!['David' by Michelangelo Fir JBU005 denoised](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/%27David%27_by_Michelangelo_Fir_JBU005_denoised.jpg)
The nude, as a form of visual art that focuses on the unclothed human figure, is an enduring tradition in
Western art
The art of Europe, or Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleol ...
. It was a preoccupation of
Ancient Greek art
Ancient Greek art stands out among that of other ancient cultures for its development of naturalistic but idealized depictions of the human body, in which largely nude male figures were generally the focus of innovation. The rate of stylistic d ...
, and after a semi-dormant period in the Middle Ages returned to a central position with the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
. Unclothed figures often also play a part in other types of art, such as
history painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...
, including
allegorical
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...
and
religious art
Religious art is artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Sacred art involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the path of the spiritu ...
,
portraiture
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...
, or the
decorative arts
]
The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose object is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. It includes most of the arts making objects for the interiors of buildings, and interior design, but not usual ...
. From prehistory to the earliest civilizations, nude female figures are generally understood to be symbols of fertility or well-being.
In India, the
Khajuraho Group of Monuments
The Khajuraho Group of Monuments are a group of Hindu and Jain temples in Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh, India, about 175 kilometres southeast of Jhansi. They are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The temples are famous for their nagara-styl ...
built between 950 and 1050 CE are known for their erotic sculptures, which comprise about 10% of the temple decorations. Japanese prints are one of the few non-western traditions that can be called nudes, but the activity of communal bathing in Japan is portrayed as just another social activity, without the significance placed upon the lack of clothing that exists in the West. Through each era, the nude has reflected changes in cultural attitudes regarding sexuality, gender roles, and social structure.
One often cited book on the nude in art history is ''The Nude: a Study in Ideal Form'' by Lord
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...
, first published in 1956. The introductory chapter makes (though does not originate) the often-quoted distinction between the naked body and the nude. Clark states that to be naked is to be deprived of clothes, and implies embarrassment and shame, while a nude, as a work of art, has no such connotations.
One of the defining characteristics of the modern era in art was the blurring of the line between the naked and the nude. This likely first occurred with the painting ''
The Nude Maja'' (1797) by Goya, which in 1815 drew the attention of the
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( es, Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( es, Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand ...
. The shocking elements were that it showed a particular model in a contemporary setting, with pubic hair rather than the smooth perfection of goddesses and nymphs, who returned the gaze of the viewer rather than looking away. Some of the same characteristics were shocking almost 70 years later when Manet exhibited his ''
Olympia
The name Olympia may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Olympia'' (1938 film), by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the Berlin-hosted Olympic Games
* ''Olympia'' (1998 film), about a Mexican soap opera star who pursues a career as an athlet ...
'', not because of religious issues, but because of its modernity. Rather than being a timeless
Odalisque
An odalisque (, tr, odalık) was a chambermaid or a female attendant in a Turkish seraglio, particularly the court ladies in the household of the Ottoman sultan. In western usage, the term came to mean the harem concubine, and refers to the ...
that could be safely viewed with detachment, Manet's image was assumed to be of a prostitute of that time, perhaps referencing the male viewers' own sexual practices.
Types of depiction
![John Vanderlyn 001](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/John_Vanderlyn_001.jpg)
The meaning of any image of the unclothed human body depends upon its being placed in a cultural context. In Western culture, the contexts generally recognized are ''art'', ''pornography'', and ''information''. Viewers easily identify some images as belonging to one category, while other images are ambiguous. The 21st century may have created a fourth category, the commodified nude, which intentionally uses ambiguity to attract attention for commercial purposes.
With regard to the distinction between art and pornography, Kenneth Clark noted that sexuality was part of the attraction to the nude as a subject of art, stating "no nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of
erotic
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow—and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals". According to Clark, the explicit temple sculptures of tenth-century India "are great works of art because their eroticism is part of their whole philosophy". Great art can contain significant sexual content without being
obscene
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be use ...
.
However, in the United States nudity in art has sometimes been a controversial subject when public funding and display in certain venues brings the work to the attention of the general public. Puritan history continues to impact the selection of artwork shown in museums and galleries. At the same time that any nude may be suspect in the view of many patrons and the public, art critics may reject work that is not cutting edge. Relatively tame nudes tend to be shown in museums, while works with shock value are shown in commercial galleries. The art world has devalued simple beauty and pleasure, although these values are present in art from the past and in some contemporary works.
When school groups visit museums, there are inevitable questions that teachers or tour leaders must be prepared to answer. The basic advice is to give matter-of-fact answers emphasizing the differences between art and other images, the universality of the human body, and the values and emotions expressed in the works.
Art historian and author
Frances Borzello writes that contemporary artists are no longer interested in the ideals and traditions of the past, but confront the viewer with all the sexuality, discomfort and anxiety that the unclothed body may express, perhaps eliminating the distinction between the naked and the nude. Performance art takes the final step by presenting actual naked bodies as a work of art.
History
![Venus von Willendorf 01](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Venus_von_Willendorf_01.jpg)
The nude dates to the beginning of art with the female figures called
Venus figurine
A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.Fagan, Brian M., Beck, Charlotte, "Venus Figurines", ''The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'', 1996, Oxford University Press, pp. 740–741 Mos ...
s from the
Late Stone Age
The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age.
The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studying it ar ...
