We know that for many centuries throughout art history, men used the notion of the model as an excuse to look at women. Fortunately today women paint men, women paint women and men paint men and women, and the imbalance is being addressed.
However, if the work is too pure and not dangerous to the innocent ignorant, then it probably does not say much, is not art and should remain in the studio as a life drawing exercise to be explored at a later date in a different context. Rainer Fetting pushed the envelope on gay culture with his nude male paintings, Baselitz focused attention on abstract qualities by tipping the nude upside down, Mapplethorpe addresses gender identity and social issues with his unusual nude poses and lighting in the photograph.
Although in contemporary art practice “painting and sculpture” are now seen as traditional artforms, the long history of the nude in art continues to document the way we live our lives and relate to each other. Portrait, photograph, video, film, interactive art, hybrid, performance or the digital electronic arts using the screen, all address the human figure in one way or another.
I don’t know about you, but for me a good model is like a blessing from the stars. The energy exchanged between the artist and model can be the making of a great image and contribute to a more meaningful exploration and understanding of the human condition.
rosepepper
The nude in art
Written by:
rosepepper
February 2, 2008
Barbara Sparhawk, 7 months ago
I know what you so energetically say to be true about working from live models from my own brief experiences, but mostly reject it because I figured it 1.trying for another person to hold still and 2.annoying that they weren’t around at 3 am when I finished with other things, or woke up and headed for a brush. I may try again, from what you write. Interesting dissertation on nudes in art. I’m not convinced it was initially motivated by voyeurism (“an excuse to look at women”), we are always reasonable to be curious about our bodies. I agree that it’s lost its taboo, to the benefit of all. There have been equal protests to understanding anatomy, only the past couple of hundred years that organ function could be investigated without anatomists being chucked in prison. And I always wonder at our certainty that we are now so free, that it may be met in fifty years by reviewers of our times shocked by our constraints. But yes, it’s true, many shackles from the past thrown off….. except for the shocking rabid lust in our times for politically correcting adversaries.
rosepepper, 7 months ago
Thanks Barbara for your valued reply. The fig leaf has been removed and now “political correctness”.
To explain further I have always been interested in the place women have in art and would like to add a few things to the journal. The question was asked “Why are there no great women artists?” The answer was that there were, but they had been kept under wraps in the art history of the white western culture. Artists like Artemesia Gentileschi were subsequently discovered. The predominant vision of white western culture was the vision of the white western heterosexual male and so Postmodernism was born. Other minority groups were given a voice and entitled to rewrite history from their point of view. This includes people from different ethnic groups, different sexual preferences and women. Women in Australia of the calibre of Joy Hester were shut out of life drawing classes because looking at nudes (women) was considered improper. Times have changed and of course not all the male artists were and are voyeurs. Women like Georgia O’Keeffe, Helen Frankenthala and Lee Krasner (under the shadow of Jackson Pollock) were instrumental in giving women a more serious voice. Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Barbara Kruger the Guerilla Girls and many others are moving forward and one day their works in the art market will be of equal value.
My support for women is part of my art and the nude in art plays an important role in telling the story of the struggle for an equal voice.