Anna Calleja
No Hope without Nakedness, 2023
oil on panel
20 × 25 cm (7 ⅞ × 9 ⅞ in)
Copyright The Artist
Don't: (Diptych with No Hope without Nakedness to be hung together) Thinking about the temptation of the feminine. From Eve to Pandora to my experience of being a woman -...
Don't: (Diptych with No Hope without Nakedness to be hung together)
Thinking about the temptation of the feminine. From Eve to Pandora to my experience of being a woman - women punished for their consciousness, sexual desire, cursed curiosity
No Hope without Nakedness:
A play on John Berger's words 'No love without Nakedness' in an essay about Maggie Hambling and her lover. How to love is to be vulnerable. This painting is a diptych with 'Don't' - the title alludes to Hope being left in Pandora's jar. And Hope being almost more fragile than love. The painting is both insecure/private/intimate and confident/sexual simultaneously. I also love the connection of these two paintings to the title through mythology - Pandora's story begins with Fire being given to Man and she is almost a cursed gift from the start. She looks like fire.
Thinking about the temptation of the feminine. From Eve to Pandora to my experience of being a woman - women punished for their consciousness, sexual desire, cursed curiosity
No Hope without Nakedness:
A play on John Berger's words 'No love without Nakedness' in an essay about Maggie Hambling and her lover. How to love is to be vulnerable. This painting is a diptych with 'Don't' - the title alludes to Hope being left in Pandora's jar. And Hope being almost more fragile than love. The painting is both insecure/private/intimate and confident/sexual simultaneously. I also love the connection of these two paintings to the title through mythology - Pandora's story begins with Fire being given to Man and she is almost a cursed gift from the start. She looks like fire.