Somaya Critchlow on Walter Sickert: Tate Etc

Artist News

Somaya Critchlow explores Walter Sickert’s reframing of the nude in the latest issue of Tate Etc., in anticipation of their upcoming Sickert retrospective.

Revolving around Sickert’s painting The Studio: The Painting of a Nude from his Camden Town Murder series, with references to Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Virginia Woolf, Critchlow exposes a darker history of the nude, one that calls into question notions of image-making, viewership and acceptability, and drives her own artistic practice.

‘Sickert’s ‘The Studio’ reminds us of the familiarity inherent to nakedness by dispelling the idealisation of the nude, but further unsettles us by situating it in an explicit façade – the act of painting, a construction of art.’ – Somaya Critchlow in the Spring 2022 issue of Tate Etc.