.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venus_de_Lespugue_(replica).jpg&usg=__Yr-Ds-MjakapFL7C_O77TigvOgk=&h=640&w=640&sz=114&hl=en&start=38&tbnid=wjZ4pR1tZIDCfM:&tbnh=137&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpaleolithic%2Bvenus%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20 "Venus_de_Lespugue_(replica)")
"Venus of Lespugue", c. 23,000 BCE
Why is the naked human body such an enduring focus of art? Of course the image of the human form excites our mirror neurons, and can express all aspects of the human experience, but it could usually do that just as well in clothes. Art students study nude models in order to see the structure and movement of the body unobstructed, but the nude figure in art clearly has an importance beyond its function in learning anatomy. The naked body is an object of desire, but the nude in art can evoke a far more complex response than can pornographic imagery.
The nude evokes many contradictory things. Historically, the nude figure has been seen as representing innocence and purity as well as sensuality and sexuality. The artistic nude can be Apollonian, showing the harmonies of sacred geometry as embodied in the human form, or it can be Dionysian, expressing unconstrained energy or emotion. Power and weakness, pride and shame, pleasure and pain: all of these are the experiences of being in the flesh, and all can be shown in the image of the flesh.
- William Blake, “Glad Day”, 1794
In the formal experimentation of the moderns, the nude as a subject maintained a connection to artistic conventions and provided a vital link of identification, humanizing abstraction.
Matisse, "Blue Nude", 1952
In contemporary art since Bacon, the nude is often a mirror reflecting the darkest aspects of society through fragmentation, commodification, dehumanization, dissociation and repulsion.
Jenny Saville, "Hybrid", 1997
For the practicing artist, scopophilia, the erotics of seeing, can be an important motivating factor, stimulating the considerable focus of energy that is required in producing art. Despite the popular image of the artist as lubricious libertine, no real art is produced unless the erotic impulse is sublimated into the creative drive. Thus the artist of the nude may also represent both sensuality and chastity through her or his practice.
Boucher, "Miss O'Murphy", 1752
Anthropologist Ian Gilligan, who studies the prehistory of clothing, says “Clothing is the thing that separates us from nature, literally and symbolically . . . It actually affects us in the way we perceive ourselves and our environment.” Clothing is a barrier between us and the world, and between us and our own physical selves, with “implications for how we think about ourselves in relation to other things, but also in how our bodies interact with the world. . . We’ve fabricated a whole artificial environment, which is a kind of externalised clothing. Many aspects of modern existence insulate us from the outside natural world.”
This separation from Nature has become an unhealed split, a division of the self expressed in the root myths of human culture. In the story of Adam and Eve we are told that the initial manifestation of self-awareness is shame at nakedness, and God’s punishment for it is suffering and death. Thus our very bodies are seen as the source of evil and sin and must be hidden.
Masaccio, "Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden", 1423
Observing death we see that the living person or soul becomes separated from the body, and so we imagine that these things are inherently separate, forced together by a cruel deity to test us. The mind or spirit is heavenly, angelic and pure, while the physical body binds us to death, destructive urges and suffering.
The body is identified with the Earth, whose odorous solidity it shares. Body and Nature, and all the living things of Earth, are then reduced to objects, to be tamed and exploited without mercy for the advancement of the supposedly pure spirit. The Earth has suffered from this division within Man, but as creatures of Earth we do not escape the pain.
Michelangelo, "Awakening Slave", 1519
The West or the Abrahamic religions hold no monopoly on this hatred of the body. The way of Yoga would seem opposed to the split, a practice of fully embodied spirituality, and yet the Yogasutras, the most revered ancient source of Yoga philosophy, clearly state the aim of the practice of Yoga is to “transcend the qualities of nature”, to purify ourselves of all physical desires and to “disentangle ourselves from involvement in even the subtlest manifestations of the phenomenal world,” as quoted from B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Scientific humanists might rail against religious ideas of the soul or the afterlife, but still long to upload the mind into a computer as a way of escaping the fallibility and mortality of the flesh. (As long as computers don’t last even one tenth as long as the human body, this would hardly seem to solve the problem!)
For the fundamentalists in all cultures that fear individual freedom and the open mind, the image of the human body is a threat to order, as it reminds people of pure animal joy. The free body terrifies authoritarians. If the people experience freedom at the level of the body, there will be no controlling them! Thus “modesty” must be strictly enforced.
Gustav Vigeland, figure from Vigeland Park, Oslo, c. 1930, photo by Simon Davey
The image of the nude reminds us that we are our bodies, that sexuality and appetites and mortality are our very nature, and that the beauty of our animality cannot be separated from the beauty of our spirituality.
Perhaps death separates body and spirit, but if we separate them in life we are like a house divided against itself, that cannot stand. We cannot, like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, deny and conceal the part of us that decays. I believe mind and matter are two surfaces of a single membrane, and neither can exist in isolation from the other.
