Where are we now? Reflections on the nude in the arts
The Renaissance Nude
Thursday 4 April 2019 6.30 - 7.45pm
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
£20, £12
Join our panel, including Dame Mary Beard, Adrian Rifkin and Jemima Stehli, as they investigate how we depict, look at and respond to the nude across historical and contemporary arts.
Taking The Renaissance Nude exhibition as a starting point, our panel discuss society’s stance on the nude and how artists and creatives represent it today. How have our attitudes on the nude changed throughout history? How does representation of the nude differ throughout the creative arts? How have topics such as gender, sexuality, power and beauty been represented and affected through the varying depictions of the nude?
The Panel will be chaired by Jacky Klein. Speakers include Professor Mary Beard OBE, contemporary artist Jemima Stehli and Professor Adrian Rifkin.
Jacky Klein is an art historian, publisher and broadcaster. She worked as a curator at the Barbican, Courtauld and Hayward galleries before moving into publishing as Commissioning Editor at Thames & Hudson, subsequently working at Phaidon Press, Tate and HENI Publishing. As a broadcaster, she has presented short films for the Art Fund, Christie’s, Tate and Bloomberg TV, and co-presented Britain’s Lost Masterpieces for BBC4. She is a regular contributor to a range of BBC arts TV and radio programmes including Radio 4's Front Row. Her books include Grayson Perry (Thames & Hudson, 2009 / 3rd edition due 2020) and Body of Art (Phaidon, 2015), a survey of art focused on the body from palaeolithic times to the present.
Professor Mary Beard OBE is the Royal Academy’s Professor of Ancient Literature. She is a Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Newnham College. Her books include Confronting the Classics, Women and Power and SPQR, and she has presented programmes for the BBC including Civilisations and Front Row Late on BBC2.
Jemima Stehli has used her own naked body in works as a way to describe subjectivity and the power of sexuality and desire in representation. Strip (1999/2000) was exhibited at Tate Modern in the exhibition Performing or the Camera in 2016. She has had solo exhibitions at venues across the UK and internationally including Focal Point Gallery Southend, Lisson Gallery and Chisenhale Gallery, London and the Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver. Stehli is a Lecturer on the Postgraduate studies in Art Practice at Goldsmiths London University.
Adrian Rifkin is a visiting professor at Central Saint Martins and emeritus Professor of Art Writing at Goldsmiths. He has published widely on issues of art historiography, cultural studies and gay and queer cultures. A collection of his essays are published by Haymarket, Communards and Other Cultural Histories edited by Steve Edwards, and Interdisciplinary Encounters: Hidden and Visible Explorations of the Work of Adrian Rifkin is edited by Dana Arnold. Currently Adrian gives occasional lecture/performance events known as "site specific enunciations" in galleries and conferences.
£20, £12
The Renaissance Nude
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