Reclining nude

Reclining nude, one of John Brack’s most iconic paintings, is from a series of eight nudes created by him between 1970 and early 1971. The Melbourne-born artist was both fascinated by the complexities of modern society and deeply informed by art history, especially the grand traditions of the reclining nude. In May 1972 he commented: ‘in my paintings of the nude, I am attempting a comment on the art of the past, as well as on the present’.

The pose of the model in Reclining nude, restfully lying on a garden lounge in the artist’s studio, with her hands folded behind her head, is derived from the paintings of odalisques by the widely influential nineteenth-century French artist, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. However, unlike Ingres, Brack has tilted the picture plane to draw attention to the repeated oblique lines of the receding floorboards, the oddly angled walls and a diagonally positioned Persian rug. The artist noted: ‘the painting depends heavily on a series of interlocking paradoxes … things are simultaneously moving and still, stable and unstable’. The model balances precariously at the centre of this altered setting, prompting many observers to suggest that Brack’s study of the human nude was indeed a study of human vulnerability and strength. 

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture