Towne famously rejected the Renaissance notion that humanity is best represented by idealized proportion. He looked at Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and saw not a celebration of potential, but a cage. “We don’t live in that circle,” Towne wrote in his 2003 collection, The Unfinished Figure . “We spill out of it. We are asymmetrical, anxious, and odorous.”
Gary Towne’s perspective is not easy to love. It denies us the simple pleasure of saying, “That’s a beautiful picture of a person.” Instead, it forces us to ask, “Does this picture tell me the truth about being alive?” gary towne perspectives on humanity in the fine arts
Towne, who built his career in the shadow of the postmodern giants, offers a refreshingly uncomfortable perspective. For him, “humanity” in the fine arts isn’t about tenderness, beauty, or even empathy. It’s about friction . Towne famously rejected the Renaissance notion that humanity
Next time you’re in a museum, don’t stand in front of the serene Madonna. Turn around. Find the painting that makes you wince. Find the drawing where the charcoal smudged in a way the artist didn’t intend. Find the sculpture with a crack in the marble. “We spill out of it