Verified by In the Buff—for Art's Sake
For years, Spencer Tunick has been creating landscape art using the human body. In his installations, hundreds or thousands of volunteers shed their clothes and arrange themselves in carefully orchestrated patterns.
By Kat McGowan published September 1, 2003 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016
Art can be a cruel mistress, requiring her disciples to perform brave feats in her service. Some artists must renounce the pleasures of urban society for solitude. Others accept bohemian squalor and a lifetime of being misunderstood. But for Spencer Tunick, the muse has prepared an especially challenging task: convincing thousands of people to strip in public.
For years, Tunick has been creating landscape art using the human body—more accurately, lots of human bodies. In his installations, hundreds or thousands of volunteers shed their clothes and arrange themselves in carefully orchestrated patterns.
Brooklyn-based Tunick at first staged his works in New York City, recruiting dozens or hundreds of volunteers through fliers and by word of mouth. (In hip corners of lower Manhattan, it isn't too hard to find people who will drop their pants for art.) His Barcelona installation in 2003 featured more than 5,000 Spaniards in the buff.
Why are so many so willing to bare it all? Perhaps it's just the love of art. But many participants say that being part of a naked horde is a communitarian thrill.
"To lie nude on your back next to a stranger amongst 1,000 people is a new experience," Tunick himself says. "The fact that they together form something in a communal process gives people a new way to think about why they are shedding their clothing."
Sociologist Sandra Schroer of Western Michigan University, who wrote her master's thesis on nudism, agrees that public nudity can be liberating. "It tends to equalize people—whatever you feel self-conscious about, you look around and see that every single body has something wrong with it," she says.
The drive to doff may go deeper, suggests Stanford University psychology professor Phil Zimbardo, an expert on conformity. It can be an act of defiance against convention, validated by the purpose of creating beauty. "In this case, the artist encourages people to make a personal statement of their willingness to break a taboo," he says. "By doing so among a mass of others similarly inclined, there's no critical observer to act as authority. Personal shame is transformed into a socially valued act."
Tunick's work can be seen at www.spencertunick.com.
