Nude (art)

The nude figure is a tradition in Western art, and has been used to
express ideals of male and female beauty and other human qualities.
It was a central preoccupation of Ancient Greek art, and after a
semi-dormant period in the Middle Ages returned to a central
position in Western art with the Renaissance. Athletes, dancers, and
warriors are depicted to express human energy and life, and nudes in
various poses may express basic or complex emotions such as
pathos.[2] In one sense, a nude is a work of fine art that has as its
primary subject the unclothed human body,[3] forming a subject
genre of art, in the same way as landscapes and still life. Unclothed
figures often also play a part in other types of art, such as history
painting, including allegorical and religious art, portraiture, or the
decorative arts.

Contents
History
Ancient Greece
Middle Ages
Early Middle Ages
Late Middle Ages
Renaissance David (1504)
"What spirit is so empty and blind,
Baroque to Modern
that it cannot recognize the fact that
Modern the foot is more noble than the shoe,
Contemporary and skin more beautiful than the
garment with which it is clothed?"
Media
— Michelangelo[1]
Drawing
Printmaking
Painting
Sculpture
Photography
New media
Issues
The naked and the nude
Sexuality
Public reaction versus the art world
Explaining nudity in art to students
Depictions of youth
Gender differences
Male nude: gods and warriors
Female nude: the Venus and Odalisques
 Feminist reinterpretations
Intersectionality
Social commentary
See also
Notes
References
Books
Journals
Web
Further reading
External links

History
Nude female figures called Venus figurines are found in the art of the Upper Palaeolithic, and in historical
times, similar images represent fertility deities.[4] Representations of gods and goddesses in Babylonian and
Ancient Egyptian art are the precursors of the works of Western antiquity. Other significant non-Western
traditions of depicting nudes come from India and Japan, but the nude does not form an important aspect of
Chinese art. 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.

The Nude in Prehistoric and Ancient Art

The Venus of Willendorf Old-Babylonian fired clay The Burney Relief, Old
(made between 24,000 and plaque of a standing nude Babylonian (ca 1800 BCE)
22,000 BCE) female, from Southern
Mesopotamia, Iraq.
Dancers and Flutists,
Thebes (ca 1400 BCE)

The Nude in Asian Art

Kandariya Mahadev Temple Bala Krishna dancing (14th Bathing woman (ca 1753),
in Khajuraho, India (1050) century) Kitagawa Utamaro

Woman putting on her Yuami (1915), Hashiguchi

clothes (1775), unknown Goyô
Indian artist
Ancient Greece

The earliest Greek sculpture, from the early Bronze Age Cycladic civilization consists mainly of stylized
male figures who are presumably nude. This is certainly the case for the kouros, a large standing figure of a
male nude that was the mainstay of Archaic Greek sculpture. The first realistic sculptures of nude males, the
kouroi depict nude youths who stand rigidly posed with one foot forward.[5] By the 5th century BCE, Greek
sculptors' mastery of anatomy resulted in greater naturalness and more varied poses. An important
innovation was contrapposto—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' sculpture Doryphoros (ca. 440
BCE).[5]

In the convention of heroic nudity, 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.

In Ancient Greece, where the mild climate was conducive to being lightly-clothed or nude whenever
convenient, and male athletes competed at religious festivals entirely nude, and celebrated the human body,
it was perfectly natural for the Greeks to associate the male nude form with triumph, glory, and even moral
excellence.[6] The Greek goddess Aphrodite was a deity whom the Greeks preferred to see clothed. In the
mid-fourth century BCE, the sculptor Praxiteles made a nude Aphrodite, called the Knidian, which
established a new tradition for the female nude, having idealized proportions based on mathematical ratios
as were the nude male statues. 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.[7]

