Nude

Brassaï

1931–34 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

One of the most radically abstract of Brassaï’s nudes, this image was published in 1933 in the inaugural issue of the avant-garde magazine Minotaure. With the figure’s head and legs cut off by the picture’s edges, the twisting, truncated torso seems to float in space like an apparition—an ambiguous, organic form with an uncanny resemblance to a phallus. This transformation of the female figure into a fetish object is a hallmark of Surrealism that reflects the important influence of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory on European art of the early twentieth century.

Artist

Brassaï

Date

1931–34

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2007