Jody B. sent me these images of a sculpture currently on display in Amsterdam. The sculpture is called BikiniBar. It’s maybe not safe for work, and the third image definitely isn’t, so after the jump…
The description (from Art Zuid):
A meeting point for elderly people: beautiful, cruel and sensual, with a nice interior space. Both art and architecture, BikiniBar represents a building as a sculpture and a sculpture as a building. There is a place to rest inside, where people can withdraw from the busy beach life or bad weather. BikiniBar is the only female body you can enter without permission.
Another by the artist, Joep Van Lieshout:
So it’s not just women’s bodies he represents in brutalized or maimed fashion. His work in general seems to be a comment on negative aspects of modern life. I find it creepy…but then, I’m supposed to. Art is often tricky to grapple with sociologically, because it may be an attempt to criticize social structures or behaviors…and yet may symbolically reproduce them as a means of doing so. For instance, if a movie has a graphic rape scene, but portrays it in a way that disapproves of the act, and the creators say their intention was to condemn rape, what do we make of that? In this case, the statement “…the only female body you can enter without permission” explicitly acknowledges women’s rights to their bodies and the need for consent. And yet somehow I still find it creepy. Maybe it’s the reference to a woman as a “body” that you can “enter”?
Thoughts? Help me out here.
Commenter Lance says,
Photographers cut off heads, and often arms and legs, to show the fundamental parts of women, i.e. the breasts and crotch; mannequins often have no heads or no arms if those aren’t relevant to the clothing on display; Van Lieshout has done the same thing, except that he’s brutally reminding the viewer that displays like those have parts that are “cut off”.
And Sarah says,
…it comes across as though being able to enter without consent is a selling point.
