THE DERRIÈRE
A Cultural Serving
THE DERRIÈRE
Butts, behinds, and backsides. A group show at LDGR turns toward the posterior with a glimpse at the “contemplation, longing, voyeurism, refusal, fetishism, and defiance” of works depicting the human figure. Rear View features paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs by dozens of artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Yoko Ono, Egon Schiele, and Jenny Saville, all of whom direct the viewer’s gaze toward the sensuous, mundane, and intimate. The show considers how perspective shapes meaning and how approaching a scene or figure from an alternate angle can prove fruitful, if not provocative.
Rear View is up through June 1 at 19 East 64th Street, New York, and to ensure complete satisfaction, LDGR has a companion exhibition, Full Frontal, on view within the second-floor gallery.
The backstory
Heather Radke’s Butts made the rounds a few months back, and the nonfiction book unpacks the complicated history and culture of the derriere. While universal anatomy, butts have become sites of desire, shame, humor, and derision, and Radke explores the racialized and sexualized history of the fat-covered joint. She connects the critically important story of Sarah Baartman, who was derogatorily referred to as “Hottentot Venus” and spent years in European freakshows, to the adoption of wide, padded undergarments and the way women’s clothing has never been designed to fit properly–our shopping woes are confirmed. Despite its cheeky cover, Butts is essential reading for better understanding our cultural conceptions of the body and their real-world implications.
Think about
“Butts don’t have to mean anything. They just don’t have to mean anything… A woman’s butt has some fat on it probably because it’s a convenient place on the body to store fat so you don’t fall over. There’s something about how kind of stupidly simple the physiology of it is that makes you wonder why everybody’s feeling so many intense ways about this?” — Heather Radke in BOMB
Feeling cheeky
Check out a series of seat imprints, controversial lounging, the undending desire for jiggle, the dame of the bustle, and of course, we can’t forget the original workout sensation.
Written by So Textual
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