Who gets nude in the countryside?

This is the second part of a two-part series about nudity and censorship in the countryside art world.

Last week I discussed the regulations of Big Tech and online censorship as it intersects with the art world — internationally, in New York City, and even up here in Connecticut’s Northwest Corner and The Berkshires, where gallery owners create their own art world for more rural communities. While digital algorithms can control what art is deemed "permissible" for public viewing on social media platforms, those same conversations — what art is appropriate for what audience — continue to happen among actual humans.

At the 2022 Spring/Break art fair on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Connecticut gallery owner Andrew Craven showed a series of acrylic full-frontal male nude portraits by painter Bruno Leydet, but was unsure if he would show the same selection of Leydet’s portfolio outside of the city. So I asked some of the major voices of the area’s art world: knowing the audience in the countryside, would you show art that depicted full nudity?

Craven Contemporary

Andrew Craven opened his contemporary gallery in Lakeville, Conn., in 2018 before moving to its current home in the walkable art hub that is Kent Barns in Kent, Conn. Craven has shown works by Alex Katz as well as more ultramodern artists like Linder, Erwin Olaf, Elad Lassry, and Ruben Natal-San Miguel.

“The audience at Spring/Break was across the board,” Craven told me. “The gay men stop and look, the women stop and look… for the straight men it can be a mixed reaction, some can appreciate the art even though it’s a male nude, but for others, I think it makes them uncomfortable. But I wouldn’t suggest any of Bruno’s work to be sexually explicit. He uses pastel palettes and patterned backgrounds, so even though they have nudity, they become much more playful. The body has existed in art for a long time, but generally there’s been more comfort around seeing the female nude, particularly a fully nude female versus a fully nude male.” He added, “What I haven’t done and would not do is show work that was sexually explicit because I don’t think that would be right for the community, which has the sensibility of having families with young children. I think explicit work in Kent is hard. It would be one thing to have a disclaimer or a warning, which I don’t think I would do anyway, but I have glass windows that I don’t want to paper up.”

KMR Arts

Kathy McCarver Root is a photography dealer with a gallery in Washington Depot, Conn., who has showcased prints by modern legends including Leo Fuchs, Mark Selinger and Sally Mann.

“I wouldn’t have a problem showing work that’s a bit more provocative if that’s the right word,” Root said to me. “I think that good art, great art, worthy art is work that gives you pause, and if there is a purpose for that type of subject matter — not gratuitous, I’m not really interested in having sensational works on the wall just for that reason — but if there’s a purpose and a concept behind them then I would totally stand by that.”

Five Points Arts

The Five Points Gallery in downtown Torrington, Conn., is a nonprofit launched in 2013, and now includes The Art Center, an educational facility on the former University of Connecticut Torrington campus. Its gallery shows are often curated around a political or social theme, including climate change or Indigenous people.

“We’ve certainly had nude images in the gallery, but it wasn’t for the sake of having nude images, the work would have to do with a contemporary issue,” Five Points Founder and Executive Director Judith McElhone told me. “The one thing I will say about nudes and that kind of material is that we’re located near a children’s museum and we have windows all down Water Street and Main Street, so we would not hang the work easily visible from the street.”

The Wassaic Project

Like Five Points, The Wassaic Project is an nonprofit educational space. A young, artist-run collective in Amenia, N.Y., it hosts multidisciplinary artist residency programs.

“I would certainly consider the inclusion of a piece that was sexually explicit,” said Jeff Barnett-Winsby, a member of Wassaic Projects executive director team, which also includes Eve Biddle, and Barnett-Winsby’s wife, Bowie Zunino. “If we have something that is potentially of a sensitive nature we do a nice warning, or put it in a space that can allow people or parents the choice if they want to engage with it. I would say in general we’re not engaged with particularly controversial material, but we do show some things that are topical and can be challenging to some degree.”

James Barron Art

James Barron is a modern and contemporary art dealer who opened his gallery in Kent Barns in 2013, with exhibitions that have included Jayne County, Ralph Gibson, and Beverly Pepper. He has sold work by Cy Twombly, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Alice Neel.

“I really objected to what happened in [Museum of Fine Arts] Boston with the Philip Guston show. I thought, really? You’ve got to have like five disclaimers, like 'You can exit the exhibition if you like through this direction?’” Barron told me over phone call from Italy. “I’ve never had a problem showing work up here, but my gallery isn’t quite like the other galleries, like say, Andrew Craven, where if you peer in through the window you can see everything.” Barron’s less visible gallery is currently by-appointment viewing. “But the censorship in America is something I really object to. Look, I’m old enough to remember what happened to Robert Mapplethorpe in the early ’90s. I’m not saying his pictures appear tame today, but I think we’re all so accustomed to them now we don’t look at them in the same way. At the time I remember [American conservative leader] Jesse Helms and all these horrible people saying, ‘We’re going to get rid of all the money for the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts].”

Carol Corey

Fine Art

Carol Corey opened her gallery in The Kent Barns when she relocated from New York City in  2020 and has showcased work by artists that include German abstract painter Matthias Meyer and The New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast.

“I don’t really represent any artists that work like that, so I suppose the answer is no. I just don’t have any work like that,”  Corey told me. “What I have found when I moved up here, I had an expectation of what would appeal to an audience here, but it’s much broader, and many preconceived notions have been dashed. It’s a sophisticated audience.”

Standard Space

Brooklynite photographer Theo Coulombe opened Standard Space in Sharon, Conn., in 2017 featuring emerging artists, many heralding from Brooklyn as well.

“I’ve at times here in Sharon questioned the content we were going to have in a show. Just before COVID, we had an artist here, Kristin Worrall, she’s a performance artist who does baking. She did a full-on exhibit where she baked apple strudels in front of a live audience,” Coulombe told me. “At one point she’s using an apple peeler, where the core of the apple has to be pushed onto this sharp three-pronged thing, and she’s pushing it in there, and her story becomes about the aspects of her life, about relationships, and there’s a lot of allusions to anal sex. I was very concerned about this when the matrons of Sharon came to the show. When the performance happened, these two older women — who will go nameless but are pretty up there in the Sharon community — they loved it. They heard these stories about being a woman, and dating, it’s part of the dialogue of the world. There I felt like there was a crossover between what happens in the city and what’s allowed to happen up here.” Coulombe added, “Some of my initial concerns stemmed from some instances that happened at The Sharon Playhouse back in 2017. They had a director there, Morgan Green, who does experimental theater in downtown Manhattan, a friend of mine. She was the director du jour at the Playhouse and I saw some incredibly negative responses the programming that she had going on. Literally, people would get up and walk out of the theater. It was very divisive and I heard people say ‘This is the worst year The Sharon Playhouse has ever had.’ But they were writing about it in The New York Times, and they had a full house because people wanted to know what the hell was going on. So it’s an interesting gamble to have sexually charged work in a gallery here or content that’s speaking to sexuality. Where some people say permissiveness, other people say freedom of expression.”