Fred Hatt, "Pregnant Couple", 2008
For me, the nude is an image of unity, of spirit incarnate and matter imbued with life. A work of art is in itself an attempt to put living energy into a physical form, so the subject matter perfectly fits the activity. The nude hides neither its eroticism nor its mortality, but shows the human as a cell of the body of Earth. The nude is a talisman to heal the ancient division afflicting humanity, and an assertion of freedom and joy against fundamentalism and fear.
I would like to hear readers’ responses to this post. Please comment.
Fair use claimed for all photos of artwork. Click on images for links to sources.
Share
17 Comments
I really enjoyed the essay but I especially like your Pregnant Couple. The composition, the poses, the inward gazes all make palpable the active feeling of the new life growing in her womb.
Thanks, Christopher. My favorite section of that one is the interlocked hands.
I agree that the nude evokes a complex psychic response in both artist and viewer, but the shear visceral response, the entertainment value of the nude as a sexual object, and the financial motivation to create nudes to entertain prospective or actual patrons, is often underestimated, in my opinion.
“The Painted Witch” by Edwin Mullins, is a fascinating discussion of an art historian’s sudden realization of the pornographic nature of depictions of women in great works of art. He also discusses artists such as Rembrandt and Lautrec whose works have presented women in a more complex manner. Very fun book to read.
I think there’s a lot of true insight in the critiques of the objectifying “male gaze”, but in recent decades the gender balance in the arts has shifted quite a bit. Does that change things?
I would say that close to half the artists attending life drawing sessions at Minerva Durham’s Spring Studio, where I am one of the monitors, are female. I don’t see a major difference in how female vs. male artists depict the body.
I have been struck that many of the biggest fans of “pornographic” or female-objectifying genres like the Victorian nude paintings or the mid-20th-century pin-up and burlesque aesthetic are women. And feminist scholars see the highly sexualized female images of stone age art as representing a lost culture of female power and respect.
The cultures of our time that are most suppressive of women’s rights are also the strictest about prohibiting display of the female body.
Also, throughout most of the history of Western art, the male nude is far more prevalent than the female nude. That balance didn’t really start to shift until the 19th century. Of course the male nude is also often effectively erotica, even (especially?) in religious-themed works.
Taking the illustrations of this post as examples, does anyone find any of them to be pornographic? If so, how do you define that term?
I guess pornographic is a pretty loaded word. When I wrote that many nudes in art are pornographic, I simply meant that in many cases they are first and foremost a form of entertainment, and didn’t necessarily mean it in a negative sense. I do have a negative response to violent or prurient images (which also very common in many great works of art), but I think that both men and women take pleasure in images of nudes created primarily to give pleasure, whether they depictions of women or men.
I agree that this entertainment factor is most visible in works of the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern aesthetics have changed the depiction of the nude in art. The sheer sensuality of the Boucher painting in your post (which seems to me to be primarily eye candy) has been replaced by abstractions and images that do not focus on the beauty of the nude.
I wish I had a better word than pornographic for what I’m trying to express. Suggestions?
“Erotic” should do for what you’re trying to say. The Boucher painting definitely has an erotic quality. It also has great craft and formal qualities, but it’s casual, spontaneous and playful.
I think the pleasure factor has always been a part of the appeal of nudes. In the middle ages when often the only patron of the arts was the church, bible stories and religious themes that allowed for the depiction of nudes were far more popular as subjects than might have been warranted by their theological significance. When the renaissance came along and artists discovered how important the nude figure was in the culture of the Ancients, there was no stopping them from then on.
Just chiming in on the semantics issue here, I’d say “erotic” is probably the more apt term than “pornographic”. To me, “pornographic” carries an element of exploitation, and that relegates the nudity to something debased and undeveloped. “Eroticism”, in contrast, is organic and liberating.
Of all the famous artistic nudes, I can’t think of any offhand that would be considered pornographic by my definition. The agreed-upon standards for “great art” would not approve a gratuitous “nude for nude’s sake” with no narrative or deeper purpose attached. Even Manet’s “Olympia”, which caused a huge scandal at the time, is, to me, not pornographic in that she is clearly a woman in charge of her own sexuality. She is actually quite intimidating!
As you discussed in such fascinating depth, Fred, nudity in art is expected to be ABOUT something: fertility, spirituality, purity, or simply beauty. But I agree with Lolarusa about the Boucher. That pose, in my opinion, is not terribly appealing and the subject comes across as submissive and acquiescent. Such a subject does not make for a compelling work of art (unless they are in the context of a narrative, mythological storyline, etc).
I think most people can discern between a nude that screams sex and only sex, and a nude that embodies a more meaningful intention on the part of the artist. Again, I’m trying to think of a famous respected work of nude art that is purely salacious. So far I can’t come up with any. Maybe Courbet?
A lot of contemporary art makes use of blatantly pornographic imagery. When an artist like John Currin does that, it’s probably actually in reaction to the idea that the nude in art is really just porn under all the pretensions. A lot of the contemporary pornography-based artwork is quite anti-erotic in its effect. I think it reflects attitudes in contemporary society that are profoundly alienated from the body, in which sexuality is so commodified it can no longer be a natural innocent experience.
