McGill Tribune

a & e

The female nude has always been a favourite subject for male painters, from Francisco Goya's mischievously seductive "The Nude Maja," to the fleshy profusions of Dominique Ingres' "The Turkish Bath." While recent work by female artists has reclaimed the female nude and allowed viewers to reconsider it through women's eyes, the view is surprisingly not that much different. Though eschewing the high-brow tradition in favour of an unabashedly low-brow pop-art model, a current exhibition by Montreal artist Natasha Clayton demonstrates a similarly voluptuous sensuality and continues a tradition of innovation and subversion.

Provocatively titled Nudie Cutie Plethor-a-m-a: A Bountifulness of Bouncy Babes, Clayton's 12-piece collection celebrates the beauty and power of the female body through a profusion of light, colour and body glitter. Following in the footsteps of influential counter-cultural artists such as California cartoonist R. Crumb and B-movie film-maker Russ Meyer, Clayton's attention-grabbing acrylic paintings burst with vivid, primary colours and her full, bright-bodied women emanate an erotic sensibility that is simultaneously both charmingly innocent and downright lascivious. Billed as "burlesque pin up cuties yer dirty ol' grampa would enjoy," the exhibition represents years of diligence and the accumulation of wildly unorthodox influences.

Encouraged since childhood to indulge her creative impulses (her mother would drape the walls of the house with rolling paper to allow the diminutive artist to doodle anywhere and everywhere), Clayton only realized her artistic calling while studying art abroad. It was at a London film festival that she first encountered the movies of Russ "King of the Nudies" Meyer, an American photographer and movie director known for such films as 1965's "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (starring Japanese-American actress and exotic dancer Tura Satana, another of Clayton's influences) and 1968's "Vixen!." Along with the work of cult filmmaker and subcultural studies professor John Waters, the influence would prove to be definitive.

"I'm really into the B-movie thing," said Clayton in a recent interview. "Having all these buxom, big-breasted beautiful women who will karate chop you and break your back in half and then go off and go-go dance into the sunset."

Clayton's style was further refined during a four-year art school stint in Athens and two years of subsequent employment in the gallery of Greek artist Takis Moraitis. It was while working for Moraitis that Clayton sought the mentorship of Gorgos Kouzounis, an old-time movie-poster artist who taught her how to mix her own paints and pigments.

Despite criticism that her paintings objectify and exploit women, Clayton insists that the opposite is true.

"My women are never victims," she pointed out, "they're always really powerful women who have a lot to say about themselves. They're very sexually assertive and won't take shit from anybody. A lot of women think that because I paint a lot of nudes that I'm exploiting women. But I don't see it that way at all. I see it as a positive thing, that the female body is beautiful, it is a work of art and I love to paint them."

Clayton's artistic sensibilities strike a particular chord in Montreal, where a vibrant burlesque scene flourished in the 40s and 50s at venues such as the Gayety theatre renowned for dancers such as the beloved Lili St-Cyr.

Though Clayton is currently taking a break from a six-month creative stint, a future exhibition is already in the works. Entitled Beyond the Valley of the Bone-Crushing Vixens and other Lovely Ladies, the collection is based on the saying of historian Lauren Thatcher Ulrich that "well behaved women seldom make history."



Nudie Cutie Plethor-a-m-a: A Bountifulness of Bouncy Babes, runs until Dec. 3 at Atelier Legend'art, 200 Churchill, Geenfield Park, QC.

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