The Nude

[stlukesguild]

Well... you knew this thread was coming. I looked for the NSFW post but I couldn't find it. Removed? Anyway... I remember some years back over on that other art site we had a discussion/debate as to what subject exists the most in images ( painting, prints, drawings, photographs ). Some guessed landscape... but actually, landscapes largely did not exist until the Baroque... and until Impressionism (with a few exceptions such as Turner and Constable) the landscape was deemed a minor subject... although not as lowly as the still life. No... it was the human portrait/face followed by the nude (mostly the female nude) that accounts for the most images in our world. The face/portrait would likely fall into second place if it weren't for cell phones and teenagers taking endless selfies. Of course, we also have endless young girls taking nude/near-nude pictures of themselves posing before their mirrors.

Having said this... I've found few examples of artistic nudes from the 19th century in photography... in spite of the number of nude paintings at the time.

One of the oldest examples of the nude photograph deemed as art are the "Storyville" nudes by Ernest Joseph Bellocq.

Bellocq's Storyville Nudes document the girls who worked in brothels in the red-light districts of New Orleans in the late 1800s.

Most of the nude photographs of the era were essentially pin-ups... especially the notorious French postcards. The models were frequently dressed in exotic, "Oriental" costume... not far removed from those employed in nude paintings by Ingres, Renoir, Matisse, and the academic painters. These photos were frequently employed as inspiration or even reference images by the painters of the time. Artists such as Degas, Munch, Mucha, Bonnard, etc... often took their own nude photographs as references:

-Edgar Degas

In the early 1900s in the United States, Charles Wesley Gilhousen produced a body of beautiful nude photographs employing burlesque dancers, strippers, prostitutes, etc... as models:

Alfred Cheney Johnston was a New York City-based photographer known for his portraits and nudes of Ziegfeld Follies showgirls as well as portraits of actors and actresses from the worlds of stage and film. These works echo a lot of the themes employed by artists such as Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Kirchner, Rouault, Kees van Dongen, Reginald Marsh, and Max Beckmann (among others) in the Modernist paintings of the early 1900s.

 

[snoball]

It's the top post in the cafe David.

 

[Artyczar]

I like the old pinups, like in the old Louise Brooks days. Some of these are nice. Thanks for posting them.

 

[Hannah]

Outside of the Degas photo, I don't see anything particularly artistic going on in any of these shots.

But then "artistic" is just a label they used to put on as many pictures of naked women (painting or photograph) as possible to make it okay for men and boys to stare at them. "It's art, mom!"

If it was really art we were talking about, the number of nude females and nude males should be pretty equal, but of course, it's not. What is it, 1,000 to 1? 1,000,000 to 1?

Which isn't to say there aren't art photos full of naked people, there are. But they're usually more disturbing than pleasing.

 

[stlukesguild]

If it was really art we were talking about, the number of nude females and nude males should be pretty equal, but of course, it's not.

That would only make sense if the number of female artists was the same as the number of male artists... and if these female artists were painting, drawing, and photographing the male nude at the same rate. You will find, as I continue with this thread, that many of the finest female photographers far preferred photographing the female nude to the male nude.

Which isn't to say there aren't art photos full of naked people, there are. But they're usually more disturbing than pleasing.

That's a stretch. The "beautiful" artistic nude in photography seems no less common than the beautiful nude in painting or sculpture.

 

[Roni]

Bellocq's Storyville Nudes document the girls who worked in brothels in the red-light districts of New Orleans in the late 1800s

According to this book below about Bellocq, his photos are dated around 1912, not late 1800s.
On a sidenote: In the movie on him, (infamous for nudes and semi-nudes of a 12-yearold Brooke Shields), "Pretty Baby", they've re-enacted some of his real historic photos.

Then I found a few really early examples of nude-photography in this book:

These by one Julien de Villeneuve are dated 1850/53.

 

[stlukesguild]

According to this book below about Bellocq, his photos are dated around 1912, not late 1800s.
On a sidenote: In the movie on him, (infamous for nudes and semi-nudes of a 12-yearold Brooke Shields), "Pretty Baby", they've re-enacted some of his real historic photos.

My mistake. I must have been looking at the date of his birth (1873) attached to one of the photos as opposed to the dates of the photos.

Honestly, I don't think any of the photos I posted above are "great" works of art... with the exception of the image by Bellocq. After his death, most of his negatives and prints were lost or destroyed. I was surprised to find that much of what survived was purchased by a young Lee Friedlander. They eventually found their way into the collection of the Met and a more extensive volume than the one shown above included an introduction by Susan Sontag.

A good many of the photos that I have seen portray older prostitutes who appear (unsurprisingly) quite jaded and cynical. But there is something quite tragic about the young girl... dragged into this profession so early in life... likely by necessity. She stares wistfully into space... and the battered or weathered state of the actual image reinforces the sense of loss to my mind.

The Degas photograph, on the other hand, strikes me as little more than a painter's reference. The cropping is odd and the pose seems forced and awkward... although some may admire this above the fluid elegance of the pinups. Personally, I don't even find the resulting painting to be one of his best. Many other nudes by Degas present the models in poses that are far more natural. The limited color range of the painting suggests one of his monoprints, and I almost think the painting was left unfinished.

