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Marie-Louise
McHugh
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Marie-Louise McHugh's
"The Studio"
questions the morality of the female nude in public space. McHugh painted this piece after
her work was "censored in a gallery because two women objected to showing nudes."
Such a reaction is not unheard of in the history of painting. Manet's "Olympia" endured a
striking reaction from the white-bearded authorities as well as the public, whose
idea of the nude was limited to a religious and mythological context.
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Part of a series on the idea of "Venus,"
"Venus & the Three Graces" is a direct response to the ideal female figure developed in
the history of art. McHugh plays on the mythological Three Graces to comment on the
contemporary ideals that society has set for women and their bodies. The Venus, "plump" and
lovely, reclines behind the gray pallor of the rather unhappy Graces, candidly pointing out
McHugh's position on today's female self-image.
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In
"Daydream: Molting" (1991) the artist imagines a body capable of self-renewal.
She dreams of a new skin, to be revealed the way a snake molts its outer layers.
The figure, with its curvaceous shape and glowing skin, resembles the characters we see
meandering throughout McHugh's entire body of work. McHugh's metaphoric and fantastical visions of the organic body challenge our expectations of the female nude.
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Beginning of the Exhibition
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