While in Seattle on business this past week, I happened on a public plaza at 3rd and Spring Street that featured two absolutely beautiful sculptures of nude ballerinas. Perched on pedestals ten feet above the ground, the two-foot tall metal sculptures faced the traffic and the surrounding highrise buildings, serenely balancing on one foot. The nonchalance of their nudity was a perfect example of "naked and simple beauty."
What made the statues even more remarkable was their detail. One statue, especially, which featured a young woman balancing on her right leg while holding her left leg, bent at the knee, in front of her. This pose exposes her vulva to the viewers below; and whereas so many artists will blur and smooth over the genital region as if it doesn't really exist, or as if they're too ashamed to portray it in accurate detail, this woman's vulva is remarkably detailed. Both the inner and outer lips of the vulva are visible. The other statue is similarly explicit but less detailed.
I wonder about the history of these sculptures. Who created them? (There was probably a sign somewhere, but I was too fascinated by the sculptures themselves to notice it.) Were they commissioned to be precisely what they are today, or did some public servant simply ask for art and end up with nude ballerinas? Did he or she worry about the public reaction to the sculptures? And what has the public reaction actually been?
I'd like to think that the reaction by everyone concerned was as nonchalant as the ballerinas themselves. With people in Florida throwing tantrums over a (non-realistic) sculpture of a nude family, it would be nice to think that Seattleites are more sophisticated than that.
I also wonder about the model (or models) for the sculptures. Does she visit the plaza to enjoy the beautiful work she helped create? Does she smile at the irony of being able to stand naked, in a sense, in the middle of downtown Seattle?
It would be interesting to try an experiment. Bring a 10-foot column and a ladder to the plaza, and pose a live, nude model on the pedestal, gazing calmly out over the city in a similarly explicit pose, with her shaved vulva nonchalantly smiling down at passersby. Would she be accepted as "art" as readily as her metal cousin? I doubt it--but why not? Why should there be a difference?
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