Let’s face it: those Adam Stennett paintings were pretty troubling.  I think I’m particularly bothered by “Girl in Bathtub,” which reminded me of this other painting by Ingres that I like a lot. Ingres was one of the last people in the nineteenth century to look favorably on the legacy of Raphael, which is cute in a way. If you take a look at his “Grande Baigneuse” down there, I think you’ll get an idea of how this and the Stennett painting became associated in my head.

Next to Ingres’ 1808 “Bather” is a 1924 photograph taken and modified by Man Ray called “Ingres’ Violin.”  What you have between the original and the tribute is a pretty good example of where Modernism diverges from Romanticism.  Ingres has put his bather on a pedestal, while Man Ray’s subject has literally been “forced” to represent a musical instrument, becoming as objectified as you can get.  Neither woman’s face is shown, which is a little unsettling if you’re expecting, you know, a face (think of Richter’s “Betty” or Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”).

Also, notice the place of disturbed fabric in both of these paintings, making them appear candid.  The effect is much more pronounced in the Ingres, owing to Man Ray’s modernist tendency to “organize” everything.  The head coverings, too, along with the semi-nudity, give the impression that the figures are in the act of disrobing.  Again, Man Ray’s twentieth-century Modernism makes his composition more rigid and formal, but the impression is similar.

Now, let’s go back to Stennett’s 2007 “Girl in Bathtub” as an example of a twenty-first century take on this idea:

I mean, is anybody ready to go home yet?  What the fuck?  We still get a faceless figure, but instead of “undressing” we get “full-on, sopping nudity.”  The disturbed cloth, which suggested a kind of candidness, is replaced by frantic water. We get a chrome spigot, which on repeated viewings is just crazy phallic to me.  And now the viewer isn’t simply suggested (“Oh, we’ve happened on a nude woman. How beautiful.”), but implicated in an act voyeurism (“Oh, we’re a bunch of scumbags.”).

Please, make your own comparisons, but god damn it if Adam Stennett hasn’t weirded me out completely.  You can find more of his paintings at his official website.