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Loose Beauty

A bisected rectangle, each side of which icludes a curved form seeming to represent a portion of a human body adorned in black lace undergarments.
© The estate of Christina Ramberg.

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  • A bisected rectangle, each side of which icludes a curved form seeming to represent a portion of a human body adorned in black lace undergarments.

Date:

1973

Artist:

Christina Ramberg
American, 1946-1995

About this artwork

Christina Ramberg’s paintings frequently present the female figure in pieces—a torso, a foot, the back of a head. The visual impact of her fetishistic fragmentation of the body is heightened through a meticulous attention to the painted surface; this “finish-fetishism” is a common formal feature of the work of the Chicago Imagists, with whom Ramberg was affiliated in the late 1960s. A persistent concern throughout her work is the ambivalent relationship between the female body and the material that adorns it. In Loose Beauty, the textural interplay between the figure’s smooth flesh and alternately slick and scalloped undergarments calls attention to a duality of pleasurable sensuality and disciplining constraint.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Christina Ramberg

Title

Loose Beauty

Place

Kentucky (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1973

Medium

Acrylic on Masonite

Dimensions

Diptych, each panel: 48.3 × 37.5 cm (19 × 14 3/4 in.); framed: 51.5 × 78.2 cm (20 1/4 × 30 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Twentieth-Century Purchase Fund

Reference Number

1973.336

Copyright

© The estate of Christina Ramberg.

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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