adminhacking away at serpentine stone producing some of the most elegant stone figures of nude women – known in visual art terms as the “TORSO”.
“What is this ‘torso’ thing that sells so well,” a local indigenous prospective collector, studying an art exhibition catalogue for the first time, once asked me in bewildered curiosity. Frank as usual, I replied: “Carvings of naked women or men”.
She shrugged, placed the catalogue down and left the exhibition in disdain.
Art, throughout its history, has had many different functions making its purpose difficult to abstract or quantify to any single concept. It has had many different reasons for being created. In many cultures, masks, torsos and figures of the human body are used in art as part of rituals, performances and dances as a decoration or symbol to serve the purpose of a cosmological relationship within a particular culture. However, their meanings can change overtime.
In the history of art the torso is a statue of the nude human trunk, without its head or limbs. Historically, many antique relics and statues have survived the ravages of the elements only in this state: without limbs or head. This form has been exploited by many global modern sculptors who have deliberately omitted the head and limbs and carved their torsos by focusing expressions and symbolism on the trunks of male or female bodies.
As a young art student during the course of my studies in Art and Cultural Anthropology at Berkley, San Francisco, USA, and later on at Southampton University in England, I was confronted by some fellow female students about the issues of nudity in art and African values over time. They asked why African nude sculpture was acceptable in pre-colonial days and yet today is a subject of debate and controversy?
Challenged by women
One of my feminist African-American colleagues angrily protested about “torsos”, especially those from Zimbabwe, referring to them as “decapitations of the female form . . . and the degradation of black African women . . . ” I feebly tried to defend Zimbabwean art and said, “It’s merely art for art sake”.
I asked why she thought the women’s torsos were portrayals of black women when the anatomy that was depicted in the sculptures was quite mechanical and raceless and in terms of colour, the stones were carved in purple, ochre, green, brown and white serpentines. She became even more incensed and started rambling “that art, demeans black mothers, black wives, black sisters, and the black girl-child . . .” The whole gender story is well known.
We continued the debate acknowledging that the history of ancient, pre-historic, and contemporary Western, Eastern and African Art is replete with sculpted, moulded, and painted imagery of nude women, some of which was and is created by the women themselves. Why was it not a problem then?
In many cultures torsos and carvings of women have many ritualistic and symbolic functions. Anthropologists know that they often serve a purpose at the level of meaning within a particular culture. I observed in retrospect, how Zimbabwean female artists were not as partial to sculpting torsos – their figures were always clothed. For example Coleen Madamombe, Agnes Nyanhongo and Letwina Mugavasi all sculpt female forms in elaborately patterned clothes. The subject of naked torsos seemed exclusively a male preference.
Nudity Debate
Art scholars will have heard of the Italian sculptor/painter Daniele da Volterra (1509-1066), whose reputation as a painter was overshadowed by his infamous, corrective work. He painted “draperies” (nhembe) over Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475-1564), naked figures in the “Last Judgement” painted frescoes (1536-1541) on the alter wall of the Sistine Chapel to suit the taste of the governing counter reformation movement of that time.
The naked depictions were considered obscene and sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua’s ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted.
After Michelangelo’s death, it was decided to obscure the genitals. Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to cover the genitals with ‘perizomas’ (briefs), leaving unaltered the complex of bodies. When the work was subsequently restored, in recent times, the restorers, however, chose not to remove all the perizomas/mabhurugwa of Daniele, leaving some of them as an historical document.
Unfortunately, some of Michelangelo’s work was regrettably scraped away by the touch-up artists’ application of “decency” to the masterpiece. The artist Daniele da Volterra became known in his circles by the nickname “Il bragghettone” (breeches maker) or in the Shona vernacular – “mabhurugwa”. The more enlightened members of the arts community detested da Volterra’s commission. The protest was so far reaching that it became “il bragghettone’s” claim to notoriety for life. Would such a ‘cover up’ cause the same uproar in our so called ‘liberated’ societies today?
Studying anatomy and the drawing and sculpting of the human forms and torsos are an essential and important part of art history, anthropology, archaeology, heritage studies, film, and photography. Would you buy and display torsos in your home, office, boardroom, bathroom or shop? Are they offensive in any way? Let us have your views!
- Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy, and a Doctorate of Business Administration in Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a practising visual artist, critic, writer/lecturer, and Corporate Image Consultant.
Online Reporter