Ancient Greek sculpture

Kroisos Kouros (c. 530 BCE) Hermes bearing the infant
Dionysus, by Praxiteles

The Marathon Boy (4th century Hermes, possibly by Lysippos

BCE) bronze statue, possibly
by Praxiteles

So-called Venus Braschi by

Praxiteles, type of the Knidian
Aphrodite
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 as
The Birth of Venus by Sandro
recorded in the Book of Genesis and the damned in Last Judgement Botticelli, c. 1484-1486
scenes anticipating the Sistine Chapel renderings. With these
exceptions, the ideal forms of Greco-Roman nudes became largely
lost, transformed into symbols of shame and sin, weakness and defenselessness.[8] This was true not only in
Western Europe, but also in Byzantine art.[9] Increasingly, Christ was shown largely naked in scenes of his
Passion, especially the Crucifixion,[10] and even when glorified in heaven, to allow him to display the
wounds his sufferings had involved. The Nursing Madonna 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, and in classical contexts such as the Signs of the
Zodiac and illustrations to Ovid. 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 (as in the Hugo van der Goes at left).[11] Male nudes tended to
be slim and slight in figure, probably drawing on apprentices used as models, but were increasingly
accurately observed.

Renaissance

The reinvigoration of classical culture in the Renaissance restored the nude to art. Donatello made two
statues of the Biblical hero David, a symbol for the Republic of Florence: 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,[12] several decades before Michelangelo's massive David (1501–04). Nudes in Michelangelo's
Sistine Chapel ceiling reestablished a tradition of male nudes in depictions of Biblical stories; the subject of
the martyrdom of the near-naked Saint Sebastian had already become highly popular. The monumental
female nude returned to Western art in 1486 with The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli for the Medici
family, who also owned the classical Venus de' Medici, whose pose Botticelli adapted.

The Dresden Venus of Giorgione (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 (Titian, 1538),
the Rokeby Venus (Diego Velázquez, c. 1650), Goya's Nude Maja (c. 1798) and Manet's Olympia (1863).
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. In addition to
adult male and female figures, the classical depiction of Eros became the model for the naked Christ
child.[13]
Raphael 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
(Louvre, c. 1500), which is usually said to be the first nude female figure study, 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 or figure study of a
live model rapidly became an important part of artistic practice and training, and remained so until the 20th
century.

16th Century

Adam and Eve (1507) by The Creation of Adam (c. 1512)

Albrecht Dürer by Michelangelo

Reclining Nymph by Lucas Venus of Urbino (1538) by

Cranach the Elder Titian
 Rebellious Slave (1513) by New Year's Greeting with Three
Michelangelo Witches (1514) by Hans
Baldung

Baroque to Modern

In Baroque 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.[4] 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, who with evident
delight painted women of generous figure and radiant flesh, gave his name to the adjective Rubenesque. In
the later Baroque or Rococo period, a more decorative and playful style emerged, exemplified by François
Boucher's Venus Consoling Love, likely commissioned by Madame Pompadour.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, classical subjects remained popular, along with nudes in
historical paintings. In the later nineteenth century, academic painters continued with classical themes, but
were challenged by the Impressionists. Eduard Manet shocked the public of his time by painting nude
women in contemporary situations in his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) as often compared to Titian and
Giogione, and Olympia (1865) as often compared to the Venus of Urbino by Titian. Gustave Courbet
similarly earned criticism for portraying in his Woman with a Parrot a naked prostitute without vestige of
goddess or nymph. Edgar Degas painted many nudes of women in ordinary circumstances, such as taking a
bath.[14] Auguste Rodin challenged classical canons of idealization in his expressively distorted Adam.[15]
With the invention of photography, artists began using the new medium as a source for paintings, Eugène
Delacroix being one of the first.[4]

Baroque to Modern
The Three Graces (1636–1638) Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654)
by Peter Paul Rubens by Rembrandt

No. 37 of a set of 80 aquatint The Age of Bronze (1877) by

prints created by Francisco Rodin, modeled after a Belgian
Goya in the 1810s depicting the soldier
horrors of war
 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Ninos A La Orilla Del Mar
Large Bathers, 1884-1887 (1903) by Joaquin Sorolla

I Werners Eka (In Werner's

Rowing Boat) (1917) by Anders
Zorn

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. The idealized
Venus was replaced by the woman intimately depicted in private settings, as in the work of Egon Schiele.[4]
The simplified modern forms of Jean Metzinger, Amedeo Modigliani, Gaston Lachaise and Aristide Maillol
recall the original goddesses of fertility more than Greek goddesses.[16] In early abstract paintings, the body
could be fragmented or dismembered, as in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon or his structuralist and
Cubist nudes, but there are also abstracted versions of classical themes, such as Henri Matisse's dancers and
bathers.

