Ehsan Bayat

Participation in the exhibition of the group Art Tehran 2014 and Damon Fan 2015 Cooperation with Siamak Azmi from 2012-2014

From The Bather of Valpinçon to the Turkish Bath Illustrious representative of the French neoclassical painting, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) very early explored the theme of the woman baths. Through his aesthetic research on female nudity, he stands out from the academic model, preferring an oriental and more precisely Ottoman reference to the antique motif. With La Baigneuse de Valpinçon (or Great Bather), he realized from 1808 the portrait of a woman with turban, presented naked and back, in a hammam and harem atmosphere.

The artist then declines this study, which is found almost identically in the two paintings studied here, The Little Inner Bather of Harem, which dates from 1828, and The Turkish Bath, made more than thirty years later, in 1862. Evoking the practice of the bath and the harem, these achievements fit fully into the orientalist trend of the nineteenth century. Indirectly, they also provide an original approach to the question of the relationship to body, nudity, health and hygiene during this period. Ehsan wanted to represent this soft light, the purified feature, the play of colors and curves. the artist suggests intimacy, the pleasure of bathing, and brings a discretely erotic character to the scene.