Adventure

Sparks rain down from open hands, swirls of flame circle the bent legs of a hopping dancer in Ruth Marten's series "All About Eve". Sometimes extensions grow from knees and elbows, making the woman's body resemble a trimmed fruit tree. At one point, paper flaps come out of the backdrop in front of which the model was photographed, wrapping themselves around the casually bent limbs like shackles. It is a game with many variations that Ruth Marten has created with her gouache overpaintings of a series of over 90 nude photographs that are over a hundred years old. The photographer Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg, who founded a studio in Paris around 1900, had worked together with models from the Folies Bergère variety theater. Looking for new freedom beyond ballet, their staged nudity echoes the trends in modern dance at the beginning of the 20th century. One may think of Isadora Duncan and her gaze towards antiquity, of Charlotte Bara who incorporated orientalisms or Gothic formal elements into her dances, or of Claire Bauroff who performed in sculptural poses with a spear and a short pleated skirt. Many of the Folies Bergère dancers worked with photographers, some of whom were famous, and the publication of their photos in magazines promoted their careers in front of and behind the camera. Citing cultural history helped to remove the nude image from the sphere of the offensive.

Born in New York in 1949, Ruth Marten has close ties to vaudeville, pop and cinema. She began drawing on skin in the 1970s, as a tattoo artist for poets and musicians, for the gay scene and women who were breaking new ground in self-empowerment in NYC’s subculture. She later worked as an illustrator for fashion magazines and music labels. She began the painted-over heliogravures of "All about Eve" in 2022, when she was over 70 years old. In them, she imagines a friendship across the distance of time with the young dancers who dared to break away not only in art but also in life, away from restrictive fashion and restrictive social norms. The situations to which she subjects the characters are quite daring — like dancing with an alligator. One might think of the pioneers of aviation when the arms of a model raised above her head connect to a propeller, while another model travels down a waterfall in a cup. Marten began her technique of overpainting on natural history illustrations from the 19th century. From this world of marvelling over the beauty of exotic artifacts also come objects with which she transforms the nude pictures into new stories. Stories alive with a spirit of adventure and a readiness to transform.

Bergisch Gladbach, Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders, until 21 April; www.villa-zanders.de;
catalog: www.verlag-kettler.de