Exhibition review - Nude: art from the Tate Collection - Art Gallery of NSW

Pablo Picasso
Nude woman in a red armchair

(Femme nue dans un fauteuil rouge) 1932
oil paint on canvas

For this year's major Summer exhibition, the Art Gallery of NSW has partnered with the Tate Gallery in London to bring a selection of over 100 works representing the nude image over two centuries of art. The exhibition is titled, not surprisingly, Nude: art from the Tate collection.

The exhibition’s main highlight, placed centre-stage is Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The kiss 1901-04 which is being displayed for the first time outside of Europe. Other works of note include Pierre Bonnard’s The bath 1925, Picasso’s Nude woman in a red armchair 1932 (very standard abstractive Picasso), Sylvia Sleigh’s Paul Rosano reclining 1974, Ron Mueck’s Wild man 2005 (as with most Mueck works it's an enormous semi life-like sculpture) and Rineke Dijkstra’s Julie, Den Haag, Netherlands, February 29 1994.

The exhibition is themed in nine rooms in the Gallery with titles such as The Historical Nude, The Private Nude, The Modern Nude, Real and Surreal Bodies, Paint as Flesh and so on. The titles of each segment predominantly correspond to periods of time demonstrating the evolution of the nude through different art interpretations and representations. Given the scale and depth of the Tate collection, this is a relatively small, thin veneer selection of works of major artists worldwide who have used the nude human form.  Although much lauded, Rodin's sculpture, the kiss, is quite underwhelming, as quietly whispered by many members of the Art Gallery of NSW Foundation at a private viewing. Its more representative of the general physical movement of a man and woman kissing whilst in the thralls of an embrace but an awe inspiring sculpture it is not.

The exhibition runs from 5 November 2016 to 5 February 2017.