Thursday, February 11, 2010

An Unconventional Canvas

Underground art form of the week? Body-painting.

For those of you who don't know me very well, I am deeply immersed in the hippie culture. My boyfriend was raised in "the scene" and has dreadlocks and his mother had seen the Grateful Dead live over 800 times before Jerry died. It is their entire life, and it's a big part of mine.

Because I live in the hippie world, I go to a lot of music festivals and shows. One thing that stands out about these shows that is different from most concerts is the abundance of naked people. There are women and men in various states of undress--whether they're just topless or went ahead and removed EVERYTHING.

A lot of the naked women at these shows will paint their bodies. You see intricate designs of flowers with a breast as the center and vines wrapping around her waist, or Dead-Bear heads smiling at you with nipples as their mouths. Things like that. Some of the designs are crude, some of them are beautiful.

I view this as a similar expression as tattoos, but less permanent. I think it's a great way to express yourself if you are comfortable enough to do it, and it sort of supports the older art forms in the sense that it emulates the beauty of the human form--like the statues of the Greeks or the paintings of nude women that you see hanging in museums.

My question to you all is this: Do you agree or disagree that it is an appropriate form of self-expression and how do you feel about nudity in art?

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