Contemporary Body Print Artists

Written By Lisa Bird

Body printing has appeared numerous times in contemporary art.

Yves Klein

In the 1960s, French artist and Judo master Yves Klein made a series of prints named “Anthropometries.” These prints were produced during performances, during which Klein directed the models to cover themselves in his patented colour, ‘International Klein Blue’. They were directed to imprint their bodies on large sheets of paper; Klein saw the body as a living paintbrush. During the performance, musicians played Klein's Monotone Symphony—a single note played for twenty minutes, followed by twenty minutes of silence.

Klein challenged the definition of painting, stole the motif of the nude, transformed it into something new and created the foundations of performance art as we know it today.

David Hammons 

From 1968 to 1979, American artist David Hammons used the body as a drawing tool and a printing plate to explore performative, unconventional forms of image-making. He created monoprints and collages by greasing his body with margarine or baby oil, pressing or rolling body parts against paper, and covering the surface with charcoal or powdered pigment. This process created intricate details of both skin and hair.

Created during the Vietnam War, when America experienced nationwide protests and demonstrations against the war, Hammons described in the 1960s his “moral obligation as a Black artist to try to graphically document what I feel socially.” https://www.moma.org/collection/works/127864

His work explores how Black bodies are politically coded in the United States, the issues of Black representation and identity in art and the ongoing racial oppression and discrimination in the world at large.

Rachel Lachowicz

In 1992, the American Artist Rachel Lachowicz orchestrated a feminist protest against both the beauty industry and Klein’s ‘Anthropometries’ by using male nudes rubbed in red lipstick to make body prints called ‘Red Not Blue’. The resulting marks were both seductively glossy and disturbingly raw.

The performance and resulting prints criticised how women are perceived and treated in the historically male-dominated art world as desirable objects rather than valuable contributors in their own right. The beauty industry supports this socially unquestioned indoctrination through its products and marketing strategies. In an interview about her work, Lachowicz stated,

“The cosmetic industry doesn’t want women to be liberated because women might get the idea they don’t want to wear lipstick, and (cosmetic companies) want you to really care about wearing it.” - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-10-07-ca-637-story.html.

She also highlights the concern that if women are obsessed with how they look and focus on this, they limit their time to explore worldly opportunities, achieve goals and gain a fuller sense of self-worth through a well-balanced life.

Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley, in 2016, created a series of unique crude oil and petroleum jelly body prints produced for the exhibition ‘Cast’ at Alan Cristea Gallery, London.

The transfer was achieved by Gormley falling directly onto the paper, the weight of his body leaving a corresponding print. Using crude oil, he represented the 'blood of the earth', highlighting our dependency on the planet's solar memory, our relationship with this finite resource, and its impact on our health and physical bodies.

My Body Prints

Those who have gone before me have used body printing to push the boundaries of what painting is, and to raise questions about spirituality, connection, freedom, oppression, racism and feminism, to name but a few.

My body prints expressing the duality of freedom and oppression, unity and separation and how human life is composed of these conflicting internal states and experiences.

References:

Lisa Bird
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