People all over the world have stripped down in public as a form of art to make a statement or just to feel the freedom of baring it all. Nude beaches are not exactly a novelty in Europe, and statues portraying the beauty of the human body stand in museums and towns worldwide. But never before has there been a naked gathering as large as the one last Sunday in Mexico City.
In Mexico City’s main square, Zocalo plaza, 18,000 naked bodies filled the area to pose for a picture orchestrated by New York photographer, Spencer Tunick, according to an article by the Associated Press.
This weekend’s shoot was not the first nude photo session for Tunick, who had previously held a record with 7,000 naked models in Barcelona. He has become famous for his nude photography and has held shoots in many other places including France, Belgium, Germany, England and Venezuela, according to Tunick’s Web site, thespencertunickexperience.org.
Tunick’s art has attracted a wide array of participants and fans. According to the article, people of different ages and social classes joined together and threw their clothes aside to be part of his work of art. Unfortunately, he did not have quite as pleasant of a response in his own country.
Throughout the course of his work in the United States, Tunick has been arrested five times and sued because of his public photo shoots. In an interview with a writer from cleveland.com, Tunick said, “From Portugal to Melbourne, to Chile and London, all the local governments have celebrated my work and have encouraged it to happen. But in New York in the ’90s, I was pretty much under the threat of arrest every time I made a work of art.”
In the United States, it seems that the naked body always has a sexual or inappropriate connotation when presented to the public. For example, a statue of a naked man in Brighton, Mich., that was the latest winner in an art competition, has raised protest and debate in the town, an article on clickondetroit.com said.
Many people were arguing that the statue should be moved because it is inappropriate for children to see. Whereas in Italy, the Statue of David stands proudly in the middle of Venice, and American tourists hover around it to try and catch a glimpse.
It is ironic that 18,000 naked Mexicans can gather in front of a Catholic church without any form of government or public protest, while a single statue throws an entire town into debate in the United States.
What is it about our culture that makes us shun public nudity and protest nude works of art? I think it has something to do with the roots of traditional nude art in Europe and the lack of it in the United States.
But with each of Tunick’s arrests, the cases were dropped shortly after, and he has yet to be prosecuted for his public art.
Similarly, the cases against the naked statue in Michigan were dropped and the statue remains in place. Maybe with each failed attempt to stop these models of beautifying and glorifying the human body through art, our country will stop trying to prevent them, and we will soon learn to appreciate them.
Maybe in a few years, the United States will top Mexico’s record of naked people joined in one place.
Christi Sobodos is a sophomore journalism major and a copy editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
