Thursday WaPo reviews

Jessica Dawson reviews Hemphill Fine Arts' new floorplan in George's new beautiful space on 14th Street and is also disturbed by Chan Chao's nude photographs currently on at Numark.

I wasn't too surprised that when Jessica first stepped into Chao's exhibition, she "wanted to step right back out" [because]... "Twenty just-over-life-size portraits of naked women ring the gallery's walls. Yet the mood isn't sexy. Or playful. It's utterly vulnerable and uncomfortable. For you and me, for sure, and even more so for Chao's subjects."

I write that I wasn't too surprised because both Dawson and her predecessor in the "Galleries" column appear to me to be rather uncomfortable with nudity. I could be wrong, I guess, but it is something that I've noticed in their demeanor and their writing over the years.

I was also surprised that Jessica writes that Chao "has applied the same clinical, pseudo-journalistic approach he used on the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma -- those pictures were a hit at the 2002 Whitney Biennial -- to naked women, many of whom are the artist's friends or associates. Despite Chao's attempts at evenhandedness, or perhaps because of them, the results feel exploitative and manipulative."

This is in fact backwards! Those familiar with Chao's photographs before he turned his camera to the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma, know that prior to that he used to focus on the nude figure, and in fact applied the "same clinical, pseudo-journalistic approach" that he used with his earlier nudes to the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma, not the other way around.

Chao abandoned the nude for a few years, returned to his native Burma and photographed the pro-democracy guerrillas of Burma. It was a big hit with curators all over the nation, landed him a spot on the 2002 Whitney Biennial and national acclaim. I personally thought those photographs were boring and repetitive; I have, on the other hand, always liked and admired his nude portraits and I think that his current Numark show is spectacular!

Chao has just returned to the nude now; that's all. And I think that Dawson is just uncomfortable around nudes.

I could be wrong. For a different (male) perspective on this show, read Louis Jacobson at the WCP.

P.S. Blake Gopnik also reviews Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art.