Bather/Night

<p>Carroll Dunham creates prints, drawings, and paintings featuring boldly graphic, often erotic cartoon-inspired imagery. His work appears at once sophisticated and childlike, refined and obscene. <em>Bather/Night</em> is part of a recent series that explores the somewhat well-worn art-historical theme of a woman in nature—a new subject for the artist. Specifically, this piece depicts a woman bathing, a theme that recalls classic depictions by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Pierre Bonnard. Shown in severe foreshortening, a female nude bends forward under a night sky inspired by the painter Vincent van Gogh, splashing herself with water as her geisha-style hair blends into the background. As Dunham explained, &quot;It’s almost similar to the way you might simultaneously be having the most intimate look at someone’s body parts and out the other side of your eye you see a tree way off in the distance—that collision of subjects and that collision of space.&quot;</p>