Added Jul 8, 2005
Although art historical convention compels us to classify them as ³nudes,² it would probably be more accurate to refer to Andre van der Kerkhoff¹s figures as ³naked.² There is an important distinction to be made here; for while the nude is an idealized and therefore depersonalized artistic construct, nakedness implies the baring of a particular body possessed of individual identity.
One might logically expect this differentiation to please the gatekeepers of political correctness. Yet they who most vociferously deplore the identity-blurring objectification of the so-called ³Male Gaze² are often those who holler loudest when any male artist dares to depart from the hourglass stereotype of ³Ideal Form,² generally demure of pose and devoid of pubic hair.
So how they will react as van der Kerkhoff¹s renown grows, as it most certainly will given the recognition and the number of exhibitions his talent has already begun to garner him, remains to be seen. (Consider the scandal when his worthy modernist predecessors Amedeo Modigliani and Egon Schiele first substituted nakedness for nudity, then multiply that by the many times more touchy cultural climate of our present postmodern era).
Clearly, the aerobically athleticized young women that van der Kerkhoff chooses to depict in his photo-derived prints on brushed aluminum belong to a bold new species of contemporary beauty, as they proudly display their nubile charms in a manner that makes a mockery of old-fashioned modesty. Look how frankly that angular waif with the tousled blond tresses spilling down around her pert breasts gazes out at the viewer from under quizzical Brooke Shields eyebrows; how that somewhat more curvaceous model preens her silvery nakedness like a living arabesque, set against vibrant hard-edged color areas reminiscent of Mondrian; how yet another lithe sylph stretches her slender arms high above her head with drowsy feline grace before a red-framed window in which gray dawn breaks over a phallic bouquet of sun-splashed skyscraper-spires.
Unlike his Pop predecessors, van der Kerkhoff does not appropriate images from the mass media in order to distance them as banal objects of satire or deny their honest erotic power in the manner of those Victorian hypocrites who banished every unclothed figure to a sterile limbo of myth to placate the clergy. Rather, he photographs the models himself, directing them with the discerning eye of a fine artist and evincing a reverence that is reflected as viscerally as a shudder in the shimmering aluminum surfaces onto which he prints his icons of unabashed desire.
Indeed such series titles as ³The Seduction of Citizen K² and ³Citizen K¹s Seductive Blues² reveal a candidness akin to Norman Mailer¹s self-characterization as ³The Prisoner of Sex.² At the same time, van der Kerkhoff takes care to invest his compositions with formal qualities as engaging as the physical attributes of his subjects, achieving, as I once noted in another context, a tantalizing tension between the hot and the cool, the blatantly erotic and the purely aesthetic.
To the active imagination, each of Andre van der Kerkhoff¹s prints can suggest a narrative subtext: One composition may evoke a poetic California dreamer, perhaps a fledgling folk singer fresh from the hot tub; another, a promising student moonlighting at an escort service to pay her way through medical school; yet another, an elegant agent for high-end Manhattan real estate, just before dressing for success.
Every picture seems to celebrate the complexity of the contemporary young woman, whose take on feminism is more likely modeled on the self-empowerment of Oprah and Madonna than the strident rhetoric of Kate Millett or Germaine Greer. In any case, she almost certainly sees her beauty as a facet of that empowerment, rather than a detriment to being taken seriously. Andre van der Kerkhoff appears to take her very seriously indeed, bathing her nakedness in a light that signifies one man¹s vision of the sacred.
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Ed McCormack, one of the original contributing
editors of Andy Warhol¹s Interview,
has written extensively on art and popular culture for
Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, the New York Daily News,
New York Times and numerous other publications.
At present, with his wife Jeannie McCormack, he publishes the
art journal Gallery&Studio.
Most recently he wrote a catalog essay for the exhibition
³Willem de Kooning, 1981-1986,² at L&M Arts, New York City.