Torsos, buttocks and breasts were bountifully put on display in Hannah Gadsby’s comic art history lecture.
If you’ve ever been to an art gallery and wondered why there were so many paintings of naked people, then Australian comic and Art History major Hannah Gadsby can answer your questions. Putting her degree in Art History and Curatorship to good use and combining it with her sardonic wit, Nakedy Nudes reveals all, figuratively and literally, on art in the nude. What’s more, she wears a bowtie, making her undeniably qualified to present the lecture.
With nothing but a bare stage, a slide show and her energetic wit, Gadsby demonstrates her remarkable artistic knowledge by delving way into art’s archives. Ranging from early Christian iconographic artwork and their censored nudity leading to the portrayal of the infant Christ as a ‘mini-man’, to Michelangelo’s strapping David with the very big….hands, Gadsby can teach you everything you need to know about heroically divine abs and the prostitutes who were the real muses behind bare-all damsels in distress.
Needless to say though, you’ll never look at art the same way again. The once merry cherubs that line the Sistine Chapel are transformed into ‘creepy little guys’ and Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’ just has one long ponytail. Did you ever notice the incestuous relationship between Cupid and Venus? Gadsby can show you a painting or two. If you’ve never seen Courbet’s ‘L’Origine du monde’, then this is definitely the place to do so. No awkward silences here from a slick, mischievous and natural comedian.
Dubbing herself a ‘comedy art lady’, Gadsby can certainly teach you a thing or two about art and in a way I’m sure many art history students would get naked for. You’ll go in to have a laugh but leave with a heap of knowledge as well as a smile on your face.
