Are you a fan of the shower or the bathtub?

THE SHOWER (2022)Photography by Dmitry Ersler.

I imagine the opposite poles of the world idelely inhabited by species with conflicting views to say the least, for example, the one by life forms who love cats, while the other by those who side with dogs, or the former by those who prefer the sea, leaving the latter with people who prefer the mountains, not to mention, surely, the life forms bent on suggesting the use of the shower, rather than that of the bathtub. It is precisely this last divergence of opinion that I see animating it in a lively conflict, in which fans of the different modes of washing insult each other fiercely, sometimes even pulling each other's hair, in case of course they still have any, trying to assert the superiority of their rather irrelevant point of view, when one considers what other problems in the world turn out to be far more serious. In such a rather surreal situation I take the opportunity to watch from afar, perhaps betting some money on one of the two factions, perhaps the shower faction, hoping to get a good winnings to spend during the first months since the return of the wasteful vacations. After this ironic diatribe, I would like to introduce the subject of bathing, whether in the tub or in the shower, in order to get everyone in agreement by means of an art-historical narrative, aimed at starting by revealing some trivia about how humankind gradually became aware of sweating, deciding, as a wise consequence, to start washing with SUBJECTIVE frequency. In a second moment, however, it will be art that will continue the narrative of cleanliness, in the aforementioned places that are the object of attention by the already discussed two poles of the universe...

TOKYO BATHHOUSE (2019)Painting by Ilya Volykhine.

How did we all, more or less, become clean?

Although what I am about to assert does not really pertain to all of humankind, more or less in need of the bidet, shower or sink, anthropology considers us to be one of the many species for whom the act of cleansing appears to be a duty, felt through the strong imposition of the desire to ward off dirt and control body odor, although, alas, such fragrant awareness has undergone a temporal evolutionary process... In fact, the conception of what is actually filthy has never been unambiguous, so much so that if the Greeks and Romans washed themselves with a strigil, or by resorting to frequent baths and scented oils, medieval men were content with a sink and a pitcher of water, while Renaissance ones frowned upon cleansing practiced through the use of water, since, according to them, it would cause the opening of the pores of the skin, through which serious diseases could enter, going so far that if a bath was granted it was then even recommended to take a day off! This point of view was carried on until the Age of Enlightenment, so much so that it is well known how King Louis XIV of France took, committing a highly risky, courageous and somewhat manly act, a bath only twice in his life. Body odors aside, the situation evolved, until it became more like the one we know today, only following the Industrial Revolution, a period in which the use of hygienic products and bathing equipment became progressively more widespread and were no longer seen as fearsome enemies, since, by then, it was considered more socially dangerous to smell the unpleasant odor of hair and armpits...

JOHANNA LT-ED 1-10Photography by Jose Grimm.

PHILIPPE DANS SON BAIN (2005)Painting by Lydie Le Gléhuir.

Bathing in art: from Pop serenity to neoclassical drama...

In contrast to the catastrophic fears of Renaissance men, Roy Lichtenstein's Pop art rendered the moment of bathing with extreme serenity, capturing it in the forms of a joyful, relaxing, liberating, healthy and rejuvenating practice, well summarized by the beaming smile on the red-painted lips of the protagonist of Woman in Bath, a portrait of a female figure in a bathtub, rendered in the artist's peculiar style, aimed at evoking the features of comic books of the time. In any case, under the guise of depicting a seemingly innocuous scene of everyday life, the painter, as in other of his iconic masterpieces, actually wishes to shape the ideal of women of his time, resolutely projected toward a more modern emancipation. From Lichtenstein's bathtub we move on to Hockney's shower, coming less to the explicitness of a joyful facial expression, since in two works depicting a similar context, such as Two Men in a Shower (1963) and Man in the Shower 1964, the faces, at times even almost concealed, seem decidedly more serious, just as if they wanted to allude to a more challenging theme, identifiable in the explication of homoerotic imagery, ready to confront, through nudity, the taboos of the time. Finally, to get to the drama of the subject matter at hand, we must decisively abandon Pop art to embrace the Neoclassicism of The Death of Marat, a masterpiece by Jacques-Louis David, aimed at celebrating one of the main protagonists of the French Revolution, who was assassinated by a young gyrodine girl while in the bath to undergo his daily treatments for seborrheic dermatitis. In conclusion, we moved from joy to sorrow to refer back to how, to this day, some people still experience bathtub bubbles as drama, just as certain children and some adults with a similar sensitivity, fragility, as well as a sometimes rebellious approach to the world do. Irony, fantasy, and art history aside, the tale continues through some works created by the artists of Artmajeur...