. In early historical times similar images represented fertility deities. When surveying the literature on the nude in art, there are differences between defining nakedness as the complete absence of clothing versus other states of undress. In early Christian art, particularly in references to images of Jesus, partial dress (a loincloth) was described as nakedness.
Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
Nude images in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt reflect the attitudes toward nudity in these societies. At the time, being naked in social situations was a source of great embarrassment for anyone with higher social status this was not due to the connection between nudity and sexual impropriety, but rather it being indicative of low status or disgrace. Non-sexual, or functional nudity was common in early civilizations due to the climate. Children were generally naked until puberty, and public baths were attended nude by mixed gender groups. Those with low status not only slaves might be naked or, when clothed, would disrobe when necessary for strenuous work. Dancers, musicians, and acrobats would be nude while performing. Many nude images depicted these activities. Other nude images were symbolic, idealized images of warriors and goddesses; while gods where shown dressed to indicate their status. The figure depicted in the
Burney Relief
The Burney Relief (also known as the Queen of the Night relief) is a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque in high relief of the Isin-Larsa period or Old- Babylonian period, depicting a winged, nude, goddess-like figure with bird's talons, flanked by ...
could be an aspect of the goddess Ishtar, Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love and war. However, her bird-feet and accompanying owls have suggested to some a connection with Lilitu (called Lilith in the Bible), though seemingly not the usual demonic Lilitu.
Ancient Greece
Nudity in Greek life was the exception in the ancient world. What had begun as a male initiation rite in the eighth century BCE became a "costume" in the
Classical period. Complete nudity separated the civilized Greeks from the "barbarians" including Hebrews, Etruscans, and Gauls.
The earliest
Greek sculpture
The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumen ...
, from the early
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
Cycladic civilization
Cycladic culture (also known as Cycladic civilisation or, chronologically, as Cycladic chronology) was a Bronze Age culture (c. 3200–c. 1050 BC) found throughout the islands of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea. In chronological terms, it is a rel ...
consists mainly of stylized male figures who are presumably nude. This is certainly the case for the
kouros
kouros ( grc, κοῦρος, , plural kouroi) is the modern term given to free-standing Ancient Greek sculptures that depict nude male youths. They first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and are prominent in Attica and Boeotia, with a less ...
, a large standing figure of a male nude that was the mainstay of
Archaic Greek
Archaic Greece was the period in Greek history lasting from circa 800 BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical period. In the archaic period, Greeks settled across the M ...
sculpture. These first realistic sculptures of nude males depict nude youths who stand rigidly posed with one foot forward. By the 5th century BCE, Greek sculptors' mastery of anatomy resulted in greater naturalness and more varied poses. An important innovation was
contrapposto
''Contrapposto'' () is an Italian term that means "counterpoise". It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs in the a ...
—the asymmetrical posture of a figure standing with one leg bearing the body's weight and the other relaxed. An early example of this is
Polykleitos
Polykleitos ( grc, Πολύκλειτος) was an ancient Greek sculptor in bronze of the 5th century BCE. Alongside the Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the most important sculptors of classical antiqu ...
' sculpture ''
Doryphoros
The ''Doryphoros'' (Greek Δορυφόρος Classical Greek , "Spear-Bearer"; Latinised as ''Doryphorus'') of Polykleitos is one of the best known Greek sculptures of Classical antiquity, depicting a solidly built, muscular, standing warrior, o ...
'' (c. 440 BCE).
The Greek goddesses were initially sculpted with drapery rather than nude. The first free-standing, life-sized sculpture of an entirely nude woman was the ''
Aphrodite of Cnidus
The Aphrodite of Knidos (or Cnidus) was an Ancient Greek sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite created by Praxiteles of Athens around the 4th century BC. It is one of the first life-sized representations of the nude female form in Greek history, d ...
'' created c. 360–340 BCE by
Praxiteles
Praxiteles (; el, Πραξιτέλης) of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attica sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue. While no indubita ...
. The female nude became much more common in the later
Hellenistic period
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 3 ...
. In the convention of
heroic nudity
Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the un-realist use of nudity in classical sculpture to show figures who may be heroes, deities, or semi-divine beings. This convention began in Archaic and Clas ...
, gods and heroes were shown nude, while ordinary mortals were less likely to be so, though athletes and warriors in combat were often depicted nude. The nudes of Greco-Roman art are conceptually perfected ideal persons, each one a vision of health, youth, geometric clarity, and organic equilibrium. Kenneth Clark considered idealization the hallmark of true nudes, as opposed to more descriptive and less artful figures that he considered merely naked. His emphasis on idealization points up an essential issue: seductive and appealing as nudes in art may be, they are meant to stir the mind as well as the passions.
Asian art
Non-Western traditions of depicting nudes come from
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
and Japan, but the nude does not form an important aspect of
Chinese art
Chinese art is visual art that originated in or is practiced in China, Greater China or by Chinese artists. Art created by Chinese residing outside of China can also be considered a part of Chinese art when it is based in or draws on Chinese ...
. Temple sculptures and cave paintings, some very explicit, are part of the Hindu tradition of the value of sexuality, and as in many warm climates partial or complete nudity was common in everyday life. Japan had a tradition of mixed communal bathing that existed until recently, and was often portrayed in woodcut prints.
