Artist Spencer Tunick Puzzle: Unlimited Collector Edition

b.1967, lives and works in the Lower Hudson Valley, NY.

Title: Big Color

Live Video of Jigsaw Puzzle: Click Here

Jigsaw Puzzle Size: (Horizontal) 12"x 16.5" (310mm x 418mm) 285 Jigsaw Puzzle Pieces, ESKA Premium Board

Unlimited Collector Edition (2020) produced by Art X Puzzles for the benefit of COVID-19 Artist Relief Fund and Black Lives Matter. The jigsaw puzzle arrives in a traditional cardboard puzzle box with the contemporary artwork image.

Level: Complex

Signature Details: Big color 7 (Herefordshire, England) 2010, Pigment Print

The photograph used for the puzzle is a multitude of people covered in colored body makeup (paint). Each person was given a small jar of paint which they then applied themselves, to their own bodies. The artist was then able to make movable human abstract paintings in a performative manner. This communal process of art-making which included the general public in the art, is very uplifting and often therapeutic to the participant. Tunick strives to create work that is informed by that understanding and continues to visually explore bodies holistically as forms of breaking barriers.

Spencer Tunick’s photographs complicates purely erotic associations of the naked body. He photographs installations of small and large groups of naked people in natural and urban landscapes, such as Times Square, the Dead Sea, and the Sydney Opera House. In 2007, The artist organized a photographic installation of more than 18,000 participants, who laid down nude in loosely organized rows, covering Mexico City’s Zocalo Square and the arid deserts of Mexico. His photographs constitute impromptu social events that, in spite of the awkwardness of public nudity, encourage positive attitudes toward the naked body. Tunick has said that his work is “about the freedom to own your body.” The government does not own your body. It’s definitely the body being touched with the environment and the social order of things.“

BIG COLOR: Spencer Tunick, the New York-based artist known for his photographs of mass outdoor nude gatherings, hosted a one-off installation in Hull as the British city and marked 2017 year as the U.K.'s second City of Culture. In the initiative administered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, every four years, the winning city gains the right to host a number of key cultural events, such as the Turner Prize. The unique display was entitled Sea Of Hull, and found its inspiration from East Yorkshire city's maritime history, with participants wearing body paint—and nothing else—to resemble the colors of the sea. Hundreds of people volunteered to strip down in the name of art and paint their bodies for the one-time event. The ARTXPUZZLES Collector Edition Jigsaw Puzzle original work is based on this event and title “BIG COLOR.”

"I'm very interested in the history of the city and its place as a seafaring center and its relationship to a rich maritime past," Tunick told BBC News. "It intrigues me that in some places where there are major streets or parks today, previously there was water. To reflect this I'll be using body paint so that the massed people create the idea of a sea of humanity flooding the urban landscape."

This year 2020, the artist has turned to working with the live nude groups using video conferencing in order to continue his art during times of isolation and quarantine. He is posting these works on his Instagram for the time being @spencertunick

Click Articles:

Spencer Tunick artistic nude shoots amid lockdown by Oscar Holland \ CNN

Behind the Scenes of a Nude Photography Project in Quarantine by Kate Storey | Esquire Magazine

Spencer Tunick Articles | The Guardian

Artist Certificate: Each puzzle comes with an artist certificate.

Biography:

Artist Spencer Tunick has been documenting the live nude figure in public, with photography and video, since 1992. Since 1994, he has organized over 100 temporary site-related installations that encompass dozens, hundreds or thousands of volunteers, and his photographs are records of these events. The individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together, metamorphose into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon the landscape like a substance. Tunick stages scenes in which the battle of nature against culture is played out against various backdrops, from civic center to desert sandstorm, humans are returned to a pre-industrial, pre-everything state of existence. These group masses, which do not underscore sexuality, often become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one's views of nudity and privacy. The work also refers to the complex issue of presenting art in permanent or temporary public spaces.

Spencer Tunick's body of work may come to help define or at least clarify the social, political and legal issues surrounding art in the public sphere. Since 1992, Tunick has been arrested 5 times while attempting to work outdoors in New York City. Soon after his Times Square arrest, as with the previous 4 arrests, all charges were dropped. Determined to create his work on the streets of New York, the artist filed a Federal Civil Rights Law Suit against the city to protect himself and his participants from future arrests. In May 2000, the Second US district court sided with Tunick, recognizing that his work was protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. On June 3 of the same year, in response to the city's final appeal made to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the court at large, the US Supreme Court also ruled in favor of Tunick by remanding the case back down, allowing the lower court decision to stand and the artist to freely organize his work on New York City streets.

His temporary site-specific installations have been commissioned by the XXV Biennial de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002); Institut Cultura, Barcelona (2003); The Saatchi Gallery (2003); MOCA Cleveland (2004); Vienna Kunsthalle (2008) and MAMBO Museum of Modern Art, Bogota (2016), among others.

Art X Puzzles • Puzzles with Purpose • COVID-19 Artist Relief