Paint Made Flesh presents paintings created in Europe and the United States since the 1950s in which a wide range of painterly effects suggest the carnal properties and cultural significance of human flesh and skin. As a revisionist study of post-World War II art, the exhibition offers a rejoinder to the modernist orthodoxies of the mid-to-late 20th century by contending that paint’s material properties make it well suited to convey metaphors of human vulnerability. The exhibition includes works by Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Willem de Kooning, Alice Neel, Leon Golub, Philip Guston, Eric Fischl, Georg Baselitz, Jenny Saville, Wangechi Mutu, John Currin, Cecily Brown, Daniel Richter, and others.

Paint Made Flesh is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts by Mark Scala, chief curator at the Frist Center.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a full-color illustrated exhibition catalogue, published by Vanderbilt University Press, with essays by Mark Scala and Susan H. Edwards, Ph.D., executive director and CEO of the Frist Center, as well as by noted scholars Emily Braun, Ph.D., professor of art history at Hunter College (New York, N.Y.) and Richard Shiff, Ph.D., professor of art history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Traveling Itinerary
• The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.) June 20–Sept. 13, 2009
• Memorial Art Gallery (Rochester, N.Y.) Oct. 24, 2009–Jan. 3, 2010


There are several ways to learn more about this exhibition before your visit:

I. Walk through the Paint Made Flesh exhibition with Chief Curator Mark Scala.

II. Click here to download an audio tour for this exhibition.
The audio tour includes an introduction of the exhibition and a conversation about 12 works in the exhibition between Mark Scala, Frist Center chief curator, and Susan Edwards, Frist Center executive director and CEO. The stops are noted below:

1. Introduction to exhibition by Susan Edwards and Mark Scala
2. Pablo Picasso, Artist and His Model, 1964
3. Willem de Kooning, Woman Accabonac, 1966
4. Hyman Bloom, The Hull, 1952
5. Philip Guston, Web, 1975
6. Georg Baselitz, Akt Elke 2, 1976
7. Eric Fischl, Frailty is a Moment of Self-Reflection, 1996
8. John Currin, Hobo, 1999
9. Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Henrietta Moraes, 1963
10. Lucian Freud, Naked Man, Back View, 1993
11. Jenny Saville, Hyphen, 1999
12. Daniel Richter, Duisen, 2004
13. Wangechi Mutu, Squiggly Wiggly Demon Hair, 2004


III. View the Paint Made Flesh Gallery Guide

IV. Watch a short video produced by The Tennessean featuring Mark Scala.

Click here for a complete list of programs relating to this exhibition.

Image (top): Jenny Saville. Hyphen, 1999. Oil on canvas, 108 x 144 in. Private Collection, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

Image (middle): Daniel Richter. Duisen, 2004. Oil on canvas, 106 1/4 x 137 3/4 in. Private Collection. Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin