NPF Naked People Finder
Fig. 1
1 Comp. Jacques Bonnet, Die Badende. Voyeurismus in der abendländischen Kunst, trans. from French by Katja Richter, Berlin: Parthas, 2006 and Burkhard Leismann and Martina Padberg (eds.), Intimacy! Baden in der Kunst, Köln: Wienand, 2010 (no English translations available)
Invitation to a Bath Marc Munter
Bathing scenes are as common in art as the daily shower or the soak in the tub. Both phenomena indicate exceptional, privileged circumstances. For water has always been scarce in many regions and is becoming more so across the globe, while the situation for art is similarly precarious. During the 15th and 16th centuries, wars and disease brought the medieval tradition of bathhouses, itself a reinvigoration of the antique and Islamic cultures of bathing, to a sudden end. A book illustration from 1470 offers an impression of such a bathhouse (Fig. 1). Emphasising the immorality of the bathers, the bathhouse is depicted as a bordello with a large mixed-gender tub. Naturally this suggests a moral double standard: the didacticism of the image requires pornographic exaggeration, thereby legitimating it and offering the colorful action to the viewer’s unveiled gaze. Here lie the beginnings of the steady rise of representations of the nude under the protective mantle of religious, epic and later profane bathing scenes, finally surfacing as an ambivalent voyeurism.1 In fact bathhouses were avoided by the privileged classes for much of the early modern period: doctors involved in the early scientific explorations of medicine during the 16th century perpetuated the false belief that bathing causes water to flow inside the body, thereby categorically condemning the practice. In courtly rococo society perfumes and powders became fashionable, which gave rise to still-familiar ex pressions such as “a French shower” – to cleanse oneself using deodorant instead of water and soap. Meanwhile bathers in art were becoming increasingly emancipated from religious connotations and developed autonomous imagery: Albrecht Dürrer’s pen drawing The Women’s Bath and his woodcut The Men’s Bath (both 1496) in a sense kick off this development. They show bathing scenes in authentic settings, exceptionally realistic for the pictorial conventions of the time (Fig. 2 and 3). Dürrer’s ambitious representation of different human types in characteristic poses, as well as the skilful demonstration of his knowledge of proportion and anatomy, is apparent
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
2 Robert Halsband (ed.) The complete letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965-1967, 3 vol.
here. On the other hand, the bath is shown as a social event charged with narrative. A reflective reference to the voyeurism of the viewer is contained in the image through the inclusion of a hidden observer to the left of the Women’s Bath, mirroring the viewer’s own gaze. Many of these components reappear in representations of bathing scenes throughout the centuries. The interest in the motif of the bather was further fostered by the ‘discovery’ of the orient, whereby the representation of the foreign, exotic body as a rule originated from western projections of the oriental: pure fantasies, but also familiar motifs observed in the artist’s environment were ‘dressed-up’ with oriental elements and thus legitimise for the art world and its publics. For his Turkish Bath, (1863, Fig. 4) Jean-August-Dominique Ingres did not travel to Turkey but referred to Letters from the Orient by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, published in 1716.2 The oriental steam bath merely provides the backdrop for an opulent display of nude women characterised however, by strong classicist lines and revealed as a treasure trove of citations of countless female acts drawn over the years by the master himself. Just as in a picture puzzle, individual figures may be recognised in the surprising clarity of the steam bath. The intervention NPF (Naked People Finder) by Haus am Gern (2004) may be understood as a persiflage: here too, various friends and acquaintances came together and circulated between relaxation area and steam bath, but in the latter the bodies’ outlines blur in the hot, billowing steam, at most reappearing as painterly imprints on the glass façade. Paul Cézanne, on the other hand, was interested in a more abstract form of painting: tirelessly he wrestled with the subject of bathers. A patchy, heavily structured application of paint determines his search for the tonal accord of figure and surrounding landscape, for the harmony of man and nature – hackneyed as it may sound – evident in Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) (1898 –1905, Fig. 5). The American painter Mark Tansey playfully references Cézanne’s Bathers in his painting Mont Sainte-Victoire (1987, Fig. 6). However, his concern is a meta-perspective on history, art and representation: the bathers are not anonymous as in Cézanne’s image, but clearly identifiable personages reflected in the lake while bathing. The figures, exponents of poststructuralism such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, are reflected in the water as women. And the looming shape of the mountain doubles as a cave reminiscent of Plato’s famous allegory. The picture’s story could be unraveled endlessly, but Tansey seduces and leads us away from any definitive knowledge. The postmodern approach, as well as the simultaneity, ambiguity and constant presence of bathers in art, are clearly articulated here. Marc Munter (*1972, Bern) is an art historian and research associate in the Department of Art at the Museum zu Allerheiligen in Schaffhausen (Switzerland). He is currently working on his PhD dissertation at the University of Bern on the management and display of collections in art museums.
Fig. 1 Anonymous, illustration from an edition of Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem, around 1470, Berlin State Library, Prussian Cultral Heritage Foundation. Reproduced in: Jacques Bonnet, Die Badende. Voyeurismus in der abendländischen Kunst, trans. Katja Richter, Berlin: Parthas, 2006 and Burkhard Leismann, p. 84.