Early Twentieth Century

 La danse (1909) by Henri Nu (Nu debout) (1911) by Jean
Matisse Metzinger

Red Nude (1917) by Amedeo Standing Woman (1932) by

Modigliani Gaston Lachaise

In the post-WWII era, Abstract Expressionism 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, 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.[17] Some critics, however, see the Woman series as misogynistic.[18]

Other New York artists of this period retained the figure as their primary subject. Alice Neel painted nudes,
including her own self-portrait, in the same straightforward style as clothed sitters,[19] being primarily
concerned with color and emotional content.[20] Philip Pearlstein 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.[21]

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995)
"I paint people, not because of what
they are like, not exactly in spite of
what they are like, but how they
happen to be."
- Lucien Freud[22]
Lucien Freud was one of a small group of painters which included
Francis Bacon who came to be known as "The School of London";
creating figurative work in the 1970s when it was unfashionable.[23]
However, by the end of his life his works had become icons of the
Post Modern era, depicting the human body without a trace of
idealization, as in his series working with an obese model.[24] One of
Freud's works is entitled "Naked Portrait", which implies a realistic
image of a particular unclothed woman rather than a conventional
nude.[25] 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".[26]
Around 1970, from feminist principles, Sylvia Sleigh painted a
series of works reversing stereotypical artistic themes by featuring
naked men in poses usually associated with women.[27]

Contemporary

The paintings of Jenny Saville 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.[28] Lisa Yuskavage'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".[29] John Currin is another
painter whose work frequently reinterprets historic nudes.[30] Cecily Brown's paintings combine figurative
elements and abstraction in a style reminiscent of de Kooning.[31] Marlene Dumas paints emotionally
challenging images derived from her own snapshots or from photographs found in news magazines.[32]
Dumas says of her paintings of nude figures that "it was not the nude I was looking for, nor the posing
figure, but the erotic conditions of life ... Two 'subjects' confronting each other."[33]

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 often includes images of the human body, and performance art frequently
includes nudity. "Cut Piece" by Yoko Ono was first performed in 1964 (then known as a "happening").
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, Vanessa Beecroft and
Carolee Schneemann use their own nude bodies or other performers in their work.

Media

Drawing

In art, a figure drawing 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.[34]

Printmaking
Japanese prints are one of the few non-western traditions that can be called
nudes, but they are quite different. 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.[35]

Painting

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."[36]

Sculpture

Due to its durability, it is in sculpture that we see the full, nearly unbroken Crayon-style print by Gilles
history of the nude from the Stone Age to the present. Figures, usually of the Demarteau with a nude man
naked female, have been found in the Balkan region dating back to 7,000 after original drawing by
Edmé Bouchardon was
BCE [37] and continue to this day to be generated. In the Indian and
acquired by Academy of
Southeast Asian sculpture tradition nudes were frequently adorned with
Fine Arts in Warsaw as a
bracelets and jewelry that tended to "punctuate their charms and demarcate
teaching material
the different parts of their bodies much as developed musculature does in the
male".[38]

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.[39] Photography suffers from
the problem of being too real,[40][41] and for many years was not accepted by those committed to the
traditional fine arts.[42] However, the work of many photographers has been established as fine artists
including Ruth Bernhard,[43] Imogen Cunningham, Anne Brigman, Edward Weston[44] and Alfred Stieglitz.

New media

In the late twentieth century several new art forms have emerged, including installations, performance, and
video art all of which have been used to create works that include nudity.[45]

Issues

The naked and the nude

While there is no single definition of fine art, there are certain generally accepted features of most
definitions. In the fine arts, the subject is not merely copied from nature, but transformed by the artist into an
aesthetic object, usually without significant utilitarian, commercial (advertising, illustration), or purely
decorative purposes. There is also a judgement of taste; the fine art nude being part of high culture rather
than middle brow or low culture.[46] However, judgements of taste in art are not entirely subjective, but
include criteria of skill and craftsmanship in the creation of objects, communication of complex and non-
trivial messages, and creativity.[47] Some works accepted as high
culture of the past, including much Academic art, are now seen as
imitative or sentimental[48] otherwise known as kitsch.[49][50]

