ART 100
The Genre of the Nude
Discussion Summary Notes
due immediately after class on Moodle
The Nude in Art:
Prehistoric Art
• The history of the nude in art can be traced back to
around 30-25,000 BC. This is the date of the tiny
statuette, probably designed to be held in the hand,
popularly called the Willendorf Venus.
• She was almost certainly a fertility symbol of some
kind. Indian temple art, some dating from at least the
1st century BC, often depicts voluptuous female
nudes. Again, these erotic figures had a serious
religious function, representing various manifestations
of fertility deities.
The Nude in Art: Ancient
Greek Art
• With the emergence of the male nude in Greek art,
however, we are dealing with a rather different
phenomenon, a figure of ideal proportions used
both as a way of memorializing real people and as
a portrayal of Gods and godlike mythical heroes -
the ideal heroic nude. Both male Kouroi and
female Korai statues exist in Greece from c.625
BC. These were funerary or votive statues, and the
male ones were nude, whereas the female ones,
obviously based on male templates, were clothed,
clearly not deploying life models in their making.
The Nude in Art: Ancient Greek Art
• Historically, with a few exceptions, the nude is mainly a phenomenon of Western art.
• The nude male and the nude female are treated quite differently and have different roles
to play.
• The male nude body in Greek sculpture was used both for portrayals of ideal heroes – gods and idealized
portraits of real heroes, notably the champions at the Olympic games. Around the 4th century BC, sculptors
began depicting nude females, notably the goddess of love, Aphrodite. But it remained improper for female
portraits to depict nudity. More generally, a double standard where male and female nudity was concerned,
persisted through the period of Roman sculpture and, indeed, right up to modern times, though its terms of
reference frequently changed.
The Nude in Art:
Antiquity
• After the rise of Christianity, portrayal of nudes in the
West decreased drastically. Virtually the only
permissible nudity for centuries, in fact, was in religious
art, with painted and sculpted depictions of Adam and
Eve (though they were often discreetly draped) and in
some Last Judgment scenes. Nudity was used in such art
as a signifier of shame, but there is some evidence that
figures such as the naked damned in hell, for instance,
could also evoke humor. These figures could therefore
function as amusing footnotes, comic relief as it were - a
far cry from the open and frequent display of perfect
nude bodies in ancient Greece for the delectation of
viewers.
LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER, ADAM AND EVE,
1526.
The Nude in Art:
Antiquity
• With the rediscovery of classical antiquity starting in the 13th century in
Italy, nudity began once again to become a respectable and indeed, a
major theme in the visual arts.
• In the 15th century, drawing from life became part of workshop practice
(though women were not used as models - as in the case of the Korai,
women depicted in art were modified males), and, as the 16th century
dawned, artists such as Leonardo became seriously interested in
anatomy. But now, and indeed for several centuries thereafter in Italy,
the idealized nude was still the sought-after norm, used mainly for
depicting grand historical scenes, both mythological and religious, with
connotations of heroism and virtue.
• Michelangelo's acclaimed sculpted and painted nudes were adjudged the
highest achievement in this sphere. They were perfected shapes rather
than naturalistic, and overwhelmingly male, with his female figures
again being clearly modified male templates. MICHELANGELO, NIGHT,1526–1531
The Nude in Art:
Renaissance
• Italian artists, such as Titian, began frequently depicting
female nudes in the 16th century, sometimes using them
as an evocation of a lost Golden Age, in scenes other
than narrative history paintings, where landscape came
to play a much more prominent role than in previous
paintings.
• It was at this time that the first Art Academies began to
be founded in Italy. It is not clear whether female
models were used in these academies, however, or in the
TITIAN, VENUS OF URBINO, 1534
workshops which were still deployed by such artists as
Titian, though male models had been used since quite
early on.
