Book excerpt: In 1989, in what might have been the darkest hours of the AIDS epidemic, artist and illustrator Mats Gustafson began a series of nudes in watercolor, wash, and ink that would explore the stripped-down human body at a moment when it seemed most at risk of erasure. When encountering the Swedish-born artists series of nudes, it becomes evident that even the annals of art have rarely treated the nude figure as a mortal, perishable vessel... But within these fifty-odd works, Gustafson celebrates the vulnerable, fragile, fleeting nature of the physical body. His watercolors saturate the paper with the softness and permeability of human skintheir surfaces seem to breathe as lithe limbs and torsos stretch across the surface. Men and women, often alone, sometimes captured in an embrace, confront us directly with their unclothedand thus, unprotectedselves. The result is less a shock than an invitation to intimacy, as if we have walked in on a moment of heart-thrashing honesty. from the introduction by Christopher Bollen Mats Gustafson, born in Sweden in 1951, has long been recognized for his international career as a top fashion illustrator. first working at British Vogue in 1978, Gustafson quickly moved on to American Vogue, Andy Warhols Interview, and the worlds most important fashion magazines and international fashion houses (Comme des Garcons, Chanel, Yohji Yamamoto). In addition to his acclaimed fashion work, he has had a dual career as an artist. In Nude, Gustafsons second artist book with August edition, he shares a very personal side of himself and his work.