Naturally : Karel Novák – Jock Sturges Moravian Gallery in Brno

Naturally : Karel Novák – Jock Sturges Moravian Gallery in Brno

Naturally : Karel Novák – Jock Sturges
Moravian Gallery in Brno / Museum of Applied Arts / Camera
26/4/2013 - 28/7/2013
www.moravska-galerie.cz
Entrance fee
40/20 CZK
CURATOR
Jiří Pátek
AUTHOR
Roman Franc
Tisková zpráva / Press Release
The Moravian Gallery in Brno presents an exhibition of photographs from the naturist environment by two
artists, Karel Novák and Jock Sturges.
American photographer Jock Sturges, whose photos are displayed in the Czech Republic for the first time,
is a world-famous artist renowned, in particular, for his nudes of adolescents and their families, largely
taken in Northern California (USA) and on the Atlantic coast, France. In 1990 the FBI raided Sturges’s studio in
San Francisco, confiscating both the studio and his photographic archive. It took him eight years of court
proceedings to purge his work of accusations of child pornography. Karel Novák, a virtually unknown photographer
from Prostějov, has been taking photographs exclusively in naturist communes since 1962, in the former
Eastern Bloc (East Germany, Hungary) and the former Czechoslovakia. His photographs from nude
beaches and the naturist environment, displayed in Brno for the first time, have yet to earn wider
recognition from art galleries and the media.
The exhibition brings a unique comparison of two photographers from different corners of the globe unified by
photographing nudity as a living phenomenon, in naturist communes to which they have both belonged for
decades. Their images do not only convey the beauty of the human body moving freely in a natural
environment; they are also messages to the world that finds the ideals of naturism difficult to understand as it
lacks the most important element, the authentic experience. The essence of combining the work by the two
artists is shown in their common features, despite differences: the relationship to naturism, attitudes to life and
the world, as well as perennial worries over its impetuous responses.
EXHIBITION CONCEPT
Through the Naturally: Karel Novák – Jock Sturges exhibition, visitors will encounter nudity in the form to
which neither them nor art institutions are accustomed to. While nudity is not uncommon in art galleries, the
kind of nudity presented here defies the traditional “museum nudity” integrated safely into patterns that we
have grown used to reading without “unnecessary questions”.
In a way, the exhibition stages a test of the public’s standpoints concerning nudity, as well as a test of
the organizing institution. Although it is hardly a revolutionary feat (the public has been regularly exposed to
nudity in art since the 1960s), the subjects of nudity, ethics and public space, as well as nudity in the context of
an institution, are far from exhausted. They appear to pose questions to every period and perhaps every
specific moment of these restless times, questions that are not artificial and are inherent to us not because we
are humans and nudity is part of our intimacy, but because nudity is also revived by terms such as shame,
taboo, ethics, eroticism and pornography that possess the inner logic of the modern civilization that has
produced them.
Tisková zpráva / Press Release
It is a pity that our civilization has entered, rather one-sidedly, sex in its nudity equations, and thus
tends to read nudity stereotypically as a mark of bodily pleasure or an excuse for scandal, in both cases with
due moral appeal. As a result, modern-age nudity is forever accompanied by the feeling of guilt that has
virtually suppressed its harmonization potential. Naturism presents an alternative of how to deal with this state
of things.
THE ARTISTS
Jock Sturges (*1947, New York, NY, USA)
American photographer best known for his images from naturist communes in Northern California, Ireland and
France. He studied perceptual psychology and photography at Marlboro College, Vermont (BFA, 1974) and
photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, California (MFA, 1984). He worked, for example, as a
photography instructor, printer and commercial photographer specialising in fashion and classic dance, as well
as portrait photographer. He contributes to a number of photographic journals, and exhibits his photographs all
over the globe. In the early 1990s his work raised controversy and Sturges was accused of producing child
pornography, which brought him a great deal of hardship in personal life and work, but also a wider
recognition. Jock Sturges lives and works in Seattle.
The artist’s photographs are represented in some of the world’s most important art collections, such as The
Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum, New York; Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, and in the
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt.
Jock Sturges has published numerous books, among them The Last Day of Summer, Aperture, 1991;
Radiant Identities, Aperture, 1994; Jock Sturges: New Work 1997–2000; Scalo, 2000; Jock Sturges: Notes,
Aperture, 2004; Misty Dawn Portrait of a Muse, Aperture, 2008.
He is also the subject of the film Line of Beauty and Grace. A Documentary About Jock Sturges, 2008
(Christian E. Klinger, Amadeo Film).
Karel Novák (*1936, Prostějov, Czech Republic)
Studied at the Secondary School of Forestry in Hranice na Moravě (1961) and at the School of Creative
Photography in Brno (extramural sudent,1967–1969). He then worked in the Prostějov printing works as a
reproduction photographer. In 1989, after the collapse of the communist regime, Novák left his job and
became a freelance photographer.
Novák ‘s interest in naturism took a more concrete shape in 1962 when he first travelled to the
seaside, to the German Democratic Republic (DDR). He subsequently became an ardent promoter of naturism
in socialist Czechoslovakia and helped establish, for example, unofficial recreational areas for nudists in the
surroundings of Prostějov. His two main interests, photography and life in naturist communes, gave rise to a
uniquely varied body of work documenting the world on which the majority of people tend to maintain biased
views.
Until now, the artist has only exhibited his work in cafes and small private galleries of his friends in
Moravia. These photographs, however, were never devoted to the subject of the naturist environment. Karel
Novák’s photographs have been published in naturist magazines both in this country and beyond its borders.
PARTNEŘS AND MEDIÁ PARTNEŘS
CONTACT FOR MEDIA: Martina Vašková, [email protected], t +420 532 169 174, m +420 724
516 672