A later sculptural piece by Dorothea Tanning, Nue Couchée introduces her weighty, contorted and headless figures made in the late 60's out of cotton textile, cardboard, 7 table tennis balls, wool and thread.
Although the title translates to "Reclining Nude", the sculpture is more of a subversion of the Reclining Venus trope commonly associated with Classical art. Instead, it confronts the out-of-date idealism of the female form often captured on canvas. Tanning uses table tennis balls to highlight the delicate backbone and pink fabric to evoke a fleshy bodily mass.
The Nue Couchée provides examples of:
- Allegorical Character: The piece is a representation of the horrifying implications of the Male Gaze, of how it hurts women on so many levels. Specifically, by twisting their bodies in unnatural ways for the sole purpose of Fanservice; therefore dehumanizing women. Fitting, since the thing only barely looks like a person.
- Art Imitates Art: The Reclining Venus pose that it emulates is interpreted as being from the back of the model not unlike Grande Odalisque.
- Body Horror: The sculpture is a hairless, fleshy mass with too many legs replacing its arms, head, and shoulders. Noticeable ridges shape what would be its spinal column and rear end, as well as the skinny waist, evoke the traditional beauty standard used for most Odalisques.
- Composite Character: The sculpture is meant to be an amalgamation of all the reclining Venuses ever produced, which results in a grotesque mass of misplaced limbs.
- Gratuitous French: The piece's name is French for "Reclining Nude". Unusual considering the artist who made it is from Galesburg, Illinois.
- Protagonist Title: The main character is a monstrous mass resembling a reclining, nude woman; hence it's title.
- Reclining Venus: Played for Horror. The piece is a surrealist take on the Reclining Venus pose, exaggerating it to highlight how artworks that play that trope straight depict women in painful positions for the sake of Fanservice. Even its name — "Reclining Nude" — is a reference to this. All in all, it denounces the Male Gaze.
- Verbing Nouny: The title means "reclining nude".
