Baring it all: Breasts take center stage at this major exhibition

(CNN) — What is one of the earliest and enduring subjects in art and media — as well as one of the most censored? Breasts. First carved large onto small “Venus” figurines some 25,000 years ago as totems of fertility, they’re now seen (or hidden) as a potent symbol of desire, motherhood, feminism, sexism, beauty ideals, defiance, controversy or illness, depending on context.

And these are all themes explored broadly in the exhibition “Breasts,” a robust survey on display at the 60th Venice Bienniale. Hosted at the Palazzo Franchetti, the show includes artworks by household names such as Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe and Salvador Dalí, as well as early-career artists including Anna Weyant, Chloe Wise and Lakin Ogunbanwo. Divided into five rooms against the building’s art deco designs, the artworks are meant to be in conversation with one another — and with exhibition-goers — according to the show’s curator Carolina Pasti.

“It’s very intimate, so it’s perfect for international artists to develop a dialogue with each other,” she said in a video call.

One of the first juxtapositions visitors encounter is between the exhibition’s earliest work, an early 16th-century Madonna and child by Bernardino del Signoraccio, and a self-portrait by Sherman which depicts the artist draped in prosthetic breasts and a pregnant belly. Both images of motherhood feature exaggerated anatomy — the baby Jesus in Del Signoraccio’s panel painting exposing his mother’s rigid bosom, while Sherman displays a hyperreal silicone torso in her riff on the Raphael painting “La Fornarina” — and sets the stage by showing how Renaissance artists have continued to influence our attitudes around breasts today.

From there, the show winds through painting, sculpture and design, photography, commercial advertising and video art, exploring the ways that breasts have been seen and represented through both the male and female gazes.

“It goes back to cave paintings — we’ve always been fascinated with the human form, and particularly the female form, which has this incredible allure and mystery,” said the artist Teniqua Crawford, who is exhibiting a delicate rendering of the breast as landscape. “Artists keep going back to it.”

“It’s been a wonderful moment to contemplate my own relationship with the meaning of  breasts,” she added of the show.

“Breasts” was staged, in part, to promote breast cancer awareness, and marks a partnership with the medical research non-profit Fondazione IEO-MONZINO, which will receive a portion of its catalog sales. It’s a theme apparent throughout the show, with a vivid pink staging and backdrops inspired by the color of the cause. That includes a passageway designed by Buchanan Studio, “Booby Trap” which is draped in pink fabric and features 35 anatomical lights from above.

And the opening night treats? All according to the theme, of course, with suggestively shaped chocolate bon bons and burrata.

Scroll to see artworks from the show, which will run through November 24 at the Palazzo Franchetti.

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