Fig. 4
Fig. 2 Albrecht Dürer, The Women’s Bath, 1496, pen drawing in black ink, 23,1 x 22,6 cm, Kunsthalle Bremen. Reproduced in: Burkhard Leismann and Martina Padberg (eds.), Intimacy! Baden in der Kunst, Köln: Wienand, 2010, p. 61. Fig. 3 Albrecht Dürer, The Men’s Bath, around 1496, woodcut, 38.5 x 28cm, museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf, graphics collection. Reproduced in: Burkhard Leismann und Martina Padberg (eds.), Intimacy! Baden in der Kunst, Köln: Wienand, 2010, p. 154.
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 4 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Turkish Bath, 1863, diameter 108cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre. Reproduced in: Jacques Bonnet, Die Badende. Voyeurismus in der abendländischen Kunst, trans. Katja Richter, Berlin: Parthas, 2006 and Burkhard Leismann, p. 128. Fig. 5 Paul Cézanne, Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses), around 1894–1905, oil on canvas, 127 x 196cm, London, National Gallery. Reproduced in: Hajo Düchting, Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906). Natur wird Kunst, Köln: Taschen, 1999, p. 144–145. Fig. 6 Mark Tansey, Mont Sainte-Victoire, oil on canvas, 254 x 394cm, 1987, Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich. Reproduced in: Judi Freeman, Mark Tansey [catalogue of the travelling exhibition: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 17.06.–29.08.1993, Milwaukee Art Museum, 10.09.–07.11.1993, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 09.12.1993– 20.02.1994, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 11.05.–07.08.1994, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 08.09.–20.11.1994 ], pub. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993, p. 55.
NPF Naked People Finder
2004 Intervention “The Bathers”, 8h video live-stream and series of videostills, inkjet on backlit paper in lightbox, dimensions variable, edition 3 + 1 EA Marks Blond Project Bern / QC – Quartier Culturel Bern
BATHING RULES You are now both model and paint brush: you decide what part of you is depicted. When you wipe the steam from the window pane or leave an imprint of your nose or butt or any other body part in the misted glass, you create a clear picture of yourself. go to QC
Pick a pair of flip-flops. Take a bathrobe, towel and a
numbered clothing bag.
Put your name down on the list. Sign to consent that the video
footage of the steam bath may be shown in art contexts and that your name may be mentioned in the film credits. Change in the cubicle and hand in the bag with your clothes. Drink a hot cup of tea. go to MARKS BLOND
You may enter the anteroom
of the NPF.
of 10 minutes and cool off outside.
Hang your robe and towel. Go into the steam bath. Relax. Enjoy. Leave the bath after a maximum
In October 2004, Haus am Gern was invited both by Marks Blond Project and QC – Quartier Culturel to use their very different offspaces for an intervention or exhibition. Both spaces were located in the immediate vicinity of Bern University, approximately one kilometre (0.6 miles) apart. Haus am Gern decided to to connect the two places in a single intervention. For the course of two nights, the public was to participate in generating images of bathers that could be inscribed in the art historical canon. In Marks Blond Project’s kiosk, Haus am Gern installed a small steam room directly behind the large window. The QC lounge was set up as a changing room and relaxation zone where bathers could change into a bathrobe and were given a towel and bathing shoe before walking across the neighborhood to the steam room. The more people enjoyed the bath, the less steam condensed the glass windows from through which the public could watch. After three rounds of steam and a cup of hot tea the bathers could return to the QC lounge to relax with the option of a professional massage. The window pane was filmed and the live stream transmitted directly to the chill-out lounge where bathers and public could watch it. The public was free to choose between bathing, walking down the street with the bathers or simply watching from both locations.
Drink a cup of tea. Repeat the steam bath 2 or 3 times. go to QC
Drink a cup of tea. Enjoy a massage. If necessary take a shower
Mittelstrasse
MARKS BLOND PROJECT
before changing.
Feel comfortable.
Länggasstrasse
Bühlstrasse
QC – QUARTIER CULTUREL
100 m
Above: Viewers outside the Naked People Finder at Marks Blond Below: Entrance to the steam bath
“The Bathers�, video still, ink jet on backlit paper in lightbox, 100 x 80 cm, 3 + 1 EA
From QC the guests strolled through the neighbourhood to the steam bath at Marrks Blond wearing bath robes and flip flops, and back to QC for massage, music and peppermint tea.
sonntag sonntag dampfbad aquarelle endreim steputat als quelle leiber wasser fleischmodelle sonntag dampfbad aquarelle wegrands spiesser treten stelle fragen staunen nicht sehr helle nackte fluten blauflanelle rüstung vorher im hotelle marsch proteste menschgebelle fragen deutung kulturelle interpretationskartelle meinung weder originelle noch besonders visuelle sonntag dampfbad aquarelle endreim steputat als quelle bademäntel blaupastelle eintritt klarluft nebelschwelle grüsse hallo virtuelle offizielle sexuelle substantiell und punktuelle führung klärung frikadelle bier und dampfbad aquarelle menschen lachen aus der zelle schunkeln tratschen blaskapelle sinn und unsinn wortduelle endreim steputat als quelle sonntag dampfbad aquarelle (zu: «I love the NPF») Hartmut Abendschein (*7 th October 1969 in Schwäbisch Hall) is a Swiss-German writer, editor and publisher.
CREDITS Hosts MARKS BLOND PROJECT Bern QC Quartier Culturel Bern Wireless Internet University of Bern Bathrobes and towels Hotel Z端richberg, Z端rich Flip-flops Lilli Tulipan, Z端rich Installation Amir Borenstein Changing room Vreni Spieser Massage Amir Borenstein Photography Effi Weiss Poetry Hartmut Abendschein