Modern artists have continued to explore classical themes, but also

more abstract representations, and movement away from idealization
to depict people more individually. During most of the twentieth
La maja desnuda (The Nude Maja;
century, the depiction of human beauty was of little interest to
1797) by Francisco de Goya y
modernists, who were concerned instead with the creation of beauty
Lucientes
through formal means.[51] In the contemporary, or Post-modern era,
the nude may be seen as passé by many,[52] however there are
always artists that continue to find inspiration in the human form.[53]

One often cited book on the nude in art history is The Nude: a Study
in Ideal Form by Lord Kenneth Clark, first published in 1956. The
introductory chapter makes (though does not originate) the often-
quoted distinction[54] between the naked body and the nude. Clark
states that to be naked is to be deprived of clothes, and implies
La maja vestida (ca. 1803)
embarrassment and shame, while a nude, as a work of art, has no
such connotations. This separation of the artistic form from the
social and cultural issues remains largely unexamined by classical
art historians.

One of the defining characteristics of the modern era in art is 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.[55] 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 Olympia (1863) by Manet
than looking away. (Goya then painted another version, with
clothes.) Some of the same characteristics were shocking almost 70
years later when Manet exhibited his Olympia, not because of religious issues, but because of its modernity.
Rather than being a timeless Odalisque that could be safely viewed with detachment, Manet's image was of
a prostitute of that time, perhaps referencing the male viewers' own sexual practices.[56]

Art historian and author, Frances Borzello says 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.[57]
Performance art takes the final step by presenting actual naked bodies as a work of art.[58]

Sexuality

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 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.[59] However sexually
explicit works of fine art produced in Europe before the modern era, such as Gustav Courbet's L'Origine du
monde, were not intended for public display.[60][61] The judgement of whether a particular work is artistic or
pornographic is ultimately subjective and has changed through history and from one culture to another.
Some individuals judge any public display of the unclothed body to be unacceptable,[62] while others may
find artistic merit in explicitly sexual images. Public reviews of art may or may not address the issue.[63]

Public reaction versus the art world

The nude, particularly the female body, has always been one of the more obvious subjects of work in
museums. However, in the United States nudity in art is a controversial subject when public funding and
display in certain venues brings the work to the attention of the general public.[64][65] 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 either
ironic or fetishistic, and therefore cutting edge. "Artists who refuse to assault the body with stylishly
perverse psychological or physical deformations are usually dismissed as being hopelessly out of tune with
today's art world."[66] Works that celebrate the human body are likely to be seen as too erotic by one group,
and kitsch by the other. According to Bram Dijkstra, attractive nudes by American artists have been
relegated to storage by museums, with only rare special exhibits or publications in recent decades.
Relatively tame nudes tend to be shown in museums, while works with shock value such as those by Jeff
Koons[67] are shown in cutting-edge galleries. Dijkstra says the art world has devalued simple beauty and
pleasure, although these values are present in art from the past and in many contemporary works.[68]

Explaining nudity in art to students

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.[69] However, the problems that might arise lead many teachers to avoid the subject.[70]

Depictions of youth

In classical works, children were rarely shown except for babies and
putti. Before the era of Freudian psychoanalysis, children were
assumed to have no sexual feelings before puberty, so naked
children were shown as symbols of pure innocence. Boys often
swam nude, and were shown doing so in paintings by John Singer
Sargent, George Bellows, and others. Other images were more
erotic, either symbolically or explicitly.[71][72]

Gender differences A Nude Boy on a Beach (1878) by

John Singer Sargent

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the

work of men; they describe it from their own point of
view, which they confuse with absolute truth.

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Men and women did not receive equal opportunities in nude training during the Renaissance. Female artists
were not allowed access to nude models and could not participate in this part of the arts education. During
this time period the 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 create History Paintings.[73]

Male nude: gods and warriors

Academic art history tends to ignore the sexuality of the male nude,
speaking instead of form and composition.[74]

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 and Lucien Freud painted the modern male nude in the
classic reclining pose, with the genitals prominently displayed. Sylvia Sleigh
painted versions of classic works with the genders reversed. This year Venuses
again...always Venuses!...as
if there really were women
Female nude: the Venus and Odalisques built like that! (1864),
lithograph by Daumier
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 created ca. 360–340 BCE by Praxiteles.[5] The female nude became much more
common in the later Hellenistic period.

