A new exhibition of unclothed portraits, jointly curated between the National Portrait Gallery and Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Laing Art Gallery, invites questions about identity and gender, the real and ideal.
It includes portraits from Nell Gwyn to Naomi Campbell, Gilbert & George to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Featured artists include Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Sam Taylor-Johnson, David Hockney, Annie Leibovitz, Linda McCartney, Tracy Emin, David Bailey, Mario Testino and Dorothy Wilding.
All the images in Exposed are naked portraits rather than depictions of the nude.
Main image: Mick Jagger; Jerry Hall by Norman Parkinson, July 81 © Norman Parkinson/Iconic Images (detail)
Exposed: The Naked Portrait is on at Laing Art Gallery until March 3, 2019.
On display alongside Exposed: The Naked Portrait will be a complementary exhibition – Dressed to Impress of clothed portraits drawn from the collections of the Laing Art Gallery, Shipley Art Gallery and Hatton Gallery. Highlights include key works by leading artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Allan Ramsay, William Orpen, George Clausen and Chris Ofili, Thomas Lawrence, Augustus John, Sir John Lavery, Beryl Fowler and Christina Robertson. Dressed to Impress will open later on November 3, 2018 until October 2019.
