Nude 2 

Aurel Cojan made "Nude 2" using crayon on paper. Cojan was Romanian, and one can only speculate about the conditions in his country that might have shaped this image. It's a turbulent, visceral image, a body seemingly defined by flows of pure energy. It does not look much like the conventional nudes, which were historically made by men about women for other men. What interests me is that this image seems to defy the conventional expectations of the nude genre. Is the figure a man or a woman? Is it an act of rebellion against a certain tradition of the nude that dominates art history? The interpretation of art depends on social and institutional context. To find out more, one might want to learn more about the artist's life, his formation, and the institutions through which he came into contact with art.