Rarely seen during the Middle Ages, the female nude reappeared in Italy in the 15th century. Subsequently,
eroticism became more emphatic in paintings such as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (ca. 1510), which situated
the reclining nude in an idyllic landscape, and Titian's Danaë series (ca. 1553–1556). These works inspired
countless reclining female nudes for centuries afterwards.[5] The annual glut of paintings of idealized nude
women in the 19th-century Paris Salon was satirized by Honoré Daumier in an 1864 lithograph.

In the 19th century the Orientalism 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" painted by Ingres in 1814.[75]

For Lynda Nead, 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.[76] 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.[77]

Feminist reinterpretations

Until the 1960s, art history and criticism rarely reflected anything other than the male point of view. The
feminist art movement 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. In Ways of Seeing, 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 wrote "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
stating the concept of the male gaze, which asserts that all nudes are inherently voyeuristic.[78]

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.[79] It was believed
by Aristotle 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.[79] 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.[79]
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.[80] It is an eroticized image that holds the
heterosexual male desire.
The Barricade (1918), oil on canvas,
In Jill Fields’ article “Frontiers in Feminist Art History”, Fields
by George Bellows. A painting
examines the feminist art movement and how they attempted to
inspired by an incident in August
change the image of the female nude. She considers how the image
1914 in which German soldiers used
of the female nude was created and how the feminist art history Belgian townspeople as human
movement attempted to change the way the image of the female shields.
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's The Origin of the World and François Boucher's
Reclining Girl, women are depicted with open legs, implying that they are to be passive and an object to be
used.[81] 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.[82] 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.[83] 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 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.[80]

Current discussion of the appropriateness of certain artworks have emerged in the context of the Me Too
movement.[84]

Intersectionality

The nude image in art has affected women of color in a different way than it has white women, according to
Charmaine Nelson. 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 of their identities, as
Nelson asserts, creates a “doubly fetishized black female body”.[85] 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, did not have pubic hair. Black
women normally did, and this created their image in an animalistic sexual way.[86] While the white women’s
image became one of innocence and the idealized, black women were continually overtly sexualized.

Social commentary

The nude has also been used to make a powerful social or political statement. An example is The Barricade
(1918) by George Bellows, 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.[87]
See also
Academic art
Artistic freedom
Depictions of nudity
Homosexuality in ancient Greece
Model (art)
Sexuality in ancient Rome
The Helga Pictures
Vagina and vulva in art

