Alongside Your ghosts are mine, Palazzo Franchetti presents Breasts, a collective exhibition curated by Carolina Pasti that explores the uses and reuses of the image of the breast, its representations and the reflections it has generated. The exhibition, which debuted during the inauguration of the Biennale Arte, includes the works of over thirty artists, which will remain on display to the public until November 24 2024.
Breasts, 2024, installation view at ACP Palazzo Franchetti, Venice, courtesy Carolina Pasti, photo Eva Herzog
From painting to sculpture, from photography to cinema, Breasts collects visual narratives on the female body and triggers a dialogue between a selection of works created from 1500 to today. Starting from the breast and its different representations in different traditions and cultures, the exhibition reflects in five chapters on themes such as motherhood and empowerment, sexuality, body image and illness, but also on the function of the breast as a catalyst through which to discuss socio-political realities, challenge historical traditions and express personal and collective identities.
Breasts, 2024, installation view at ACP Palazzo Franchetti, Venice, courtesy Carolina Pasti, photo Eva Herzog
The Venetian exhibition opens with a site-specific intervention designed by Studio Buchanan, and then offers in the first room a historical survey of the methods and languages with which the breast has been represented over the centuries, highlighting how modern and contemporary artists have intervened on narratives related to the female body. In fact, in this section of the exhibition, Renaissance masters and an analysis of the iconography of the Madonna del Latte find space, but also more recent works, from Portraits of History by Cindy Sherman to the works of artists such as Richard Dupont, Teniqua Clementine Crawford and Sherrie Levine, who incorporate Renaissance elements into their figurative paintings.
The second section is focused on the breast in sculptural representations. These include Marcel Duchamp's multimedia work, Prière de toucher (Please Touch), which features a foam breast attached to the cover of the book Le Surréalisme en 1947, and Claude Lalanne's wearable chest plates, displayed as articles of fashion alongside the mannequin by Allen Jones, which itself evokes historical precedents such as armor and religious vestments.Added to these is the sculpture of a breast created by Prune Nourry, diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 and author of a film documenting her treatment journey.
Organized on the basis of different expressive languages, Breasts presents a third environment dedicated to photography, in which the impact of digital media on the representation of the breast is examined. Among these, the surrealist images of Robert Mapplethorpe and Irving Penn, which evoke dreamlike landscapes and abstract forms, but also the works of Oliviero Toscani and Hsu Che-yu, through which the exhibition returns the role of the breast as a commercial device in marketing and advertising.
Breasts, 2024, installation view at ACP Palazzo Franchetti, Venice, courtesy Carolina Pasti, photo Eva Herzog