I included the Boucher as an example of a “sex-object” image. There’s no deeper meaning there. I find it beautifully realized for what it is, but I won’t go on trying to defend that one picture.
Eroticism is a natural and important aspect of the nude in art, but I think the fact that many people can’t see a naked body without sex being the first thing on their mind is a symptom of our dissociation from our own animal natures, and from Nature in general.
Perhaps I should say I am speaking only for myself, but I see the nude in art as representing the human being seen as an animal – as an Earthly creature. Depending on how it is treated, this image can express our separation from nature, or it can seek to heal that separation. When the theme involves eroticism, it can be objectifying and exploitive, or it can express natural sexual energy as an aspect of wholeness restored. That was a big theme for William Blake, who made the second image in the post.
Here’s a view on the significance of the Nude that is quite different from my own. This is from a classic of art historical writing, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, by Kenneth Clark, 1956. It’s a good read.
“Modern art shows even more explicitly than the art of the past that the nude does not simply represent the body, but relates it, by analogy, to all structures that have become part of our imaginative experience. The Greeks related it to their geometry. Twentieth-century man, with his vastly extended experience of physical life, and his more elaborate patterns of mathematical symbols, must have at the back of his mind analogies of far greater complexity. But he has not abandoned the effort to express them visibly as part of himself. The Greeks perfected the nude in order that man might feel like a god, and in a sense this is still its function, for although we no longer suppose that God is like a beautiful man, we still feel close to divinity in those flashes of self-identification when, through our own bodies, we seem to be aware of a universal order.”
That’s the last paragraph of the book. One of the epigraphs at the beginning is:
“For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.” – Spenser, Hymne in Honour of Beautie, 1596
I think that there is a pure pleasure principle to the nude that can be separate from sexuality per se. The Boucher, for example, depicts youthful beauty that viewers react to instinctively even if it doesn’t provoke an erotic response.
Claudia, I can think of many great nudes that seem to me to be primarily created for their entertainment value. I believe Reubens’ nudes fall into this category, and they’re considered great works of art by many. The Death of Sardanapalus and other works by Delacroix I would categorize as pornographic, as well as being masterfully realized and traditionally considered a great works of art.
What I’m trying to articulate (rather imperfectly) is that in many discussions of representative art, too little attention is paid to the content of the picture – what it is a picture of. A still life of luscious fruit makes my mouth water, a road leading into an expansive landscape makes me feel freedom and a desire to move, and a beautiful nude evokes a similar instinctive, sensual response.
Lolarusa, I agree with you about the “pure pleasure principle” response. However, I think it’s confusing to use the term “pornographic” for something like the Delacroix. It’s certainly sensationalist and erotic and violent and plays on exotic orientalist stereotypes. But I think for most people today the word “pornographic” implies something that is sexually explicit in a single-minded way, with no real purpose other than to stimulate someone sexually. In recent decades “pornography” has become a very specifically marketed and easily recognizable genre in images, moving pictures, and writing, and the term has lost its broader connotations.
By the way, I looked into the story behind the Boucher painting. It depicts Marie-Louise O’Murphy, a mistress of King Louis XV of France, and apparently she was only fourteen when she posed for this picture. So maybe it’s not only porn, but child porn! Now I’m feeling a bit queasy.
This post reinforces my exploration of self-acceptance/trust, empowerment, liberation, and healing through a more open expression of sensuality in specific contexts. To be comfortable in ones nudity is to be comfortable with oneself, in general. This is a revelation and a healing for those of us who have felt shame and have self-censored for our entire lives, despite a nagging sense that we are beautiful creatures in the end.
I agree with Claudia on the use of the word “pornographic”; it implies some form of dehumanization of the subject, whereas “erotic” depictions imply that the subject is a full human being with will and desire of his/her own.
Shame about the body is a complex phenomenon. It can include the internalization of feelings arising from being seen, including being judged for our imperfections or being subjected to a sexually predatory gaze. But it also arises from cultural mores that say we should deny or even despise our animal nature. In my artwork, I am striving to transcend the division, to show bodies that are entirely physical and entirely spiritual, to say that physical and spiritual are one and the same.
If you would like to continue this discussion while teaching in Hawaii, check out the web site and contact me. Aloha RA
I love your art. It is your way of expressing yourself I think. I express myself in a whole differnent way. I feel 100% uncomfortable with nudity. I would not paint a nude person and if I would all the private parts would not show. It’s not that I am uncomfortable with my body but because of the respect that I feel for my father. He is uncomfortable with it and makes me feel it as well. Its hard for me to even talk about anything that has to do with the nude body or sex. Then again its just me. But it definitly works for you.
Thanks for your comment, Cristina. Different people and different cultures have very different attitudes about displaying the body and about sexuality. Some religions go so far as to ban all figurative images. In Germany, people sunbathe nude in urban public parks. I generally respect cultural differences, and I’m not trying to convert people to nudism. To me, the body is a creation of great beauty, and appreciating it is a way of experiencing the beauty of nature within ourselves. I am glad you are able to appreciate my work, even if it makes you a bit uncomfortable.
Post a Comment