In the early twentieth century, artists in the Arab world used nudity in works that addressed their emergence from colonialism into a modern world.
Middle Ages
Early Middle Ages
Christian attitudes cast doubt on the value of the human body, and the Christian emphasis on chastity and celibacy further discouraged depictions of nakedness, even in the few surviving Early Medieval survivals of secular art. Completely unclothed figures are rare in medieval art, the notable exceptions being
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. ...
as recorded in the
Book of Genesis
The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning") ...
and the damned in ''
Last Judgement
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Reckoning, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, Doomsday, Day of Resurrection or The Day of the Lord (; ar, یوم القيامة, translit=Yawm al-Qiyāmah or ar, یوم الدین, translit=Yawm ad-Dīn, ...
'' scenes anticipating the
Sistine Chapel
The Sistine Chapel (; la, Sacellum Sixtinum; it, Cappella Sistina ) is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the pope in Vatican City. Originally known as the ''Cappella Magna'' ('Great Chapel'), the chapel takes its name ...
renderings. With these exceptions, the ideal forms of Greco-Roman nudes became largely lost, transformed into symbols of shame and sin, weakness and defenselessness. This was true not only in Western Europe, but also in
Byzantine art
Byzantine art comprises the body of Christian Greek artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of Rome and lasted ...
. Increasingly, Christ was shown largely naked in scenes of his Passion, especially the
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthagin ...
, and even when glorified in heaven, to allow him to display the wounds his sufferings had involved. The
Nursing Madonna
The Nursing Madonna, ''Virgo Lactans'', or Madonna Lactans, is an iconography of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the infant Jesus. In Italian it is called the ''Madonna del Latte'' ("Madonna of milk"). It was ...
and
naked "Penitent Mary Magdalene", as well as the infant Jesus, whose
penis was sometimes emphasized for theological reasons, are other exceptions with elements of nudity in medieval religious art.
Late Middle Ages
By the late medieval period female nudes intended to be attractive edged back into art, especially in the relatively private medium of the
illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, the ...
, and in classical contexts such as the
Signs of the Zodiac
The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The path ...
and illustrations to
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
. The shape of the female "Gothic nude" was very different from the classical ideal, with a long body shaped by gentle curves, a narrow chest and high waist, small round breasts, and a prominent bulge at the stomach. Male nudes tended to be slim and slight in figure, probably drawing on apprentices used as models, but were increasingly accurately observed.
Renaissance
![Sandro Botticelli - La nascita di Venere - Google Art Project - edited](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Sandro_Botticelli_-_La_nascita_di_Venere_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg)
During the Renaissance, interest in the nude body in art was being rekindled after a thousand years. Toward the end of Greco-Roman antiquity, Christian doctrines of celibacy, chastity, and the devaluation of the flesh led to the declining interest of nudes for patrons, and thus for artists. Since the end of the ancient classical period, the unclothed body was only depicted in rare instances like renderings of Adam and Eve. Now, with the rise of
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was a revival in the study of classical antiquity, at first in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term ''humanist'' ( it, umanista) referred to teache ...
, Renaissance artists were relishing opportunities to depict the unclothed body.
The reinvigoration of classical culture in the Renaissance restored the nude to art.
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi ( – 13 December 1466), better known as Donatello ( ), was a Republic of Florence, Florentine sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Republic of Florence, Florence, he studied classical sculpture and use ...
made
two statues of the Biblical hero
David
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
, a symbol for the
Republic of Florence
The Republic of Florence, officially the Florentine Republic ( it, Repubblica Fiorentina, , or ), was a medieval and early modern state that was centered on the Italian city of Florence in Tuscany. The republic originated in 1115, when the Flo ...
: his first (in marble, 1408–1409) shows a clothed figure, but his second, probably of the 1440s, is the first freestanding statue of a nude since antiquity, several decades before
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...
's massive ''
David
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
'' (1501–1504). Nudes in Michelangelo's
Sistine Chapel ceiling
The Sistine Chapel ceiling ( it, Soffitto della Cappella Sistina), painted in fresco by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance Renaissance art, art. The Sistine Chapel is the large papal chapel built with ...
reestablished a tradition of male nudes in depictions of Biblical stories; the subject of the martyrdom of the near-naked
Saint Sebastian
Saint Sebastian (in Latin: ''Sebastianus''; Narbo, Gallia Narbonensis, Roman Empire c. AD 255 – Rome, Italia, Roman Empire c. AD 288) was an early Christian saint and martyr. According to traditional belief, he was killed during the Dioclet ...
had already become highly popular. The monumental female nude returned to Western art in 1486 with
''The Birth of Venus'' by
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian Renaissance painting, Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th cent ...
for the
Medici family
The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Muge ...
, who also owned the classical
Venus de' Medici
The Venus de' Medici or Medici Venus is a tall Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. It is a 1st-century BC marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture, following the type of th ...
, whose pose Botticelli adapted.
Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna (, , ; September 13, 1506) was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini.
Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g. by lowering the horizon in order ...
(1431–1506) is considered by art historians to have been a pivotal figure in the resurgence of nudes in art because of his love of the ancient classical world and how he incorporated classical principles of form into his creations.
He is not the first to use classical influences in his work. However, few painters before him did this to the conspicuous degree and quality to which he did. He is known as a master of form, and his nudes are noteworthy because his style is influenced by his study of ancient classical sculpture and his knowledge of ancient classical Greek and Roman culture.
