Emilia Clarke has been roundly mocked for hating doing nude scenes for Game of Thrones. Yet, many men still think they have a “right” to see women naked in art.
In early-sixteenth-century Strasbourg, where 5,000 witches were burned, Baldung Grien exacerbated this misogynist climate with his paintings of nude women. We examine the history of this tradition and its implications for today’s society.
Origins
Nude women have been a recurring theme in the plastic arts since antiquity. In art history, they’ve often walked the razor’s edge between artistic representation and obscenity. Whether a female figure is sculpted in bronze or splattered across a canvas, her depiction can be both provocative and inspiring.
The earliest nude figures are thought to represent fertility deities such as the Near Eastern Ishtar and the Greek Aphrodite, who was often depicted in idealized and perfect form. These types of images were common in prehistoric art, and the first known nude statue was created around 28,000 BCE.
In the Middle Ages, Christian attitudes cast doubt on the value of the human body and chastity, discouraging depictions of nakedness except in religious art such as the Book of Genesis’ Adam and Eve and Last Judgment scenes. The rediscovery of Greco-Roman culture during the Renaissance brought nude women back into the forefront of creativity in fine art painting and sculpture. Master painters such as Botticelli (Birth of Venus, 1484), Titian (Venus of Urbino, 1538), Giorgione (Sleeping Venus, 1510) and Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto (Susanna and the Elders, 1556) sought to capture the full beauty of the female figure.
For artists, the female nude offered a means to circumvent Christian moral restrictions and promote ideas of sexual liberation. It could encourage erotic paintings and prints that celebrated seduction, the world of dreams, the power of female beauty and even same-sex desire. These works sometimes pushed the boundaries of censorship, with many prints confiscated by the church and destroyed.
The emergence of modern scientific methods also led to the development of new representations of the human body. Artists such as Albrecht Durer and Hans Baldung used dissection and models to learn about anatomy, developing a precise understanding of the structure of the human skeleton along with the placement and character of muscle. These methods allowed artists to create more convincing figural compositions, making them a standard element of artistic training. This practice was further expanded by the Impressionist movement, which emphasized the expressive qualities of color and sought to capture realist details.
Meanings
The nude female figure is often more than a subject of painting or sculpture. In some cases it is a vehicle for the exploration of complex ideas or narratives. Many famous nude paintings have symbolic interpretations that go beyond depiction of the physical body, revealing deeper aspects of femininity and sexuality. For example, the classic renaissance painting The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli evokes themes of love, beauty, and fertility. Moreover, the artist’s choice of placing the goddess in an everyday setting rather than in a mythological space is innovative and challenges the convention that depicting a naked woman was provocative.
Similarly, Edouard Manet’s painting Olympia challenges the academic norms of his time by depicting a female prostitute rather than a classical nymph or goddess. In doing so, Manet reveals the complexity and power of the female form while simultaneously demonstrating the ability of art to transcend its purely decorative function.
In the humanist culture that surrounded the Renaissance, the nude female body provided an opportunity to explore erotic impulses condemned by the Church. Nevertheless, artists seized upon the nude as an opportunity to create a new kind of painting that explored themes such as seduction and the world of dreams.
Even today, the nude female figure remains a powerful symbol of the body as object of desire and commodification. The female figure continues to be a powerful means of exploring repulsion, fragmentation, dehumanization, and disassociation. In a similar vein, the art of Bacon has frequently explored the darkest aspects of our human nature through depictions of eroticism and sexual violence.
In the modern era, the role of nude images in the internet has been controversial. The first Web browser, Mosaic, included an image gallery that displayed nude women and men. This caused a controversy that led to attempts to regulate the internet and its use of nude images. It also helped to propel the growth of online censorship and the rise of social media platforms that are designed to filter content based on its sensitivity.
Representation
The nude female body is an extremely complex and fascinating subject, and it has been depicted by artists throughout the centuries. These depictions have been often objectifying and at other times empowering. However, women as artists have brought a different frame of reference to this subject, and as such their work is sometimes more complex and revealing.
During the Renaissance, the continuing fascination with classical antiquity led many artists to renew and expand their approach to the female form. Painters such as Sandro Botticelli used the figure of Venus to highlight ideal beauty, while others, like Peter Paul Rubens, painted more naturalistic and less-idealized depictions and worked from live models. These more contemporary interpretations were often erotic, and a few explicitly co-opted feminist discourses of liberation.
Nude images also proliferated in the pages of mass-market, weekly and monthly women’s magazines during the 1960s and 1970s. These pictures adorned advertisements for diverse products including underwear, tights, bath foams and deodorants, slimming aids, bust developers and tanning oils. The women portrayed in these images were all objects of desire, but they were framed differently: as clean and hygienic; “natural”, liberated and free; dreamy, romantic and sensual; glamorous and confident.
In these representations, the body was not seen as a taboo or forbidden subject, and a voyeuristic attitude toward women was prevalent. This attitude was challenged, however, as a result of changing social mores. The nude female body was also a potent symbol of the changing power of women.
Today, artists are still exploring the human body and its possibilities in their art. Modern nudes still feature female bodies, but they are more likely to be ambiguous and suggestive rather than explicit and erotic. This trend is largely due to the increasing acceptance of gender fluidity and fluidity of sexual desire, which are a part of a more generalized movement to challenge traditional views of human sexuality.
Other new forms of art have included nude imagery, such as installation and performance art. For example, in the 1960s, Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ featured her allowing audience members to cut at her clothing until she was almost naked. Other artists, such as Carolee Schneemann, Vanessa Beecroft and Marina Abramovic use their own or other women’s nakedness in their work.
Objectification
For many centuries, the female nude was a prevalent subject in art. Artists used the figure as a way to express their ideas and values and to create beauty in nature. But what happens when these representations are viewed through the lens of objectification? The exhibition Objectified: The Female Form and the Male Gaze examines the portrayal of women in Western art. It raises critical questions about whether justifications for depicting the nude as natural, beautiful and traditional can stand up to the reality of women’s subjugation by men and their objectification in the arts throughout history.
One of the most iconic examples of the female nude in art is Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, which was painted for the Medici family. The painting was an innovative representation of the female nude for its time. Its implication of female eroticism combined idealism and sexuality, and established new compositional rules for paintings that included a nude woman.
The depiction of a nude body was also an important aspect in Greek art. Their statues of women like the Venus de Milo emphasized the ideal features of a human body. These characteristics include athleticism, symmetry and flawless skin. Artists would often observe several models to observe their ideal features and then combine them into a single image.
During the Renaissance, paintings of nude women continued to be provocative because they explored sensual themes and human impulses condemned by the Christian church. The nude was a vehicle for artists to explore sexuality and the world of dreams. They also explored ideas like erotic desire, virginity and same-sex attraction. Artists who created these works challenged social mores and were often punished by the church or had their works confiscated.
In modern times, it has become more common for artists to depict non-idealized bodies of women. This movement can be seen in artworks such as Matisse’s reclining nude or Modigliani’s Reclining Nude. These works have helped to shift the perception of the nude and make it less objectifying.
However, these efforts have not eliminated the objectification of the nude in all forms. For example, when a painting is based on the nude of a white woman, it can still be perceived as a sexist work that perpetuates the objectification of women of color. This can lead to harmful stereotypes, discrimination and misogyny that can be difficult to overcome.