On Thursday, April 4, 2019 an opening reception and gallery talk by Miya Tokumitsu were held at the Davison Art Center.
From eye rolls to statement jewelry—we exaggerate with our bodies as much as with our words, if not more so. Yet, more than 500 years after the Renaissance, conceptions of the “normal” body remain grounded in ideals of the human body as mathematically proportional, static, and unadorned. The exhibition For Effect: Emphatic Bodies from the Renaissance to the Industrial Age examined the obverse of these ideals, and presents bodies exaggerated by their accoutrements, pose, and anatomical proportion from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Across artistic movements and historical contexts, artists exaggerated bodies to evoke from spectators responses as widely ranging as sympathy, shock, offense, or desire.
Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on Flickr.