Notes
1. "Michelangelo Gallery" (https://www.michelangelo-gallery.com/michelangelo-quotes.aspx).
Retrieved January 7, 2018.
2. Clark, Ch.1 The Naked and the Nude
3. Clark
4. Graves
5. Rodgers, David and Plantzos, Dimitris. "Nude", in Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford
University Press. Web. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
6. Goodson, Aileen. "Nudity in Ancient to Modern Cultures" (https://web.archive.org/web/2010030
6045104/http://www.primitivism.com/nudity.htm). Archived from the original (http://www.primitivi
sm.com/nudity.htm) on March 6, 2010. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
7. Sorabella, Jean (January 2008). "The Nude in Western Art and its Beginnings in Antiquity, In
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History" (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nuba/hd_nuba.htm).
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
8. Clark, pp. 300–309
9. Ryder
10. Clark, pp. 221–226
11. Clark, pp. 307–312
12. Clark, pp. 48–50
13. Sorabella, Jean (January 2008). "The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, In
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History" (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/numr/hd_numr.htm).
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
14. "Degas and the Nude" (http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/degas-and-nude). Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston. Retrieved 10 November 2012.
15. Sorabella, Jean (January 2008). "The Nude in Baroque and Later Art, In Heilbrunn Timeline of
Art History" (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nuba/hd_nuba.htm). New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
16. Borzello, p. 30
17. Scala, Ch 2. "The Influence of Anxiety" by Susan H. Edwards
18. Monaghan, Peter (Jan 2, 2011). "Unveiling the American Nude". The Chronicle of Higher
Education.
19. Leppert, pp. 154–155
20. Borzello, Chapter 2 - The Changing Room: Female Perspectives
21. Borzello, p. 90
22. "Lucian Freud quotes" (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8654734/Lucian-Freud
-quotes.html). The Guardian. July 22, 2011. Retrieved January 7, 2018.
23. RIDING, ALAN (September 25, 1995). "The School of London, Mordantly Messy as Ever" (http
s://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/25/arts/the-school-of-london-mordantly-messy-as-ever.html).
The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-02-16.
24. "Lucien Freud" (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/feb/08/lucian-freud-na
tional-portrait-gallery#/?picture=385691839&index=5). London: The Guardian. 8 February
2012. Retrieved 10 November 2012.
25. "Naked Portrait 1972-3" (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/freud-naked-portrait-t01972). The
Tate Modern. Retrieved 2013-02-17.
26. Grimes, William (Jul 22, 2011). "Lucian Freud, Figurative Painter Who Redefined Portraiture,
Is Dead at 88". The New York Times.
27. Leppert, pp. 221–223
28. "Jenny Saville" (http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jenny_saville.htm). Saatchi Gallery.
Retrieved 10 November 2012.
29. Mullins, p. 38
30. Mullins, p. 168
31. Mullins, p. 35
32. Mullins, p. 44
33. Dumas, M., Bedford, E., South African National Gallery., & Standard Bank Centre Art Gallery.
(2007). Marlene Dumas: Intimate relations. Johannesburg: Jacana Media. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-
77009-381-2
34. Nicolaides
35. Clark, p. 9
36. Scala, p.1
37. Gimbustas, Marija The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974
38. Finn, David, essay by Vicki Goldberg, in Nude Sculpture: 5,000 Years, Harry N. Abrams Ltd.,
New York, 2000. p. 14
39. Dawes, p.6
40. "Naked Before the Camera" (http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/naked-befor
e-the-camera). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 10 November 2012.
41. Scala, p. 4
42. Clark, p. 3
43. Conrad, Donna (2000), "A Conversation with Ruth Bernhard" (http://www.photovisionmagazin
e.com/articles/bernhard.interview.html), Vol. 1 No. 3, PhotoVision
44. "Edward Weston" (https://web.archive.org/web/20121113145451/http://www.edward-weston.co
m/edward_weston_nudes.htm). Archived from the original (http://www.edward-weston.com/ed
ward_weston_nudes.htm) on 13 November 2012. Retrieved 10 November 2012.
45. Daris, Gabriella (March 6, 2018). "Six Dance Shows Stripped Bare: Redefining Nudity on
Stage" (http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1322089/six-dance-shows-stripped-bare-redef
ining-nudity-on-stage). Artinfo.
46. Low Culture should not be confused with the Lowbrow or Graffiti Art Movement, which often
uses nude images from popular culture but attempts to raise them to Fine Art.
47. Dutton, Ch. 3 - What is Art?
48. King, Ross
49. "Theories of Media, Keywords Glossary:kitsch" (http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/kitsch.
htm). The University of Chicago.
50. See also: Avant-Garde and Kitsch
51. Steiner pp. 44, 49–50
52. Steinhart, p. 9
53. "Nude Freud painting in £17m record sale" (http://www.metro.co.uk/news/147546-nude-freud-p
ainting-in-17m-record-sale). Metro. Retrieved 22 October 2012.
54. Nead, p.14; the distinction was already well-known, and is treated as a hackneyed, by Walter
Sickert, in an article of 1910. See The Italian Renaissance Nude, by Jill Burke, p. 16
55. Goya, F., Tomlinson, J. A., Calvo, S. F., Museo del Prado., & National Gallery of Art (U.S.).
(2002). Goya: Images of women. Washington, D.C: National Gallery of Art. p. 228. ISBN 0-
89468-293-8
56. Charles Bernheimer (Summer 1989). "Manet's Olympia: The Figuration of Scandal". Poetics
Today. Duke University Press. 10 (2): 255–277. doi:10.2307/1773024 (https://doi.org/10.230
7%2F1773024). JSTOR 1773024 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1773024).
57. Borzello, Introduction
58. Borzello, Chapter 2 - Body Art: the Journey into Nakedness
59. Clark, pp. 8–9
60. Leppert p. 247
61. Nochlin, Linda (1986). "Courbet's "L'origine du monde": The Origin without an Original".
October. The MIT Press. 37: 76–86. doi:10.2307/778520 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F778520).
JSTOR 778520 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/778520).
62. Smith, Timothy R. & Weil, Martin (April 3, 2011). "National Gallery visitor attacks Gauguin
painting" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/national-gallery-visitor-attacks-gaugui
n-painting-officials-say/2011/04/03/AFoATUXC_story.html). The Washington Post. Retrieved
October 22, 2012.
63. Gopnik, Blake (November 8, 2009). "In Art We Lust" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2009/11/06/AR2009110600041_2.html). The Washington Post. Retrieved
2013-02-23.
64. Nead
65. The Nude in Contemporary Art. The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. 1999.
66. Dijkstra, p. 11
67. Schjeldahl, Peter (June 9, 2008). "Funhouse:A Jeff Koons retrospective" (http://www.newyorke
r.com/arts/critics/artworld/2008/06/09/080609craw_artworld_schjeldahl). The New Yorker.
Retrieved 2013-02-24.
68. Dijkstra, Introduction
69. "Body Language:How to Talk to Students about Nudity in Art" (https://aic-web-cms-uploads.s3.
us-east-2.amazonaws.com/b996b7ec-f502-436d-97ec-90836d0589c1/TX-CR1627.pdf) (PDF).
Art Institute of Chicago. March 18, 2003. Retrieved 2013-02-28.
70. "Teach Art Exchange: Response to Nudity in Art Education" (https://web.archive.org/web/2013
1102024146/http://www.getty.edu/education/teacherartexchange/archive/Jan08/0010.html).
The Getty.edu. January 8, 2008. Archived from the original (http://www.getty.edu/education/tea
cherartexchange/archive/Jan08/0010.html) on November 2, 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-28.
71. Dijkstra, Ch. 5 - Retreat to the Dream
72. Leppert, Ch. 2 - Representing the Young
73. Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art and Power and Other Essays. Thames and Hudson, 1988.
ProQuest. Web. 25 Sep. 2017.
74. Leppert, p. 166
75. "Ingres' La Grand Odalisque" (http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/grand-odalisque.html).
76. Nead, Part I - Theorizing the Female Nude
77. Dijkstra, Ch. 3 - The "New Woman": Fading Flower or Scourge of Nature?
78. Leppert, pp. 9–11
79. Jacobs, Frederika H. “Woman's Capacity to Create: The Unusual Case of Sofonisba
Anguissola”, in Renaissance Quarterly vol. 47, no. 1, 1994, pp. 74–101.
80. McDonald, Helen. Erotic Ambiguities: The female nude in art. Routledge, 2001.
81. Hammer-Tugendhat, Daniela and Zanchi, Michael. “Art, Sexuality, and Gender Construction”,
in Art in Translation, vol. 4, no. 3, 2012, pp. 361-382.
82. Maes, Hans; Levinson, Jerrold, eds. (2015-07-02). Art and pornography : philosophical
essays. ISBN 9780198744085. OCLC 965117928 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/965117928).
83. Fields, Jill. “Frontiers in Feminist Art History”, in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol.
33, no. 2, June 2012, pp, 1-21.
84. Priscilla Frank (December 14, 2017). "In The #MeToo Era, Do These Paintings Still Belong In
A Museum?" (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/museums-me-too-sexual-harassment-art_n_5a2
ae382e4b0a290f0507176). The Huffington Post. Retrieved June 23, 2019.
85. Nelson, pp. 98
86. Nelson, Charmaine. "Coloured Nude: Fetishization, Disguise, Dichotomy", in Racar22.1-2
(1995): 97-107. ProQuest. Web. 17 Oct. 2017.
87. Dijkstra, pp. 246–247

References

Books
Berry, William A. (1977). Drawing the Human Form: A Guide to Drawing from Life. New York:
Van Nortrand Reinhold Co. ISBN 0-442-20717-4.
Borzello, Frances (2012). The Naked Nude. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc. ISBN 978-0-
500-23892-9.
Burke, Jill, The Italian Renaissance Nude (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bspfDwAAQB
AJ&printsec=frontcover), 2018, Yale University Press, ISBN 0300201567, 9780300201567
Clark, Kenneth (1956). The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (https://archive.org/details/nudestudyi
nideal00clar). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01788-3.
Dawes, Richard, ed. (1984). John Hedgecoe's Nude Phtotgraphy. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Dijkstra, Bram (2010). Naked : The Nude in America. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-
3366-5.
Dutton, Denis (2009). The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (https://archive.
org/details/artinstinctbeaut00dutt). New York: Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 978-1-59691-401-8.
Gill, Michael (1989). Image of the Body. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-26072-5.
Hausenstein, Wilhelm (1913). Der nackte Mensch der Kunst aller Zeiten und Volker. Munich:
R. Riper & Co.
Hughes, Robert (1997). Lucian Freud Paintings. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27535-1.
Jacobs, Ted Seth (1986). Drawing with an Open Mind. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications.
ISBN 0-8230-1464-9.
King, Ross (2007). The Judgement of Paris:The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World
Impressionism. PIML. ISBN 978-1-84413-407-6.
Leppert, Richard (2007). The Nude: The Cultural Rhetoric of the Body in the Art of Western
Modernity. Cambridge: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-4350-1.
LeValley, Paul (2016). Art Follows Nature: A Worldwide History of the Nude. Berkeley: Edition
One Books. ISBN 978-0-9992697-0-5. OCLC 965382008 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/96538
2008).
McDonald, Helen. Erotic Ambiguities: The female nude in art. Routledge, 2001.
 Mullins, Charlotte (2006). Painting People: Figure Painting Today. New York: D.A.P. ISBN 978-
1-933045-38-2
Nead, Lynda (1992). The Female Nude. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02677-6.
Nicolaides, Kimon (1975). The Natural Way to Draw. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. ISBN 0-
395-20548-4.
Postle, M. & Vaughn, W. (1999). The Artist's Model: from Etty to Spencer. London: Merrell
Holberton. ISBN 1-85894-084-2.
Rosenblum, Robert (2003). John Currin. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-9188-8.
Saunders, Gill (1989). The Nude: A New Perspective. Rugby, Warwickshire, England: Jolly &
Barber, Ltd. ISBN 0-06-438508-6.
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1622-0.
Steiner, Wendy (2001). Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-century Art. The
Free Press. ISBN 0-684-85781-2.
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edartwhyw00stei). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4184-8.
Walters, Margaret (1978). The Nude Male: A New Perspective (https://archive.org/details/nude
malenewpersp00walt). New York: Paddington Press. ISBN 0-448-23168-9.

Journals
Fields, Jill. “Frontiers in Feminist Art History”, in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol.
33, no. 2, June 2012, pp, 1-21.
Hammer-Tugendhat, Daniela and Zanchi, Michael. “Art, Sexuality, and Gender Construction”,
in Art in Translation, vol. 4, no. 3, 2012, pp. 361–382.
Jacobs, Frederika H. “Woman's Capacity to Create: The Unusual Case of Sofonisba
Anguissola”, in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, 1994, pp. 74–101.
Larissa Bonfante (Oct 1989). "Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art". American Journal of
Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America. 93 (4): 543–570. doi:10.2307/505328 (http
s://doi.org/10.2307%2F505328). JSTOR 505328 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/505328).
Nelson, Charmaine. "Coloured Nude: Fetishization, Disguise, Dichotomy", in Racar22.1-2
(1995): 97-107 ProQuest. Web. 17 Oct. 2017.

Web
Graves, Ellen (2003). "The Nude in Art - a Brief History" (https://web.archive.org/web/2012111
4234121/http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/djc/lifestudy/graves/). University of
Dundee. Archived from the original (http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/djc/lifestudy/
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Postiglione, Corey. "The Postmodern Nude" (https://web.archive.org/web/20121110182140/htt
p://www.bradcoopergallery.com/Exhibitions/2002/Nude%20in%20the%20Postmodern/The%20
Postmodern%20Nude.html). Archived from the original (http://www.bradcoopergallery.com/Exh
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Ryder, Edmund C (January 2008). "Nudity and Classical Themes in Byzantine Art, In
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Further reading
 Falcon, Felix Lance (2006). Gay Art: a Historic Collection [and 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. ISBN 1-
55152-205-5
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. ISBN 2-89000-066-4

External links
"Francis Bacon" (http://www.francis-bacon.com/paintings/?c=74-75). Estate of Francis Bacon.
Retrieved 10 November 2012.
Leopold Museum, Austria -Nude Men (http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/46/nude-
men)

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