Vessels - Separation and Perfection

Vessels from All Things Are Always Changing

Roberto Calasso in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony discusses control of the nude in terms of separation:

"As the Greeks see it, elegance arises from excavation, from the cavity.....The epidermis of the Greek statue is so sharply separated from all that surrounds it because it is carved out of the air, whereas Mesopotamian or Egyptian statues seem to have grown up from the ground."

This complimented our idea of evoking Greek sculpture in order to separate the body from any recognizable context and emphasize it's metaphorical function of "vessel."

Lynda Nead states this Greek approach another way:

"The female nude can almost be seen as a metaphor for these processes of separation and ordering, for the formation of self and the spaces of the other. If the female body is defined as lacking containment and issuing filth and pollution from it's faltering outlines and broken surfaces, then the classical forms of art perform a kind of magical regulation of the female body, containing it and momentarily repairing the orifices and tears. This can, however, only be a fleeting success; the margins are dangerous and will need to be subjected to the discipline of art again...and again.

Our Vessels have been contained, but their disproportion challenges.