There's a well-known story about the Greek sculptorWhen the famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) visited his friend and admirer, the art critic Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) in January 1887, he was very curious to see these exotic art treasures in real..
who fell in love with his own creation, the marble Galathea, and asked VenusThis is the third time that the Swedish Senju Shunga (1968) pays tribute to a classic work of art. Recently he finished a melancholic rendition of John Everett Millais’ Ophelia and a couple of years ago it was..
to bring it to life. British studio and press photographer John Everard (Edward Forward, active in the 1920s-1960s) seems to show in his photography the sculptural "origin" of the modelsHelmut Newton (1920-2004) was a German-Australian photographer whose works appeared in lots of fashion magazines, like Vogue , French Vogue , Marie-Claire , Elle , and Playboy . Newton made numerous nude photographs..
. Watching Everard's works, we witness the process of sculpturing performed not by a chisel but by light and shadowAt an auction I came across this rare and fascinating scroll with ink paintings that was produced in the late 19th century. The hand-painted color ink paintings are depicted with light ink, and the expressions and..
.
Fig. 1. Artist’s Model, 1952 (worthpoint.com)
Fig. 2. NudeWhen the French painter, sculptor and drawer Alain ‘Aslan’ Bourdain (1930-2014) was 12, he already made his first sculptures after putting aside money to obtain two soft stones. The Bordeaux-born..
, 1959, ebay.com
Fig. 3. Nude, 1940-49 (collezionemarone.com)
Fig. 4. Nude, 1959
Fig. 5. BreastsA more mature couple – husband and pregnant wife – are seen at passionate foreplay. The woman asks the flirtatious man to hurry and get on with the main act, abruptly directing him in the details of every desired..
, 1940
Fig. 6. Female Torso, 1940
Fig. 7. Japanese Nude, 1955
Fig. 8. Female Nude, 1940s
From Competition to Cooperation
John Everard was a self-taught photographer and a former tea planter who began his artistic activity being a veteran of World WarThe first Sino-Japanese war (1 August 1894 – 17 April 1895) introduced a new character of erotic fantasy to the stage: the nurse. This was a professional woman whose job it was to touch men, and in some cases..
I. He had a studio in London and was a competitor to two remarkable British photographers of that time, Walter Bird and Horace Roye, the author of the LoveliesAt the beginning of the XXth century, there were fierce debates on whether photography is art. Photographers tried to imitate classic paintings doing pictorialist oeuvres. Times moved on, and people of art started..
set (you can check out our article on it!). In 1939, artists decided to give up eclipsing each other and joined the lights of their talents to keep us blind with beauty, so to say. Three photographers founded the Photo Centre Ltd. company. The book with a titillating title Eves Without Leaves (1940) was the first 'child' of their collaboration.
Fig. 9. Female Nude Figure, 1939 (lofty.com)
Fig. 10. Nude figure, 1939 (dantebea.com)
Fig. 11. Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (fulltable.com)
Fig. 12. Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (unregardoblique.com)
Fig. 13. Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (fulltable.com)
Fig. 14. Female Nude, 1940
Fig. 15. Female Nude, 1940
Fig. 16. Female Nude, 1940
Fig. 17. Nude, 1930s (twitter.com)
Fig. 18. Female Torso, 1930s
Fig. 19. Female legs, 1930s
From Eve to Galathea
The first book made solely by Everard was published in 1923. Its' subject was press photography (Photographs for the Papers: How to Take and Place Them). Then, there followed a 12-year gap, probably connected with Everard's studies of the art of nudeWhen the French painter, sculptor and drawer Alain ‘Aslan’ Bourdain (1930-2014) was 12, he already made his first sculptures after putting aside money to obtain two soft stones. The Bordeaux-born..
photography. In his second book, Adam's Fifth Rib, 1935 (Fig. 20), featuring 48 b&w plates, Everard found a subject that would become a leitmotif of his further photography. One of the plates, №31, "Invocation," (Fig. 21) demonstrates the scene that slightly resembles the biblical creation of Eve. In the picture, one human reaches his hands out in astonishment, and another stands in a pose of an ancient magician invoking a creature from the darkness of non-existence. Here we can watch a curious inversion, as the naked soul, whom the magician apparently called for the person standing on the left, looks liver than actual people represented by shadows. The oeuvres from this book combine pictorialist and avant-garde approaches. They evoke in mind both pagan works of Anne BrigmanIn some of our articles, we spoke of the principles of pictorialist photography, but we didn’t pay attention solely to this phenomenon. American photographer Anne Brigman (1869-1950) provided us with outstanding..
and the surreal experiments of Man RayIn today’s article, we’ll examine an extremely rare surrealistic brochure 1929. It was made by two famous French poets and one photographer with the founder of surrealistic movement André Breton as..
. The attention to plastique of body makes these shots similar to the pictures of Lucien ClergueIn today’s article, we’ll examine another surrealistic book made by four artists, each of them was a master in his field. Corps Memorable is an album of erotic poems by Paul Eluard with twelve illustrations by famous..
and Edward WestonEdward Weston (1886-1958) was an American photographer who made a great contribution to the photo art of the XX century. His nudes are palpable or, at least, they seem to be, so looking at these close-up body shots..
, but their resemblance to sculpture seems to be most striking.
Fig. 20. Cover of Adam’s Fifth Rib (fulltable.com)
Fig. 21. Invocation (Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935)
Fig. 22. Sitting Figure from Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (dantebea.com)
Fig. 23. Nudes in dunes from Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (dantebea.com)
Doomed by the Light of Nature
In the foreword, the editor of the British newspaper The Bystander states that "Mr. Everard is one of those inquisitive, persistently creative artists doomed by the light of Nature and a born eye for the unmade picture, to accept the camera as his ruling passion." Despite the "born eye" formula, we should mention that the case of Everard is not like that of Weston, who began photographing at the age of 16. Instead, it is very close to the biography of Everard's collaborator Horace Roye, who didn't want to become a photographer from infancy and took up this profession after trying all kinds of jobs. When we speak of the Photo Centre Ltd. company's founders, there's a weird combination of pragmatism and adventurism, business sense and passion for art. Everard, who issued 15 solo books and two books in collaboration with Roye and Bird, was a member of the British Institute of Professional Photography (FBIPP), which didn't prevent him from contributing to magazines like Men Only. Balancing between art and industry, Everard managed to show us the difference.
Fig. 24. Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (fulltable.com)
Fig. 25. Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (fulltable.com)
Fig. 26. Adam’s Fifth Rib, 1935 (fulltable.com)
Fig. 27. Adam’s Fifth Rib (dantebea.com)
In Premium you can find the complete article with an additional paragraph (including an intriguing reference to Sinead O'Connor's worldwide hit Nothing Compares 2 You) + 18 other enticing nudes...!!!
Sources: Wikipedia.org; pamela-green.com; fulltable.com
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