The Nude in Art: Baroque
• With the 17th century, a somewhat more naturalistic depiction of the nude started to be
seen, in such Baroque paintings as Artemisia Gentileschi's Susanna and the Elders (1),
or the art of Caravaggio - here, sensual male nudity comes to the fore, in such paintings
as Love Victorious (2).
• In sculpture, Bernini created highly dramatic nude works such as his David (3). The
northern artist Rubens (The Three Graces, 4), however, was perhaps the pre-eminent
artist of the nude female in the 17th century. His nudes, though highly sensual, are very
naturalistic - and abundantly endowed! - than their still quite idealized Italian
counterparts.
1 3
2
The Nude in Art:
Rococo
• In the 18th century, the nude began to be depicted
in more frivolous surroundings by Rococo artists
such as Boucher, favored artist of Madame de
Pompadour, Louis XV's mistress. His Reclining
Nude is, in fact, thought to be a portrait of another
royal mistress.
• It seems clear that these painters did routinely now
use female models for their female nudes, but the
great Academies such as the French Académie
Royale did not use female models as much as
males until later, in the 19th century.
BOUCHER, STUDY OF A RECLINING NUDE, 1732-
1735
1
The Nude in Art:
Realism
• As the 19th century progressed and French painting came
into ascendancy, the female nude became pre-eminent in
French art also, both in Academic painting and sculpture
and in such rebellious works as that of Courbet (Nude with
Flowering Branch, 1), whose realistically heavy-hipped
females revolted viewers attuned to the idealized,
airbrushed nudes of Academic painting.
• With Manet's infamous Olympia (2), the deliberate use of
nudity to shock rather than to idealize, begins to come into
its own. Here, a recognizable portrait of a famous model,
Victorine Meurent, is rendered in a pose deliberately
evocative of Titian's Venus of Urbino, but the model looks
out defiantly at the viewers.
2
1
The Nude in Art:
Impressionism &
Post-Impressionism
• As the 19th century continued and the Impressionists
came into their own, the female nude continued to be
very popular. Renoir's nudes (Nude on a Couch, 1), with
their glowing, satiny sensuousness, in fact seem to
revive the spirit of Rubens, but they are depicted in the 2
settings of modern life so beloved by the Impressionists,
rather than as figures in mythological stories.
• Some of the Post-Impressionists, however, such as
Matisse in his Joie de Vivre, (2) tried to unite a revival
of classicizing themes as a setting for their nudes, with
the use of new techniques, non-representational color,
etc.
The Nude in Art:
Proto-Cubism and
Modern Art
• With Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) we
see again a deliberate subversion of the classical
idealizing tradition of the female nude. He depicts
four prostitutes, drawn in near-Cubist,
unnaturalistic outlines, in provocative poses and
wearing the faces of ancient Iberian sculpture and
grotesque African masks, framed with a deadpan
classicizing swag of drapery.
The Nude in Art:
Contemporary Art
• In contemporary art, with our modern
knowledge from Freudian psychology of
submerged sexual urges just beneath the
surface of human life, depictions of nudity
seem more and more often to be deliberately
obscuring the fine line between art and
pornography. Egon Schiele's drawings often
inhabit this territory.
• Acceptable vs. pornographic?
Naked vs. Nude?
Many different statues, paintings and drawings exhibit the human being in its rawest form.
Unclothed. Being naked or being nude. Nudity and nakedness may seem like the same
thing, but they can have very different meanings and looks.
So what's the difference?
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Episode 2
• “To be naked is to be oneself, to be nude, is to be seen naked by others, and yet not
recognized for oneself.”
• “A nude has to be seen as an object in order to be a nude.”
• “Nude implies an awareness to be seen by a spectator; they’re not naked as they are,
they’re naked as you see them.”
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Episode 2
• What is the role of spectator?
• Why is the woman painted often as passive?
• Idealized paintings – are they human? Are they relatable?
Homework
Note: Start reading Kafka, The Metamorphosis, as it is a longer text that must be read before Thursday,
Feb. 17th.
