Nude Art - How Spencer Tunick Hopes to Make Change With Nudity

As part of Bazaar.com's #NudeWeek, we look at the political power of nudity in art.

At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this July, 100 naked women will stand facing the Quicken Loans Arena holding large, round mirrors. They'll be part of artist Spencer Tunick's latest large-scale art installation: "Everything She Says Means Everything."

The New York-based artist has been planning this project since 2013—back when Donald Trump was little more than a hyper-rich businessman and reality-TV personality.

"I could never have imagined there would be such a heightened attention to the male-versus-female dynamic of this Cleveland juggernaut of a convention," Tunick says. "But I feel like doing this will sort of calms the senses. It brings it back to the body and to purity."

Tunick has been working with large mirrors since 2013 in preparation for the convention, including for this project: Indian Point Reaction, 2015.

Tunick has been creating large-scale nude installations since 1994 when he organized a project at the United Nations. He's staged them around the world and, for his largest undertaking, gathered 18,000 people in Mexico City. Lady Gaga wrote her NYU undergraduate thesis about Tunick's influential—and at times controversial—work, arguing: "Tunick challenges traditional ideas of intimacy, and asks us to free the body of sexuality and view it aesthetically for the purpose of his art." 

Because public nudity is so rare, Tunick's pieces often draw attention and sometimes pushback and criticism.

"I think as a society, we're so used to seeing nudes on the Internet and on TV in the movies that we sort of think that it's a very open society but once the nude body goes outside of an enclosed environment, it becomes the equivalent to a crime or violence," explains Tunick, who has been arrested five times while attempting to work outdoors in New York. "The body in public space is very much taboo still, but it's something worth fighting for."

Desert Spirits, 2013

Tunick usually invites both sexes to participate. But for Cleveland, it'll just be women. It will be a powerful display considering the Republican party's difficulty connecting with women: Seven out of 10 women say they have a negative impression of Trump, the party's presumptive nominee, according to a recent poll. 

"I have two daughters—9 and 11—and I want them to grow up in a progressive world with equal rights and equal pay and better treatment for women, and I feel like the 100 women lighting up the sky of Cleveland will send this ray of knowledge onto the cityscape," Tunick says. "I think it will enlighten not only the delegates but set the vibe of the weekend, set a tone."

Tunick announced the project and put out a call for unpaid volunteers on May 10th. To pull it off, he'll work with a location manager, volunteers from local art schools, and his wife. Early in the morning on July 17, the day before the convention, the women will meet across from the arena on private property to get into formation, rain or shine. He estimates the volunteers will be nude for about 15 minutes. Each participant will receive a limited edition print of the project.

Ohio 2 (Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland), 2004

While Trump events have drawn violence from his supporters and protesters, Tunick hopes his project will be a unifying one.

 "We really are reaching out to people of all parties. This is a work Republican women can participate in. It's not so much a protest as it is a representative artwork," says Tunick, who went to the New York Military Academy, which Trump attended as well. "Who knows what will happen."

When asked if he's concerned about police intervention, Tunick says: "I hope police participate in the project, too. I've had a lot of cops participate in the past."

God Bless America, 2004

The artist is no stranger to protestors or threat of arrest. In 2002, after facing hundreds of protestors in Santiago, Chile, 5,000 nude volunteers turned out for a massive instillation. "The people used my work as a catalyst to send a message to the government that they're free and the government doesn't own their bodies," he says. That year, Tunick was named the country's Man of the Year by a local newspaper.

While facing threat of arrest by New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the owners of Grand Central Station closed it down for him to host 400 women for an installation. The case against Tunick went to the Supreme Court. In 2000, the court ruled in favor of the artist.

"I ran into [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg at a museum after that and I thanked her," Tunick says. "She said, 'Just don't do it on the steps of the Supreme Court.'"

Artist Spencer Tunick organizing a project

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