the body as a canvas

Throughout history it has been traditional for artists to paint on a canvas surface, however using the body as a canvas is becoming increasing popular within modern art scene. Two artists that work using this new canvas are Qin Ga and Veruschka von Lehndorff. Both artists use the human body are their canvas but is completely different way. In 2002 Qin Ga with a group 250 artists recreated the Long March in China, each day the route of the march was tattooed onto Ga’s back as the artwork and a memory. Lehndorff completely transforms the appearance of the human body so that it can be camouflaged into the surrounding environment in which it is placed.

On the 28th of June 2002, Qin Ga and 250 Chinese and international artists started their walk to 20 of the historical sites along the Historical Long March Route in China and after each day of walking the route and resting point was tattooed onto Qin Ga’s back. The journey itself was conducted using a variety of transportation methods including trains, buses, trucks, tractors as well as walking. At the start of the march the complete route and map of the area was tattooed on Ga’s back in blue and each day as the group progressed so did the tattoo. A shortened route walked by the group and was tattooed onto Ga’s back in red ink which created a contrast between the blue of the original route and the red of the shortened route.

“When I was thinking about how to participate in the Long March I was trying to consider how to put the use of the body behind the work” (Lu, J). By tattooing the route on his own back Ga became part of the work and he himself became a part of the Long March Memory.

“The work had a strong relationship to the body, the natural conditions in the region are quite harsh, and the toll these conditions took on the historical Long March or my Long March journey could be seen through the body. There was also an indefinable political ideology, which was also an ideology regarding the body” (Lu, J).

The work is influenced and comments on how individual bodies are affected by larger political motivations and experiences as well as destroying the collective memory of the positive and utopian aspects of modern China. Using the March as a historical and geographical framework his works explore the limits behavioural conventions and physical endurance within an individual human being.

By using his body as the canvas Ga is breaking free from traditional art practices and aesthetic by suing his body as the canvas and by tattooing his own body he is also engaging with the contemporary notions of Chinese identity and also human identity. “For Qin, the body is both a platform and site that meditates relationships between local stories and collective identity, theory and practise, art and cultural history.” (The 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art)

Veruschka von Lehndorff started her career as a model in the 60’s and then moved on to pursued her passion of body painting. “I was always being different types of women. I copied Ursula Andress, Brigge Bardot, Great Garbo. Then I got bored so I painted myself as an animal.” (A Conversation With Myself) Her body art works incorporating the use of colour to camouflage the human body into certain backgrounds forming a spectacular connection between the human body and nature. In her body of work Oxydationen, Veruschka has completely transformed the appearance of the human body to be completely invisible when placed into a natural background. The backgrounds included natural environments and also man made environments, such as old brick walls, factories and doorways.

Her trip to Kenya with photographers Andy Warhol and Peter beard in 1970 was the start of her career in body painting. It was here that she first painted herself in black shoe polish to obscure her identity and photographed herself posed in the natural environment. Her aim was to try and blend into the environment as a surreal and foreign plant or animal. Through her works she is trying to communicate the relationship between the human figure and its surroundings. Commenting that the human body can become won with nature.

For her photographs to work Lehndorff’s appearance must be adaptively natural. In all of her photographs her body is placed so naturally into the backgrounds that in many cases the body can no longer be seen. She paints herself to resemble a tree or an African animal and would completely blend with the surrounding environment.

The body of work, Oxydationen included images taken between 1970-1986. Through collaboration with photographer Holger Trulzsch the works communicated the transformation of Veruschka’s into her surrounding environments. Many of the photographs were taken in front of old brick walls and window frames and often created an illusion between the backdrop and the camouflaged body which was standing in front. Her use of colour is phenomenal and is what toes the photographs together. The body is painted with such precision that not one change of tone or shadow is missed.

“When I was young I used to spend a lot of time in the woods behind my house, hiding among the trees and pretending I was one.”

Her works are deconstructions if her own past and identity and ones own desires. “… the desire to hide, to be camouflaged, to escape human appearance, to be animal, an object, not a person, the desire to punish, to dissolve the self into the world, to be stripped naked, to pertify the body, to become only matter.”(A Conversation With Myself) By using her own body and placing herself into natural environments she I questioning her relationship with her surroundings which often requires her require her to merge into a physical context or inhabit alternate personas. Her works often suggesting that identity itself is often vague and unrealistic.

Bibliography

A Conversation with Myself: She is the Goddess. She is the Sheba (2009)
http://paperpursuits.blogspot.com/2009/11/conversation-with-myself-she-is-goddess_12.html
Date Accessed: 08/08/10

Body Painting 101: A Short Primer
http://www.dailyartfixx.com/2009/07/29/body-painting-101-a-short-primer/
Date Accessed: 10/08/10

Ga, Q. Long March
http://www.leoalmanac.org/gallery/locative/longmarch/index.htm
Date Accessed: 25/08/10

Lu, J. Qin Ga: 'Miniature Long March', Art Link
http://www.artlink.com.au/articles.cfm?id=2013
Date Accessed: 25/08/10

The 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
http://apt5.asiapacifictriennial.com/artists/artists/long_march_project/qin_ga
Date Accessed: 25/08/10

War Paint: An Hommane to Veruschka
http://letgeniushappen.com/2010/04/19/war-paint-an-hommage-to-veruschka/
Date Accessed: 25/08/10