To begin at the beginning

My love affair with the nude dates back to 1971. In that year I was seduced by Enzo Plazzotta’s sculpture Jamaican Girl. The infatuation was such that I followed my temptress to the land of her birth. Thereafter, the Caribbean became my adopted home and the islanders, my subject matter. 

Enzo Plazzotta’s sculpture Jamaican Girl.

My book Notes on the Nude traces my work as a painter and sculptor of the female nude figure. The images that illustrate the book are from my series: Daughters of the Caribbean Sun.

The title of the series is taken from a poem by the Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman (1958-1991). Sheila gave me the courage to explore the sensuous. I timidly began in the 1980’s from my studio in the British Virgin Islands. A Portrait of Alice is collection of red chalk drawings that depicted the beauty of the Afro-Caribbean woman. Alice is discreetly veiled in my drawings, for I had not then the courage to work with the nude.

The above illustration is taken from my book and shows Alice with one of my first tentative drawings. In advance of publishing a large format collector's limited edition of the book I will be serializing the contents week by week, page by page, over the next few months. To access the pages to date click on the sidebar image for this book or go to: notesonthenude.blogspot.com.

The best of both worlds

As you'll on the sidebar, I have begun serializing Notes on the Nude in advance of publishing a large format, high quality, limited print edition. This gives my followers the best of both worlds. First: it makes the contents available on-line for art students in every corner of the world and second: for collector's, a hard copy, the details of which will follow. 

I will be serializing the book week by week, page by page, over the next few months. To access the pages click on the sidebar image for this book or go to: notesonthenude.blogspot.com.

To quote the reviewer of a draft copy:

Roger Burnett’s account of his life-time’s work as a painter and sculptor depicting the nude figure will forever put traditional life classes in the shade. The pages radiate with passion, both from the artist’s and model’s standpoint. I know of no other book on this subject that comes close. It is brave and beautiful…

What have we done wrong?

Today's sketch might well express the dejected feelings of my models whose paintings and sculptures are featured in my book Notes on the Nude. I share their dismay: what have we done wrong to have our work "blocked" by the publisher of our choice. My models gave their body and soul and together we worked in all innocence to elevate the beauty and profundity of the nude.

The thousands of artists and art students that follow these post from every corner of the world do so in order to develop their understanding of working from the live model, and in doing so continue a practice that has been on going for centuries. 

Notes on the Nude is unique in giving an insight into the creative process from both the artist's and model's perspective. Moreover - and relevant to what we are presently up against - it records the battle of censorship in the arts since the time of Michelangelo. 

But one way or the other we will publish and be damned. One option is to publish the book on this blog in serial form, together with a high quality, limited edition print version. 

We're working on it!

It beggars believe...or does it

My last post ended with a reviewer's comment:

It is artists like Schiele who blaze a trail for future generations of artists to create work without constraints limiting what they can do.

It would be wonderful if that were so. But alas, in today’s world it is the likes of Facebook that have set themselves up as the guardians of morality, and it seems that all others meekly follow suit. The “F” and “C” words pass muster, as does violence and hatred, but the innocent beauty of the nude is censored. 

The content of my forthcoming book Notes on the Nude is presently suffering a similar fate and has been BLOCKED by my first choice of publisher. 

It is somewhat ironic that, in a society where sex appeal is used to sell everything from perfume to cars, artistic representations of the nude are regularly banned from being shown in public places. But this is not a new development: notwithstanding the fact that, historically, the nude has been one of the central subjects of art, it has been subjected to regular censorship attempts.

On its unveiling in Florence in 1501, onlookers stoned Michelangelo’s “David,” breaking off an arm.  More recently, in California the penis on a reproduction of “David” was masked with a fig leaf - as it was in London at the time of Queen Victoria - and in Florida, a replica of David was dressed with a loincloth after community complaints.

I give credit to The National Coalition Against Censorship for serving as the US watchdog on these issues.

My loss was my gain

Thank goodness I did not go to art school or seriously study the work of past masters until, by way of my roving lifestyle; I had developed my own way of seeing. Had this not been so, I would have discovered the work of Egon Schiele earlier than I did, and hence been tempted to imitate his unique way of seeing.

The opening sketch is one that I made before I knew that Egon Schiele had ever existed, and the painting below is by the master himself.

A recently published book: Egon Schiele. The Complete Paintings 1909–1918 is high on my wish list. The following is quoted from the publisher’s press release.

After Egon Schiele (1890-1918) freed himself from the shadow of his mentor and role model Gustav Klimt, he had just ten years to inscribe his signature style into the annals of modernity before the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware of his own genius and a passionate provocateur, this didn’t prove to be too big a challenge.

His haggard, overstretched figures, drastic depiction of sexuality, and self-portraits in which he staged himself with emaciated facial expressions bordering between brilliance and madness, had none of the decorative quality of Klimt's hymns of love, sexuality, and yearning devotion. Instead, Schiele’s work spoke of a brutal honesty, one that would upset and irreversibly change Viennese society.

Although his works were later defamed as “degenerate” and for a time were almost forgotten altogether, they influenced generations of artists – from Günter Brus and Francis Bacon to Tracey Emin. Today, his then-misunderstood oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international art market.

Presented in a voluminous format that captures all of the intensity and emotional truth of his work, Egon Schiele. All paintings from 1909-1918 features 221 paintings and 146 drawings that retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele’s life. With many pieces newly photographed for this edition, these works are paired with excerpts from his countless writings and poems, as well as essays introducing his life and oeuvre, to situate the Austrian master in the context of European Expressionism and trace his extraordinary legacy.

 As one reviewer has said:

I am obsessed with Schiele’s work. I love the boldness of his paintings and drawings particularly in a time of real censorship. It is artists like Schiele who blaze a trail for future generations of artists to create work without constraints limiting what they can do.