Project
What is the history of the (female) nude in art – from Renaissance art or earlier to the modern and contemporary period? Is this always a means of titillation for a voyeuristic (usually male) audience?
Probably the overwhelming answer to the question above might be ‘yes’ but it would be interesting to explore different approaches.
The subject of the female nude, conceived as a ‘beautiful object’ more than a ‘subject’, is and has always been a constant in art, from idealised eroticism ‘justified’ by the mythological context, that we can for example find in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus c.1485 , which was accepted, and even admired, by the cultured Florentine élite in the early days of the Renaissance; to the sharply realist and recognisable portrait of a nude prostitute in Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herb, 1863 which in the context of a bourgeois society caused scandal due to its unveiled and truthful way of depicting sexuality (it was uncomfortable, because it was the unspoken truth).
A subject like eroticism is at the origins of life and yet we seem to accept it only when it is depicted in ways that erease its bond with the reality we live in.
The work of art becomes disturbing, in fact, when it truthfully portrays the direct connection that humans have with this, and other natural aspects of life that we decided were not ‘noble’: it is incriminating, and therefore shameful.
But if we freed ourselves from the sense of guilt and shame related to these subjects, and aim for the truth, then we would appreciate both Art and its subject: reality. Because reality is just art at its initial stage.
‘Art is a lie that helps us to see the truth’ – Pablo Picasso.
Art is a ‘lie’, in that it gives us an edited view of the world – which could be heroic, romanticized, eroticized, expressive, politicised, abstracted or formalized, etc, etc – depending on the artist’s or patron’s point of view and the tastes/philosophies of the time.
How different (if at all) is an eroticised female photograph, used on a porn site or in a sex worker’s publicity flyer? Is this a view of the ‘real’ or is it an equally ‘edited’ image of reality?
And how different is our approach to the two?
In Dejeuner sur l’herb Manet depicted a prostitute: it was scandalous. Completely normal was, thought, for unmarried (and married) men to frequent brothels at the time, also due to the fact that ‘respectable’ women could not give themselves before marriage.
In 2021, this painting is studied in schools and the nude is considered completely acceptable and culturally relevant. Could one of the reasons for this acceptance be that we forgot that the portrayed woman is prostitute, and therefore we look at her in the same idealised way in which we look at Botticelli’s or Cabanel’s Birth of Venus?
Nowadays, it is very common to watch porn, but don’t we often consider sex workers and porn actors (mostly actresses, how unexpected!) as vulgar, or ‘dirty’?
When discussing my project in class, a classmate of mine mentioned the term ‘low class’ when reffering to the way Porn is seen by society. She immediatly corrected her unintentional mistake, but that brought me to get even more involved in this reflection.
Porn is not considered culturally relevant or noble because, unlike Art it is a type of eroticism that doesn’t involve justifications or deep messages: it doesn’t hide its relation to us and our sexual instincts.
It also evident that Porn, as well as Art, is a ‘lie’. Even if it’s harsh and uncensored, and therefore less idealised than Art, it still depicts a staged, perfect and exaggerated representation of sex and a vision of the woman that still follows the standards imposed by the patriarchal society.
And in the same way as the naked woman is admired in a painting and not respected in reality, the way she is portrayed in Porn often brings the watcher to see her, in real life as well, as an object of sexual desire and not as a complete human being.
This project was not conceived in order to find an answer, or a question: it was born from a personal, on-going reflection and it aims to guide the audience into developing a different, more disilluded approach towards Art while simultaneusly developing a more artistically sensitive one towards the unembellished reality of things.
Neither Porn is being promoted or Art is being demoted: the fascinating and often unspoken similarities between the two are unveiled and the distance between the High and Low worlds is shortened.
Probably the overwhelming answer to the question above might be ‘yes’ but it would be interesting to explore different approaches.
The subject of the female nude, conceived as a ‘beautiful object’ more than a ‘subject’, is and has always been a constant in art, from idealised eroticism ‘justified’ by the mythological context, that we can for example find in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus c.1485 , which was accepted, and even admired, by the cultured Florentine élite in the early days of the Renaissance; to the sharply realist and recognisable portrait of a nude prostitute in Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herb, 1863 which in the context of a bourgeois society caused scandal due to its unveiled and truthful way of depicting sexuality (it was uncomfortable, because it was the unspoken truth).
A subject like eroticism is at the origins of life and yet we seem to accept it only when it is depicted in ways that erease its bond with the reality we live in.
The work of art becomes disturbing, in fact, when it truthfully portrays the direct connection that humans have with this, and other natural aspects of life that we decided were not ‘noble’: it is incriminating, and therefore shameful.
But if we freed ourselves from the sense of guilt and shame related to these subjects, and aim for the truth, then we would appreciate both Art and its subject: reality. Because reality is just art at its initial stage.
‘Art is a lie that helps us to see the truth’ – Pablo Picasso.
Art is a ‘lie’, in that it gives us an edited view of the world – which could be heroic, romanticized, eroticized, expressive, politicised, abstracted or formalized, etc, etc – depending on the artist’s or patron’s point of view and the tastes/philosophies of the time.
How different (if at all) is an eroticised female photograph, used on a porn site or in a sex worker’s publicity flyer? Is this a view of the ‘real’ or is it an equally ‘edited’ image of reality?
And how different is our approach to the two?
In Dejeuner sur l’herb Manet depicted a prostitute: it was scandalous. Completely normal was, thought, for unmarried (and married) men to frequent brothels at the time, also due to the fact that ‘respectable’ women could not give themselves before marriage.
In 2021, this painting is studied in schools and the nude is considered completely acceptable and culturally relevant. Could one of the reasons for this acceptance be that we forgot that the portrayed woman is prostitute, and therefore we look at her in the same idealised way in which we look at Botticelli’s or Cabanel’s Birth of Venus?
Nowadays, it is very common to watch porn, but don’t we often consider sex workers and porn actors (mostly actresses, how unexpected!) as vulgar, or ‘dirty’?
When discussing my project in class, a classmate of mine mentioned the term ‘low class’ when reffering to the way Porn is seen by society. She immediatly corrected her unintentional mistake, but that brought me to get even more involved in this reflection.
Porn is not considered culturally relevant or noble because, unlike Art it is a type of eroticism that doesn’t involve justifications or deep messages: it doesn’t hide its relation to us and our sexual instincts.
It also evident that Porn, as well as Art, is a ‘lie’. Even if it’s harsh and uncensored, and therefore less idealised than Art, it still depicts a staged, perfect and exaggerated representation of sex and a vision of the woman that still follows the standards imposed by the patriarchal society.
And in the same way as the naked woman is admired in a painting and not respected in reality, the way she is portrayed in Porn often brings the watcher to see her, in real life as well, as an object of sexual desire and not as a complete human being.
This project was not conceived in order to find an answer, or a question: it was born from a personal, on-going reflection and it aims to guide the audience into developing a different, more disilluded approach towards Art while simultaneusly developing a more artistically sensitive one towards the unembellished reality of things.
Neither Porn is being promoted or Art is being demoted: the fascinating and often unspoken similarities between the two are unveiled and the distance between the High and Low worlds is shortened.