The drawing of ''
St. James Led to His Execution'' demonstrates that, early on, Mantegna did anatomical nude sketches in preparation for the
Ovetari Chapel
The Ovetari Chapel (Italian: ''Cappella Ovetari'') is a chapel in the right arm of the Church of the Eremitani in Padua. It is renowned for a Renaissance fresco cycle by Andrea Mantegna and others, painted from 1448 to 1457. The cycle was destroyed ...
frescoes. This is the earliest known drawing by the artist.
The ''
Dresden Venus
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the List ...
'' of
Giorgione
Giorgione (, , ; born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco; 1477–78 or 1473–74 – 17 September 1510) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance, who died in his thirties. He is known for the elusive poetic qualit ...
(c. 1510), also drawing on classical models, showed a reclining female nude in a landscape, beginning a long line of famous paintings including the ''
Venus of Urbino
The ''Venus of Urbino'' (also known as ''Reclining Venus'') is an oil painting by the Italian painter Titian, which seems to have been begun in 1532 or 1534, and was perhaps completed in 1534, but not sold until 1538. It depicts a nude young wom ...
'' (
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...
, 1538), and the ''
Rokeby Venus
The ''Rokeby Venus'' (; also known as ''The Toilet of Venus'', ''Venus at her Mirror'', ''Venus and Cupid'', or '' La Venus del espejo'') is a painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Completed between 1647 ...
'' (
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...
, c. 1650). Although they reflect the proportions of ancient statuary, such figures as Titian's ''Venus and the Lute Player'' and ''Venus of Urbino'' highlight the sexuality of the female body rather than its ideal geometry. These works inspired countless reclining female nudes for centuries afterwards. In addition to adult male and female figures, the classical depiction of
Eros
In Greek mythology, Eros (, ; grc, Ἔρως, Érōs, Love, Desire) is the Greek god of love and sex. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire").''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. In the earli ...
became the model for the naked Christ child.
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of works by Raphael, His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of ...
in his later years is usually credited as the first artist to consistently use female models for the drawings of female figures, rather than studio apprentices or other boys with breasts added, who were previously used. Michelangelo's suspiciously boyish ''
Study of a Kneeling Nude Girl for The Entombment
''Study of a Kneeling Nude Girl for The Entombment'' is a drawing of c. 1500–1501 by Michelangelo, now in the Louvre Museum. It is in black chalk, with pen and ink and white highlighting, on pink prepared (coloured) paper, and measures 26.6&nb ...
'' (
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, c. 1500), which is usually said to be the first nude female
figure study
A figure study is a drawing or painting of the human body made in preparation for a more composed or finished work; or to learn drawing and painting techniques in general and the human figure in particular. By preference, figure studies are done f ...
, predates this and is an example of how even figures who would be shown clothed in the final work were often worked out in nude studies, so that the form under the clothing was understood. The nude
figure drawing
A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed, ...
or figure study of a
live model rapidly became an important part of artistic practice and training, and remained so until the 20th century.
17th and 18th centuries
In
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
art, the continuing fascination with classical antiquity influenced artists to renew and expand their approach to the nude, but with more naturalistic, less idealized depictions, perhaps more frequently working from live models. Both genders are represented; the male in the form of heroes such as Hercules and Samson, and female in the form of Venus and the Three Graces.
Peter Paul Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...
, who with evident delight painted women of generous figure and radiant flesh, gave his name to the adjective
Rubenesque
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...
. While adopting the conventions of mythological and Biblical stories, Rembrandt's nudes were less idealized, and painted from life. In the later Baroque or
Rococo
Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...
period, a more decorative and playful style emerged, exemplified by
François Boucher
François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...
's ''Venus Consoling Love'', likely commissioned by
Madame Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and rema ...
.
Early modern
Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...
's ''
Nude Maja'' represent a break with the classical, showing a particular woman of his time, with pubic hair and a look directed at the viewer, rather than an allusion to nymphs or goddesses.
![This Year Venuses Again (Daumier)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/This_Year_Venuses_Again_%28Daumier%29.jpg)
In the 19th century the
Orientalism
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. In particular, Orientalist p ...
movement added another reclining female nude to the possible subjects of European paintings, the odalisque, a slave or harem girl. One of the most famous was ''The
Grande Odalisque
''Grande Odalisque'', also known as ''Une Odalisque'' or ''La Grande Odalisque'', is an oil painting of 1814 by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres depicting an odalisque, or concubine. Ingres' contemporaries considered the work to signify Ingres' brea ...
'' painted by
Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( , ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...
in 1814. The annual glut of paintings of idealized nude women in the
Paris Salon
The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...
was satirized by
Honoré Daumier
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second N ...
in an 1864 lithograph with the caption "This year Venuses again... always Venuses!... as if there really were women built like that!" While Europe accepted the nude in art, America was restrictive of sexuality, which sometimes included criticism or censorship of painting, even those that depicted classical or biblical subjects.
In the later nineteenth century, academic painters continued with classical themes, but were challenged by the Impressionists. While the composition is compared to Titian and Giogione, Édouard Manet shocked the public of his time by painting nude women in contemporary situation in his ''
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe'' (1863); and although the pose of his ''
Olympia
The name Olympia may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Olympia'' (1938 film), by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the Berlin-hosted Olympic Games
* ''Olympia'' (1998 film), about a Mexican soap opera star who pursues a career as an athlet ...
'' (1865) is said to derive from the
Venus of Urbino
The ''Venus of Urbino'' (also known as ''Reclining Venus'') is an oil painting by the Italian painter Titian, which seems to have been begun in 1532 or 1534, and was perhaps completed in 1534, but not sold until 1538. It depicts a nude young wom ...
by
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...
, the public saw a prostitute. Gustave Courbet similarly earned criticism for portraying in his ''
Woman with a Parrot
''La Femme au perroquet'' (''Woman with a Parrot'') is an oil painting on canvas by French artist Gustave Courbet. It was the first nude by the artist to be accepted by the Paris Salon in 1866 after a previous entry in 1864 was rejected as indec ...
'' a naked prostitute without vestige of goddess or nymph.
Edgar Degas painted many nudes of women in ordinary circumstances, such as taking a bath. Auguste Rodin challenged classical canons of idealization in his expressively distorted Adam. With the invention of photography, artists began using the new medium as a source for paintings,
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
being one of the first.
For
Lynda Nead
Lynda Nead is a British curator and art historian. She is currently the Pevsner Chair of the History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London. Nead's work studies British art, media, culture and often focuses on gender. Nead is a fellow of the B ...
, the female nude is a matter of containing sexuality; in the case of the classical art history view represented by Kenneth Clark, this is about idealization and de-emphasis of overt sexuality, while the modern view recognizes that the human body is messy, unbounded, and problematical. If a virtuous woman is dependent and weak, as was assumed by the images in classical art, then a strong, independent woman could not be portrayed as virtuous.
Late modern
Although both the Academic tradition and Impressionists lost their cultural supremacy at the beginning of the twentieth century, the nude remained although transformed by the ideas of
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
. The idealized Venus was replaced by the woman intimately depicted in private settings, as in the work of
Egon Schiele
Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele (; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918) was an Austrian Expressionist painter. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, and for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portr ...
. The simplified modern forms of
Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
,
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
,
Gaston Lachaise
Gaston Lachaise (March 19, 1882 – October 18, 1935) was a French-born sculptor, active in the early 20th century. A native of Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 re ...
and
Aristide Maillol
Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol (; December 8, 1861 – September 27, 1944) was a French sculptor, painter, and printmaker.Le Normand-Romain, Antoinette . "Maillol, Aristide". ''Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online''. Oxford University P ...
recall the original goddesses of fertility more than Greek goddesses.
In early abstract paintings, the body could be fragmented or dismembered, as in Picasso's ''
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'' (''The Young Ladies of Avignon'', originally titled ''The Brothel of Avignon'') is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum o ...
'' or his structuralist and Cubist nudes, but there are also abstracted versions of classical themes, such as
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
's dancers and bathers.
Suzanne Valadon
Suzanne Valadon (23 September 18657 April 1938) was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des B ...
was one of relatively few female artists in the early 20th century to paint female nudes, as well as male nudes.
In 1916, she painted ''Nude Arranging her Hair'', which depicts a woman carrying out a mundane task in a frank, un-sexualised and non-erotic way.
In the
post-WWII era,
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
moved the center of Western art from Paris to New York City. One of the primary influences in the rise of abstraction, the critic
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formal ...
, had supported de Kooning's early abstract work. Despite Greenberg's advice, the artist, who had begun as a figurative painter, returned to the human form in early 1950 with his
''Woman'' series. Although having some references to the traditions of single female figures, the women were portrayed as voracious, distorted, and semi-abstract. According to the artist, he wanted to "create the angry humor of tragedy"; having the frantic look of the atomic age, a world in turmoil, a world in need of comic relief. Later, Greenberg added that "Maybe ... I was painting the woman in me. Art isn't a wholly masculine occupation, you know. I'm aware that some critics would take this to be an admission of latent homosexuality ... If I painted beautiful women, would that make me a non-homosexual? I like beautiful women. In the flesh—even the models in magazines. Women irritate me sometimes. I painted that irritation in the Woman series. That's all." Such ideas could not be expressed by pure abstraction alone.
Some critics, however, see the Woman series as
misogynistic
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced fo ...
.
Other New York artists of this period retained the figure as their primary subject.
Alice Neel
Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psyc ...
painted nudes, including her own self-portrait, in the same straightforward style as clothed sitters,
being primarily concerned with color and emotional content.
Philip Pearlstein
Philip Martin Pearlstein (May 24, 1924 – December 17, 2022) was an American painter best known for Modernist Realist nudes. Cited by critics as the preeminent figure painter of the 1960s to 2000s, he led a revival in realist art.
Biography ...
uses unique cropping and perspective to explore the abstract qualities of nudes. As a young artist in the 1950s, Pearlstein exhibited both abstracts and figures, but it was de Kooning that advised him to continue with figurative work.
Contemporary
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...
was one of a small group of painters which included
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
who came to be known as "The School of London", creating figurative work in the 1970s when it was unfashionable.
However, by the end of his life his works had become icons of the
Postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
era, depicting the human body without a trace of idealization, as in his series working with an
obese model.
One of Freud's works is entitled "Naked Portrait", which implies a realistic image of a particular unclothed woman rather than a conventional nude. In Freud's obituary in ''The New York Times'', it is stated: His "stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates, splayed nude in his studio, recast the art of portraiture and offered a new approach to figurative art".
Around 1970, from feminist principles,
Sylvia Sleigh
Sylvia Sleigh (8 May 1916 – 24 October 2010) was a Welsh-born naturalised American realist painter who lived and worked in New York City. She is known for her role in the feminist art movement and especially for reversing traditional g ...
painted a series of works reversing stereotypical artistic themes by featuring naked men in poses usually associated with women.
The paintings of
Jenny Saville
Jennifer Anne Saville (born 7 May 1970) is a contemporary British painter and an original member of the Young British Artists.Royal Academy of ArtsJenny Saville RA , Artist , Royal Academy of Arts accessdate: 29 August 2014 Saville works and ...
include family and self-portraits among other nudes; often done in extreme perspectives, attempting to balance realism with abstraction; all while expressing how a woman feels about the female nude.
Lisa Yuskavage
Lisa Yuskavage (1962) is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. She is known for her figure paintings that challenge conventional understandings of the genre. While her painterly techniques evoke art historical precedents, her ...
's nude figures painted in a nearly academic manner constitute a "parody of art historical nudity and the male obsession with the female form as object".
John Currin
John Currin (born 1962) is an American painter based in New York City. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner. His work shows a wide range of in ...
is another painter whose work frequently reinterprets historic nudes.
Cecily Brown
Cecily Brown (born 1969) is a British painter. Her style displays the influence of a variety of contemporary painters, from Willem de Kooning, Francis BaconScott, Sue (2013). "Cecily Brown" in ''The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium ...
's paintings combine figurative elements and abstraction in a style reminiscent of de Kooning.
The end of the twentieth century saw the rise of new media and approaches to art, although they began much earlier. In particular
installation art
Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...
often includes images of the human body, and performance art frequently includes nudity. "Cut Piece" by
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
was first performed in 1964 (then known as a "
happening
A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events.
History
Origins
Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...
"). Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting away her clothing until she was nearly naked. Several contemporary performance artists such as
Marina Abramović
Marina Abramović ( sr-Cyrl, Марина Абрамовић, ; born November 30, 1946) is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, feminist art, the relationship between the performer and audienc ...
,
Vanessa Beecroft
Vanessa Beecroft (born April 25, 1969) is an Italian-born American contemporary performance artist; she also works with photography, video art, sculpture, and painting. Many of her works have made use of professional models, sometimes in large nu ...
and
Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann (October 12, 1939 – March 6, 2019) was an American visual experimental artist, known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and ...
use their own nude bodies or other performers in their work.
Issues
Depictions of youth
![Ragazzo nudo sulla spiaggia John Singer Sargent](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Ragazzo_nudo_sulla_spiaggia_John_Singer_Sargent.jpg)
In classical works, nude children were rarely shown except for babies and
putti
A putto (; plural putti ) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism,Dempsey, Charles. ''Inventing the Renaissance Putto''. University of ...
. Before the era of Freudian psychoanalysis, children were assumed to have no
sexual feelings before puberty, so nude children were shown as symbols of pure innocence. Boys often swam naked, which was depicted in modern paintings by
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...
,
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realism, American realist painting, painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art ...
, and others. Other images were more erotic, either symbolically or explicitly.
Gender differences
![Susanna and the Elders (1610), Artemisia Gentileschi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Susanna_and_the_Elders_%281610%29%2C_Artemisia_Gentileschi.jpg)
Men and women did not receive equal opportunities in
artistic training from at least from the Renaissance until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Women artists
The absence of women from the canon of Western culture, Western Art history, art has been a subject of inquiry and reconsideration since the early 1970s. Linda Nochlin's influential 1971 essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, Why ...
were not allowed access to nude models and could not participate in this part of the arts education.
During this period, study of the nude figure was something all male artists were expected to go through to become an artist of worth and to be able to depict historical subjects.
Academic art history tends to ignore the sexuality of the male nude, speaking instead of form and composition.
For much of history, nude men represented martyrs and warriors, emphasizing an active role rather than the passive one assigned to women in art.
Alice Neel
Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist, who was known for her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psyc ...
and
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...
painted the modern male nude in the classic reclining pose, with the genitals prominently displayed.
Sylvia Sleigh
Sylvia Sleigh (8 May 1916 – 24 October 2010) was a Welsh-born naturalised American realist painter who lived and worked in New York City. She is known for her role in the feminist art movement and especially for reversing traditional g ...
painted versions of classic works with the genders reversed.
Until the 1960s, art history and criticism rarely reflected anything other than the male point of view. The
feminist art movement
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of contemporary ar ...
began to change this, but one of the first widely known statements of the political messages in nudity was made in 1972 by the art critic
John Berger
John Peter Berger (; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism ''Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to the ...
. In ''
Ways of Seeing
''Ways of Seeing'' is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name.
The series was intended as a ...
'', he argued that female nudes reflected and reinforced the prevailing power relationship between females portrayed in art and the predominantly male audience. A year later
Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously taught at Bulmers ...
wrote ''Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'', in which she
applied to film theory the concept of the
male gaze
In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heteros ...
, asserting that all nudes are inherently voyeuristic.
The feminist art movement was aimed at giving women the opportunity to have their art reach the same level of notoriety and respect that men's art received. The idea that women are intellectually inferior to men came from Aristotelian ideology and was heavily depended on during the Renaissance. It was believed by
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
that during the process of procreation, men were the driving force. They held all creative power while women were the receivers. Women's only role in reproduction was to provide the material and act as a vessel. This idea carried over into the image of the artist and the nude in art. The artist was seen specifically as a white male, and he was the only one who held the innate talent and creativity to be a successful professional artist. This belief system was prevalent in nude art. Women were depicted as passive, and they did not possess any control over their image. The female nude during the Renaissance was an image created by the male gaze.
In Jill Fields' article "Frontiers in Feminist Art History", Fields examines the feminist art movement and its assessment of female nude imagery. She considers how the image of the female nude was created and how the feminist art history movement attempted to change the way the image of the female nude was represented. Derived from the Renaissance ideal of feminine beauty, the image of the female body was created by men and for a male audience. In paintings like
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
's '' The Origin of the World'' and
François Boucher
François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...
's ''Reclining Girl'', women are depicted with open legs, implying that they are to be passive and an object to be used. In A. W. Eaton's essay "What's Wrong with the (Female) Nude? A Feminist Perspective on Art and Pornography", she discusses multiple ways in which the art of the female nude objectifies women. She considers how male nudes are both less common and represented as active and heroic, whereas female nudes are significantly more prevalent and represent women as passive, vulnerable, sexual objects. The feminist art history movement has aimed to change the way this image is perceived. The female nude has become less of an icon in Western art since the 1990s, but this decline in importance did not stop members of the feminist art movement from incorporating things like the "central core" image. This way of representing the nude female figure in art was focused on the fact that women were in control of their own image. The central image was focused on
vulva
The vulva (plural: vulvas or vulvae; derived from Latin for wrapper or covering) consists of the external sex organ, female sex organs. The vulva includes the mons pubis (or mons veneris), labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, bulb of vestibu ...
-related symbols. By incorporating new images and symbols into the female nude image in Western art, the feminist art history movement continues to try and dismantle the male-dominated art world.
More recent discussion of the appropriateness of certain artworks has emerged in the context of the
Me Too movement
#MeToo is a social movement against sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and rape culture, in which people publicize their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment. The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in ...
.
Nudes depicting the female and queer gaze
Female nudes have long been informed by the male gaze, and men's desires of the nudity of women.
[Eaton, A. W. "What's Wrong with the (Female) Nude? A Feminist Perspective on Art and Pornography." ''Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition, An Anthology'' (2018): 266.] Feminist criticism has targeted female nudes, informed by the male gaze, for nearly a century.
However, there are some artists who have turned this concept on its head, and have, as a result, distilled the criticisms embodied within the male gaze nude depictions of women. Artists have instilled the female gaze in the nudes they create. Rather than women being the object of men's desires, some artists have challenged traditional narratives of women, depicting them contrastingly as being non-sexualised.
Additionally, artists have implemented the queer gaze into art, and specifically nude art, which also challenges the traditional male gaze nude artwork.
*
Helen Beard
Helen may refer to:
People
* Helen of Troy, in Greek mythology, the most beautiful woman in the world
* Helen (actress) (born 1938), Indian actress
* Helen (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name)
Places
* Helen, ...
creates colourful and bright artwork in different mediums, from paintings, to needlepoint, to sculptures, depicting close ups of women in explicit, pornographic sexual positions.
Her pieces embody women feeling pleasured by their bodies, which contradicts the traditional male gaze nudes of women previously.
*
Lucy Liu
Lucy Alexis Liu is an American actress. Her accolades include winning a Critics' Choice Television Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Seoul International Drama Award, in addition to nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award.
Liu has star ...
has created a collection, entitled 'SHUNGA,' a Japanese term meaning erotic art.
Liu's subject matter involves close up images of lesbian women, entwined within each other and bed sheets.
*
Maggi Hambling
Margaret ("Maggi") J. Hambling (born 23 October 1945) is a British artist. Though principally a painter her best-known public works are the sculptures '' A Conversation with Oscar Wilde'' and '' A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft'' in London, ...
recently commemorated the British feminist writer,
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (, ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationsh ...
, by creating ''
A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft'', which uses a nude female figure to represent the spirit of Wollstonecraft's feminism.
This has caused great deals of controversy, with people questioning why Hambling chose to depict Wollstonecraft in nude form.
However, Hambling has argued that her reasoning is to depict Wollstonecraft as a spirit and a representation of every woman.
* Louis Fratino has redefined the male gaze and how queer men and women are represented in nude art. His pieces explore queer sexuality in both everyday and erotic formats.
*
Lisa Yuskavage
Lisa Yuskavage (1962) is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. She is known for her figure paintings that challenge conventional understandings of the genre. While her painterly techniques evoke art historical precedents, her ...
's artwork has been included in ''The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women'' exhibition in 2009. Her work includes nude depictions of women, which illustrates the women as being incapable of caring what others think of them because of their own bodily discomfort, which does not make them subjected to the male gaze.
*
Suzanne Valadon
Suzanne Valadon (23 September 18657 April 1938) was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des B ...
painted non-sexualised, not overly-erotic nude depictions of women.
The art work does not depict women from the traditional male gaze standpoint, and Valadon was one of the only women artists to paint such subject matter, in such a way, in the first half of the 20th century.
