Image 1. Au Naturel by Sarah Lucas. 1994. Mattress, melons, oranges, cucumber, and water bucket, 33 1/8 x 66 1/8 x 57 in (84 x 168.8 x 144.8 cm).
The denotation for this artwork is a photo of a mattress, two melons, two oranges, a cucumber, and a water bucket. However, the connotation for this artwork for me is something related to sex and chaos.
We could see that Sarah Lucas used a cucumber and two oranges to form a shape that looks like a sexual organ for male, and he used a water bucket and two melons to form the shape of the organs for female. What is trick is that he placed those objects on a mattress, combine with the condition of the mattress, which is old and teared, made me think that something related to sex, crazy and chaotic happened on it.
"Au Naturel" is a French phrase meaning "in the natural" or "in the nude." With a title like that, one might expect beautiful, classical paintings of female nudes, but Sarah Lucas challenge expectations with her work. (HANNAH ROTHBARD, n.d.)
The arrangement of found and fabricated objects in Lucas's works forces us to confront our perverted minds. An exhibition whose name comes from a sculpture featuring two melons, two oranges, one cucumber, and a bucket on a mattress. Despite the fact that the assemblage looks meaningless, it evokes the notion of a man and woman lying in bed when arranged as Lucas has done. There is no face, no limb, no romance, just sex. Are we simply that? A major influence on Lucas' arts practice is psychologist Sigmund Freud's work. (HANNAH ROTHBARD, No date.)
I believe that he is questioning and shaming our stereotypes of men and women through her work. It's just two melons, two oranges, one cucumber, and a bucket arranged on a mattress in a certain way. There is no chance that we could feel uncomfortable, unless that arrangement of objects reflected our stereotype of sex or gender that we are shamed and feeling uncomfortable about it. Imagine if we were kids rather than adults, we wouldn't have such fierce feelings of uncomfortable and ashamed when we look at this work.
Visual-Related Work
The first thing that pops up to my head when I first saw this work is that I probably made the same thing like this before. I was on my vacation on a beach. As there are tides flush the beach, I thought it was a perfect drawing board for me. Comes to what to draw, I immediately think of the sextual organ of male. I have no idea why that think popped up to my mind and when I finished it. I was so uncomfortable and ashamed when other people looking at it. I wish that the tides come fast and wash it away.
Now I understand it might be the stereotypes in my mind that shamed me, things related to the sex is often hidden, forbidden in my culture, that is surely a stereotype.
Image References List
Image 1. Sarah Lucas, (1994). Au Naturel. Mattress, melons, oranges, cucumber, and water bucket, 33 1/8 x 66 1/8 x 57 in (84 x 168.8 x 144.8 cm).
Research Reference List
HANNAH ROTHBARD. Sarah Lucas Cracks Notions of Natural Behavior in Retrospective. No date. Available from SARAH LUCAS: AU NATUREL — EMBODIED (embodiedmag.com) [Accessed 5 November 2022].
Thank you!
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