Alison Luterman: “I couldn’t take my eyes off the sculpture of the Big Naked Man—if that’s what he was called, I don’t remember—who dominated a whole corner of a museum room at the Smithsonian. I saw many other beautiful paintings and sculptures that day, but the sight of this man in all his naked, defeated sagging humanity, touched me deeply, made me shiver with revulsion, recognition and tenderness for the processes of decay that are even now taking place in my own body. I wish I remembered the name of the artist, or the title of the work. But in the end it’s just the physical fact of the piece itself—the man in all his helplessness—that remains in my memory. Which is perhaps as it should be.” (web)