ДУШ ДЛЯ ДУШ (2018)Painting by Serge Sunne.

The bath (2019)Collages by Annabelle Amory.

Annabelle Amory: The bath

Annabelle Amory's collage, by means of its perspective cut, aimed at capturing only the legs of an effigy seemingly "hidden" in her bathtub, fixs on the canvas support, is thus in eternity, that well-known and recurring moment when, as we wash, we finally breathe a sigh of relief, allowing ourselves to partially sink downward, like sailors, who, now tired of fighting the storm, have the necessary need to escape from their undulating thoughts, finding refuge, if only for a moment, in the calm of the quieter, warmer waters of their interiors, before resuming, once again, rowing against the current. Ahhh, there's that sigh, I can hear it as it is accompanied by some of the more typical routinized thoughts, such as, for example: again today I did everything I was supposed to do, or, fortunately I got away with it nicely, but also, of course, the most romantic: I can't wait to see him again! Leaving aside what the vision of the aforementioned collage may trigger in our minds, in a primarily associative way, I would like to reflect precisely how in the latter it is not possible to actually know the identity of the effigy, as is the case, at least in part, in the masterpiece dated 1883 and titled Woman Bathing by Edgar Degas. In fact, the pastel in question depicts a feminine subject caught from the back, and thus "faceless," while she is intent on rubbing her leg with the sponge, which is soaked in the water, in which the aforementioned naked body lies immersed. In this context, it is worth noting how the French painter depicted such a theme in other works, some of which similarly conceal the identity of the woman depicted, such as, for example, the popular pastel titled The Tub (1886), a work in which, inside a private home, a naked young woman is depicted leaning back as she is caught in washing her neck, finding its place inside the iron tub that gives the same masterpiece its name.

I LIKE - SHOWER (2022)Digital Arts by Pedro Abreu.

Pedro Abreu: i like shower

Artmajeur digital artist Pedro Abreu explicitly states his position, revealing, through the title, as well as the subject, of his work, that he is an unabashed and exclusive fan of the shower, ready to besmirch the members of the opposite faction, namely those who are part of the bathtub team, by immortalizing the idyllic image of water, coming out strictly from above. Such a frontal perspective might stimulate the imagination of the user, who is perhaps invited to try to widen his field of vision, imagining to glimpse the presence of a character, intent on benefiting from the presence of the aforementioned waterfall, or thinking of the empty environment, as if someone had let the water run, perhaps consequent to a period of life that was too stressful or too much in love...Personally, this work generated an unexpected association in me, ready to make me juxtapose the quiet close-up of a shower with that of a crowded scene of bathers, in which water sources multiply in order to be able to wash all the bodies present: I'm talking about Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Artillerymen in the Shower (1915), a masterpiece that depicts a group of naked men, intent on showering, while a uniformed figure monitors them, subjects made with broad brushstrokes, in which the yellowish collor of human skin stands out against the blue-green hues of the background. It is precisely the disquiet of this color contrast that leads one to evoke the dramas of war, marked by the vulnerability of young men, who, in order to serve their nation, were somehow deceived, as they were led into a conflict potentially capable of taking away their own immature lives, which, in some cases, have not even yet known love.

Return from the beach (2023)Painting by Christophe Clement.

Christophe Clement: Return from the beach

The world is not only divided into the pricipal and above-mentioned types of people, aimed at preferring dogs to cats or the sea to the mountains, the bathtub to the shower, etc., as there are also multiple and endless sub-categories of gender, which, unfortunately still undervalued, may be represented, for example, by human beings who shy away from washing at the beach after bathing, as they prefer to remove the salt water only once they return home, exclusively within the irreplaceable comfort and privacy of their personal hygienized bathroom. They may, in fact, also take this attitude merely because they are too lazy to go to the nearest beach shower, or as they are animated by a great phobia related to sharing intimate spaces (fear of other people's germs), in addition to the fact that a simpler and more manic predilection, as well as sometimes an insane attachment, to their unique and personal bathtub may be possible. The latter fixation would also seem to affect the protagonist of Clement's work, who, as per the title, hurries to remove the sand from the sea, only once she arrives at her own home. In addition, it is good to highlight how this scene, definitely related to the intimate act of washing, turns out to be quite familiar within the narrative of art history, since, since ancient times, artists have delighted in portraying the figures of bathers, always ready to clean themselves in a tub, basin, sink, etc. As far as ancient Greece is concerned, for example, the above can be seen from the observation of the Aphrodite of Cnidius by Praxiteles, a 4th-century sculptor, who gave birth to one of the first life-size representations of the female nude of his time, whose subject, intent on clutching a towel, also represents one of the first bathers in the history of Western art.