| In the English language the word naked has
embarrassing connotations. It's crude: "deprive yourself of cloths",
it implies. The word nude on the other hand has no uncomfortable overtones.
Nargess Shahmanesh-Banks argues that the nude remains the perfect base
for design today.
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The Greeks invented the perfect image of man with the Apollo (above); Ghery uses process to create strong layering seen on the Bilbao Guggenheim in Spain (right); and Bangle's Z4 (below) combines process and the nude to create perfect design |
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The Greeks invented the nude, as an art form. The iconic beauty -- the
ideal human form available to man -- can be traced as far back as the
5th century BC. Then the Greeks were crazy about mathematics and it was
with its application that they were able to create the perfect, geometrically
proportioned image of man.
According to Kenneth Clark, author of The Nude -- a must read for all
designers -- "The relation of head to body determines the standard
by which we assess all other proportions in nature." Even abstract
shapes like the square and the circle become male and female. Additionally,
he argues, the human eye is unforgiving or even disturbed by bodily imperfections
and so doesn't judge the nude as a living organism, but as a design.
"Replace nude with car, and you will understand everything about
cars," says Chris Bangle who is a big fan of Clark's book. You could
say it's a bible for the controversial BMW chief designer. Bangle insists
we start by reading this book to ‘get’ what he’s been
doing with the Bavarian brand and revisiting it has not only opened my
eyes, or more precisely geared my eyes differently to his work, but to
that of car design in general.
Through history, the love of the nude remained, but the naughty bits were
covered in time. It was no longer deemed quite so acceptable to have all
those stark naked male statues everywhere. But effectively what the draping
did was to create a hidden sexuality. What was beneath the layering?
"When the Greeks put cloths on the nude, suddenly there was tension,"
says Bangle. According to the author and the controversial car designer
everything around us, every object, appeals to us because we relate to
it on a human scale. Bangle adds: "It has to relate to us on a personal
level and nothing is more personal than the erotic emotions of life."
Bangle is fascinated by process. In other words he is obsessed with what
technology can do to help create more complex shapes. In his belief the
only way to create perfection in design is for nature and machine to work
together in harmony. Process has allowed Bangle to effectively push the
boundaries of car design. Process has allowed him to overwork the body
of his cars to create the concave and convex surfaces everyone likes to
talk about.
The same way process allowed architect Frank Ghery to produce the complex
bendy structures and laying effect that has become his design signature,
most notably seen on the Bilbao Guggenheim in Spain. The architect is
somewhat of a hero to Bangle and apparently the affection is mutual.
But going back to draping, process is key to creating draping. Bangle
is a master of draping. Draping is what makes one of his earliest cars,
the Z4 in particular such a sexual car. Here steel is stretched seductively
over a hidden masculine body that is probably as perfect a nude as the
ones meticulously carved out of marble by the Greeks all those centuries
ago.
Bangle confesses that car design is an erotic experience. Clark says no
nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse some form of erotic feeling
in the spectator. Failing this, he concludes, the artist has false morals
and the art is bad.
It seems that everyone is overcomplicating Bangle’s design language.
In simple terms the man is trying to apply the perfect form invented before
Christianity to BMW cars. Ghery was heavily criticised earlier in his
career for being provocative. Critics said he was shallow and relied too
much on effect. But he stuck it out and was in time accepted and then
loved, admired and copied. His building in Spain is so powerful that it
has actually put Bilbao on the map. It’s not right to make comparisons
at this stage, but my hunch is that the church of Bangalism may also one
day become the winning faith.
To quote Clark: "Modern art shows even more explicitly than the art
of the past that the nude does not simply represent the body, but relates
it, by analogy, to all structures that have become part of our imaginative
experience." After all, the nude is not a subject of art, but a form
of art.
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