Campus exhibition to inform and challenge perceptions of the 'obscene' with prints by Picasso, Matisse, Hokusai, Emin and others.
Titled Beautifully Obscene: The History of the Erotic Print, the exhibition will take place from 5 May – 12 June at Studio 3 Gallery, School of Arts, on the University’s Canterbury campus. It is free and open to all between 9am-5pm Monday to Friday. NOTE: parental/guardian guidance is advised for minors.
Featuring over 50 works from across Europe and Japan and spanning the course of 500 years, Beautifully Obscene incorporates the different approaches used by artists in order to explore themes of sexuality, gender roles and power.
Curated and organised by students from the Print Collecting and Curating Module at the School of Arts, the exhibition explores art historian Sir Kenneth Clark’s famous distinction between the socially-acceptable ‘nude’, and the socially-pejorative ‘naked’ body, with the majority of the works included arguably belonging to the latter category.
Beautifully Obscene will not only present viewers with a comprehensive study of the aesthetics of the human form and sexuality but will also challenge society’s ingrained discomfort with erotic visual representations and suggest that beauty can in fact be found in the obscene.
The artists whose works will be exhibited are: Pietro Aquila, Pietro Santi Bartoli, Monika Beisner, Jan de Bisschop, Emma Bradford, Simone Cantarini, Stephen Chambers, Marianne Clouzot, Gabriel Dauchot, Angele Delasalle, Roland Delcol ,Amandine Dore, Tracey Emin, Brad Faine, Henri Fantin-Latour, Valentin Le Fevre, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Othon Friesz, Frans de Geetre, Paul Guiramand, Sarah Hardacre, William Hogarth, Katsushika Hokusai, Anita Klein, Rudolf Koch, Antonio Lafrery, Martin Van Maele , Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Patricia Nik-Dad, Pablo Picasso, André Provot, Felicien Rops, Berthommé de Saint-André, Kitagawa Utamaro, Alex Varenne, Marcel Vertes , Denis Volx, Lucas Vorsterman, and Shane Wheatcroft.
Kent’s renowned Print Collecting and Curating Module gives students the opportunity both to curate a museum-quality exhibition of their design and to acquire prints for the Kent Print Collection. In thinking about this exhibition, this year’s students wished to address the lack of erotic art in the permanent collection and to explore the rich and varied history of sensuality and eroticism depicted in print.