Nude performances in the practice of Fiona Banner, 2006-2010

2014-04-21This study explores Fiona Banner’s nude performances and the differences that occur in the analysis of artwork that privileges the process of creation instead of the completed aesthetic object. Banner realized five nude performances: Nude Performance, July 2006, Nude Performance, April 3, 2007, Mirror, September 3, 2007, Performance Nude, October 8, 2008 and Nude Performance, March 5, 2010. Banner’s role and positionality in producing sexually charged portraits of nude models is analyzed in this thesis from a set of feminist theoretical perspectives. The study also highlights select key uses of the terminology surrounding the description of the unclothed female form, for example the nude versus the naked (Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form 1956 and Lynda Nead, Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality 1992). The distinction between Banner’s acts of writing and the viewer’s reading process, I argue, is fundamental to the denaturalizing of representation that occurs in the work, an interpretation that is supported by Michael Bracewell’s 2009 article "Life Writing.