Ideal Bodies
Monika Sziladi at Hasted Kraeutler is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
The Daily Pic: Monika Sziladi captures a flesh-free ideal.
(© Monika Sziladi, courtesy the artist & Humble Arts Foundation, NYC)
This is the aptly named “Untitled (Ribs),” a photo from 2009 by a Hungarian-born New Yorker named Monika Sziladi. It’s at the Hasted Kraeutler gallery in New York, in a show of 31 woman photographers organized by the Humble Arts Foundation. Anyone who thinks that beauty is a universal constant only needs to take a look at the wraith-like “ideal body” in Sziladi’s shot. Its owner seems to take as much pride in her bones as the big girls of Rubens could take in their avoirdupois. And I refuse to weigh-in, as it were, on one side or the other.
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