Intimacy!: Bathing in Art

by B. Leismann, Martina Padberg

Across time and in every culture, bathing represents a primal urge. This book provides a broad historical and thematic overview of the bath, examining its traditions in the Orient and Japan, looking at modern spas and illuminating the bath as a scene often depicted in movies as the setting in which mayhem is committed. Throughout the world, a ritual bath is linked to traditions, and social, cultural and religious practices. Art often connects bathing with biblical and mythological stories, such as Susanna and the Old, of Bathsheba or Diana and Aktaion. Bathing in art reflects different perceptions of the body, highlighting beauty and vulnerability ? and linking them to perceptions of intimacy. Water has metamorphic rejuvenating and transformative, capable of returning original innocence. Featuring 140 works of art dating from the 15th century to the modern, the book casts a spell of suspense and intimacy through paintings, drawings, prints, photography, sculpture and video.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2010