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Desnudo en el Louvre
Artist Cristina Lucas (1973)
Title Desnudo en el Louvre
Year 2010
Material Inkjet print on methacrylate
About the work The Spanish word “desnudo” in the title means nude and refers to the several naked bodies in the Louvre in Paris. Yet it is probably one body in particular that catches your attention: that of the man posing next to a marble statue from ancient Greece. In this work, Cristina Lucas addresses our ambiguous attitude towards nudity. On the one hand, we tend to see nude (and perfect) bodies in museums as the most natural thing in the world. On the other hand, a naked, living human body often evokes uncomfortable feelings. This was confirmed when security asked the nude model to get dressed again as quickly as possible.
About the artist Lucas creates installations, videos, sculptures, performances, drawings and photographs. Her work explores power structures, breaks through clichés and takes the sting out of emotionally charged subjects. Cristina Lucas studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid and at the University of California. From 2006 to 2007, she was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She lives and works in Madrid.
In the collection This work was acquired in 2019, along with another “desnudo” portrait by Lucas, of a nude model at the Prado Museum in Madrid. These and other works were on display that same year at Lucas’ solo exhibition, Wonder While I Wander, in De Nederlandsche Bank’s art gallery. A year earlier, she was the guest curator of another exhibition in the art gallery, titled After Bretton (a reference to the 1944 conference that introduced the system of fixed currency exchange rates).
