Body of evidence

From head to toe, these artists bare their all

by Leon Nigrosh

HEAD TO TOE: IMPRESSING THE BODY. At the University Gallery, Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, through December 17.

We have always used parts of our bodies as tools for expression. It is an exercise ingrained in our collective psyche. The "cavemen" of Lascaux, France, left us smoky outlines of their hands some 25,000 years ago. And today's pre-schoolers delight in bringing home their latest finger paintings. The human figure has long been an important subject in the realm of art; but ever since the sexual revolution of the '60s, the body has become a popular and highly charged subject, with many artists making their artistic statements by employing their own bodies.

Co-organized by Margaret Mathews-Berenson and former Worcester Art Museum curator of contemporary art Donna Harkavy, the current exhibition at the UMass Amherst University Gallery showcases the work of 32 contemporary artists who have forsaken the typical brush, pen, and pencil and produced works with their own appendages. In this manner, they are attempting to create a sense of immediate intimacy with their particular medium -- an impression they assume will carry over to their viewers.

The most politically charged works are those by Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta (1947-1985). An avid feminist and anti-Castro activist, she often created performance pieces by covering her body in blood, and then making gestural marks on paper. Her 1982 three-part Body Tracks starts with clearly delineated blood-red hand prints and then sweeps off at various angles to the edges of the paper. The inevitable oxidation of her work suggests the temporal nature of her medium and of life itself. The works' striking simplicity cannot help but evoke our emotions.

Boston artist Annette Lemieux's 10-foot-long, latex-on-canvas Tight Rope is the tops for the sheer "aha" effect. A conceptual artist who wanted to get back to paint but felt that her hands were too well-trained, Lemieux instead coated her feet and paced the length of canvas from one end to the other, and then repeated the process. The resulting image shows black footprints at each end that fade as they traverse the distance. It is as if we are witnessing the trail of a circus artist crossing a high wire, until we notice that the image is made up of just 12 steps.

The earliest example of body art in this exhibit is from the dean of pop art, Jasper Johns. In his 1963 lithograph Skin with O'Hara Poem, rather than use a litho crayon or brush, he pressed his hands -- and face -- onto the litho stone, creating the impression that the artist is trapped in his own work and attempting to push his way out. More recently, German-born artist Kiki Smith performed a similar act by rolling her hair and face across a litho stone to produce an energetic tangle, and tango, of wispy lines and ethereal planes. And speaking of dance, Venezuelan-born artist Eduardo Difarnecio quite literally does the salsa across his paper. Coating his feet with graphite, he dances to the rocking beat of the music, leaving a permanent record of his expressive joy through marks, swirls, and the occasional footprint.

The ever-outrageous performance artist Carolee Schneemann and New York artist Larry Miller each employs the most personal body parts to imprint bold, personal statements, while Suzan Etkin's pale paint-on-canvas impressions of her breasts and buttocks compete for attention with photos of Vito Acconci biting himself. For some reason, these attempts to shock, infuriate, or at least annoy us seem to fall short. Perhaps current-day movies, television, and advertising have simply inured us to such images.

Because most of the artists chose to work with ink, graphite, or photographic processes, the overall exhibition has a monochromatic quality to it, with only the rare flash of color from Mendieta, Nam June Paik, and Charles Clough's "fingerings." But even within these confines, the artists have lived up to the exhibit's name by continuing our DNA-ingrained desire to personify and immortalize the human condition. By employing virtually every possible body part, from orifices to eyelashes, they have created works that are imaginative and evocative.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. Call (413) 545-3670.