Intersectionality
The nude image in art has affected women of color in a different way than it has white women, according to
Charmaine Nelson
Charmaine Andrea Nelson (born 1971) is a Canadian art historian, educator, author, and independent curator. Nelson was a full professor of art history at McGill University until June 2020 when she joined NSCAD University to develop the Institute f ...
. The different depictions of the nude in art has not only instituted a system of controlling the image of women but it has put women of color in a place of other. The
intersection
In mathematics, the intersection of two or more objects is another object consisting of everything that is contained in all of the objects simultaneously. For example, in Euclidean geometry, when two lines in a plane are not parallel, their i ...
of their identities, as Nelson asserts, creates a "doubly fetishized black female body". Women of color are not represented to the degree that white women are in nude art from the Renaissance to the 1990s, and when they are represented it is in a different way than white women. The Renaissance ideal of female beauty did not include black women. White women were represented as a sexual image, and they were the ideal sexual image for men during the Renaissance. White women, in most major works before the 20th century, did not have pubic hair. Black women normally did, and this created their image in an animalistic sexual way. While the white women's image became one of innocence and the idealized, black women were continually overtly sexualized, she adds.
Social commentary
![The Barricade by George Wesley Bellows - BMA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/The_Barricade_by_George_Wesley_Bellows_-_BMA.jpg)
The nude has also been used to make a powerful social or political statement. An example is ''The Barricade'' (1918) by
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realism, American realist painting, painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art ...
, which depicts Belgian citizens being used as human shields by Germans in World War I. Although based upon a report of a real incident in which the victims were not nude, portraying them so in the painting emphasizes their vulnerability and universal humanity.
Media
![Demarteau Study of a nude man standing](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Demarteau_Study_of_a_nude_man_standing.jpg)
A
figure drawing
A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed, ...
is a study of the
human form in its various shapes and
body postures, with line, form, and composition as the primary objective, rather than the subject person. A life drawing is a work that has been drawn from an observation of a live model. Study of the human figure has traditionally been considered the best way to learning how to draw, beginning in the late Renaissance and continuing to the present.
Oil paint historically has been the ideal medium for depicting the nude. By blending and layering paint, the surface can become more like skin. "Its slow drying time and various degrees of viscosity enable the artist to achieve rich and subtle blends of color and texture, which can suggest transformations from one human substance to another."
Due to its durability, it is in sculpture that we see the full, nearly unbroken history of the nude from the Stone Age to the present. Figures, usually of the naked female, have been found in the
Balkan region dating back to 7,000 BCE and continue to this day to be generated. In the Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture tradition nudes were frequently adorned with bracelets and jewelry that tended to "punctuate their charms and demarcate the different parts of their bodies much as developed musculature does in the male".
Photography
The nude has been a subject of photography almost since its invention in the nineteenth century. Early photographers often selected poses that imitated the classical nudes of the past. Photography suffers from the problem of being too real, and for many years was not accepted by those committed to the traditional fine arts. However, many photographers have been established as fine artists including
Ruth Bernhard
Ruth Bernhard (October 14, 1905 – December 18, 2006) was a German-born American photographer.
Early life and education
Bernhard was born in Berlin to Lucian Bernhard and Gertrude Hoffmann. Lucian Bernhard was known for his poster and typeface ...
,
Anne Brigman
Anne Wardrope Brigman (née Nott; December 3, 1869 – February 8, 1950) was an American photographer and one of the original members of the Photo-Secession movement in America.
Her most famous images were taken between 1900 and 1920 and depict ...
,
Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham (; April 12, 1883 – June 23, 1976) was an American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham was a member of the California-based Group f/64, known for its dedication to t ...
,
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...
and
Edward Weston
Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." ...
.
New media
In the late twentieth century several new art forms emerged, including
installation
Installation may refer to:
* Installation (computer programs)
* Installation, work of installation art
* Installation, military base
* Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...
,
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
and
video art
Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...
, all of which have been used to create works that explore the concept of the nude. An example is
Mona Kuhn
Mona Kuhn (born 1969 in São Paulo, Brazil) is a German-Brazilian contemporary photographer best known for her large-scale photographs of the human form and essence. An underlying current in Kuhn's work is her reflection on our longing for spirit ...
's site-specific installation ''Experimental'' (2018), which employs video projections, vinyl installation, and other mixed media.
See also
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The Helga Pictures
''The Helga Pictures'' are a series of more than 268 paintings and drawings of German model Helga Testorf (born c. 1933Wilmerding, 11Updike, 176 or c. 1939Meryman, 335[Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth ( ; July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was an American visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.
In his ...]
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Further reading
* Falcon, Felix Lance (2006). ''Gay Art: a Historic Collection
nd history', ed. and with an introd. & captions by Thomas Waugh. Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press. ''N.B''.: The art works are b&w sketches and drawings of males, nude or nearly so, with much commentary.
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* Roussan, Jacques de (1982). ''Le Nu dans l'art au Québec''. La Prairie, Qué.: Éditions M. Broquet. ''N.B''.: Concerns mostly the artistic depiction of the female nude, primarily in painting and drawing.
External links
*{{cite web, title = Francis Bacon
, publisher = Estate of Francis Bacon
, url = http://www.francis-bacon.com/paintings/?c=74-75
, access-date = Nove
Painting
Visual arts