Exploring the Grotesque: A Fascination with People Who Exist on the Margins of Society (Nan Goldin)

Hellenistic art works were vastly different in comparison to any of the pieces that came prior.  The most notable contrast was the fact that artists began to move away from the ideal of beauty that was cherished by the Greeks.  During the Hellenistic age there was a great interest in depicting curiosities in nature through art.  Depictions of these oddities are generally referred to as grotesques.  Hellenistic artworks contrasted violently with canons of Greek beauty.  These figure makers fashioned bodies that were grossly deformed and posed in exaggerated, torturous ways. Artists tended to focus on subjects such as hunchbacks, drunks, those of extreme age, epileptics, gamblers, and hermaphrodites, amongst others.

(Source Images/L-R: http://www.farrellworlds.com/WedThurs_files/Gargoyle.jpg ; http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/hb/hb_12.229.6.jpg)

Nan Goldin, an American photographer who made her most prominent works in the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, shared the Hellenistic attraction to those who were at the fringes of society.  Goldin was drawn to many different, prominent sub-cultures in New York City.  Through her lens, she depicted a world that was essentially unknown to the general public.  As was the tradition of the Hellenistic Grotesques, Goldin’s works went beyond what was typically seen in art and rather, was focused around real people as opposed to perfect and stereotypical idealized figures.  Goldin also spent time shooting those who were involved in practices that were seen as being fairly abnormal, such as dressing in drag or engaging in homosexual relations.

(Source Image: http://feistyink.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/nan-goldin2.jpg)

Goldin avidly documented the post-punk and new wave music scenes.  She was especially interested in the drug/alcohol influenced subcultures she discovered thriving in the city.  Many of her photographs depict open drug use, alcohol abuse, and personal/private and often times, aggressive moments shared between couples.  She presents the world as she found it, without manipulation or over-stylization.  Her photographs are raw and honest and expose the aforementioned subcultures for their energetic flaws and dynamic differences from mass culture, as artists in the Hellenistic period did.

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(Source Images/L-R: http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/gr/web-large/DT295.jpg ;http://www.yandp.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/nan2.jpg)