The New Men, 2016
Claudine Doury keeps on questioning this fragile and violent in-between stage of the body and of the coming of age that is teenagerhood.
Until now, men were only making fleeting appearances as extras on her pictures. They are at the core of her series “l’Homme nouveau”, entirely captured in Saint-Petersburg.
Two references can be picked up from this title. It is, of course, a reference to Bolshevism. But it also echoes this time of mutation, where the teenager sloughs into a man.
In between, we cross a border, like an Ovidian metamorphosis: it is this so specific, so unique laps of time, which is a time of crisis and of self-affirmation, that the artist keeps on trying to capture.
By doing so, she is questioning the masculine identity in itself: what does it mean to become a man? What does it mean to become a man in nowadays Russia, which is itself in mutation?
Coming from the middle class from all around the country to study and to start a new life, these young men are the antithesis of their elders.
Although they all see themselves as modern young men, interested by art and culture, linked to the rest of the world and following the codes of globalization, their portraits appear to be trans-historical. As we cannot help but seeing princes, Greek ephebes, or archetypal aristocrats through their portraits, our iconic mind thinks about Leonard’s, Dürer’s or Holbein’s paintings.
Excerpt from Dominique Baque’s text.
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