The nude figure
is mainly 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. In
one sense, a nude is a work of fine art that has as its primary subject the
unclothed human body, 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.
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 judgment of
taste; the fine art nude being part of high culture rather than middle brow or low culture. However, judgments 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.
Some works accepted as high culture of the past, including much Academic art,
are now seen as imitative or sentimental otherwise
known as kitsch.
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 century, the depiction of human
beauty was of little interest to modernists, who were concerned instead with
the creation of beauty through formal means. In
the contemporary, or Post-modern era, the nude may be seen as passé by
many, however there are always
artists that continue to find inspiration in the human form.
Naked female figures called Venus figurines are found in very early prehistoric art, and in
historical times, similar images represent fertility deities. 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.
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
works of secular art. Completely unclothed figures are rare in medieval art,
the notable exceptions being Adam and Eve and the damned in Last Judgment scenes, and the ideal forms of Greco-Roman nudes are
completely lost, transformed into symbols of shame and sin, weakness and
defenselessness. This was true
not only in Western Europe, but also in Byzantine art. Increasingly, Christ was
shown largely naked in scenes of his Passion, especially the Crucifixion, 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, well as the infant Jesus, whose penis was sometimes
emphasized for theological
reasons, are other exceptions with elements of nudity in medieval religious
art.
In Baroque art, the continuing fascination with
classical antiquity influenced artists to renew 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,
who with evident delight painted women of generous figure and radiant flesh,
gave his name to the adjective "rubenesque".
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) and Olympia (1865), and Gustave Courbet was
criticized 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 in taking a bath. With the invention of photography and
the decline of Victorian prudishness,
there was a general acceptance of artistic nudity except in
Fundamentalist Christianity.
*
Famous Nude Sculptures
Michelangelo's David
Aphrodite
Apollo Belvedere
Cupid
*
Famous Nude Paintings
Francisco de Goya's The Naked Maja
Adam and Eve
Vittorio Carelli's Victory
Falerio's Moonlit Beauties
Michelangelo's Creation of Adam
Rembrandt's Bathsheba
William Bougueroau's Bilbis
George Wesley Bellows' The Baracade
*
Nude Photography
Nude Man Standing
Alfred Cheney Johnston's Dorothy Flood with Mirror
Robert Mapplethorpe's Dennis with Flowers
Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe
Naturalist Male Sitting on the Beach
Untitled
Untitled
Sonia and Tracy
Nude Man Sitting
Stripes
Bruce Weber's The Carlson Twins
Male Nude Pose