 

[musket]

I seem to recall a thread at TOF in which several women reported getting extremely hostile responses for drawing or otherwise portraying male nudes. It was in the Cafe. It may have been a thread about "the male gaze." If memory serves, I said that people objectify each other all the time, men and women alike (which I still hold to be true). It was after that that someone raised the subject of the prejudice against women portraying male nudes.

 

[stlukesguild]

So let's look at some of the nude photographs that came about as a result of the innovations of Modernism. Cubism, as developed by Picasso and Braque, was the great turning-point of Modernism. Prior to Cubism, Matisse and the Fauves with their shocking use of color were the leading figures of the avant garde. One might argue, however, that all the Fauves did was take the expressive exaggerated use of color seen in the paintings of such Post-Impressionists as Bonnard, Van Gogh, and Gauguin to the next step. Confronting a world of increasing speed where to quote Yeats, "Things fall apart", the Cubists, beginning with Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, shattered the usual perception of the world.

Film and photography picked up on the innovations of Cubism through the use of montage and collage... but outside of the use of collage... or cutting up various images and reassembling them... the favored method of fragmenting the figure or nude in a Cubist manner involved breaking up space... or the positive and negative shapes... through the use of light and shadow. One of the most intriguing photographers working in this manner was the member of the Czech avant garde, František Drtikol:

Drtikol uses light and shadow to shatter the space around the figures in a manner that is disjointed and unsettling.

Erwin Blumenfeld took the play of light and shadow further, visually fragmenting the figure itself:

This idea would be taken further later in the century in the photographs of Lucien Clergue:

Blumenfeld and Clergue would become the model for endless photographs employing the play of shadow across naked bodies.

 

[Artyczar]

I seem to recall a thread at TOF in which several women reported getting extremely hostile responses for drawing or otherwise portraying male nudes. It was in the Cafe. It may have been a thread about "the male gaze." If memory serves, I said that people objectify each other all the time, men and women alike (which I still hold to be true). It was after that that someone raised the subject of the prejudice against women portraying male nudes.

Oh boy, not this again.

 

[stlukesguild]

Musket, if I recall, one member had a life-size male nude that she had painted vandalized. It is interesting to realize that there are probably more paintings and sculpture of the male nude made by male artists from the Ancient Greeks and Romans through Donatello, Michelangelo, Bronzino, Cellini, Giambologna, on through Lucian Freud.

 

[Artyczar]

I really love Freud's paintings of the male nude. The way he paints, I love. Anything he paints I love. He can paint a tractor and I'd love it, but the body is probably better. Any body.

 

[Hannah]

That would only make sense if the number of female artists was the same as the number of male artists... and if these female artists were painting, drawing, and photographing the male nude at the same rate.

So there aren't as many male nudes because there weren't as many female artists. Got it.


Wait though, I was always under the impression that male artists could paint or photograph whatever they wanted to.

If we're talking strictly about art, isn't it the job or goal of any artist, regardless of gender, to find interest or beauty in all kinds of things?
If we're talking strictly about art, aren't the male body and the female body equally interesting or beautiful?
If we're talking strictly about art, why, for the most part, don't men paint or photograph nude men?

Could it be that we're not talking about art? Could it be that we're just talking about what a lot of men like to look at?

That doesn't mean that what a lot of men like to look at can't be art. I'm just saying it doesn't hurt to admit that it may also serve other purposes.

"Man, I just wanted to paint a naked woman to look at whenever I want to see a naked woman, but I've accidentally created art! Now what?!"
"Write some books about it being art so we don't look like a bunch of wankers."
"Oh yeah, I forgot that we write history too! Whew, I was scared there for a second. LOL!"
"Yeah, no worries. It is what we say it is, right? Hey, um, you got any more of her? Like, say, I don't know, one where she's chained to big rocks on the seashore? You know, for art purposes..."
"How about this one? She's tied to a tree with ribbons, playing the oud while a bunch of cherubs rub her ankles. I know it's not the same as the seashore, but..."
"Yeah, now that's what I call art!"

 

[Artyczar]

Oh my goodness! Chained to rocks on the seashore! LOLOL!

 

[Roni]

Could it be that we're not talking about art? Could it be that we're just talking about what a lot of men [persons] like to look at?

Before starting: I'm NOT going to try to discuss, what is art or is the purpose of art. Maybe later and elswhere.

I do see and understand your point about sexual interest (or whatever you'd call it).

Admitted, that this may be a factor - sort of "erotic" feelings towards a model or an object of art - but this doesn't make it Non-Art.
You said it's about what men [or people] "LIKE to LOOK AT".

Yes, ABSOLUTELY! This is what art is about!
If people don't like to look at it (and be it only the creator), there's no reason for it.

'course there can be a huge lot of different things, people like to look at in arts:
Some like the pleasing and soft beauty of perfect tenderness. Some others like to see the ugliness and hurt that reflects their traumatic experiences in life.
Both is equally art.


Now (having said the above and being one who loves BOTH in art, the soft beauty as well as the darkest deep depression), I'd like to stand up for pictures, nudes included, that have no other purpose than pleasing the eye and fighting passionately to see them as TRUE ART.

When I'm standing in a museum just in front of a nude by Burne-Jones, no-one would expect me to pull out my thing and start to wank it. Why? Just because we're in a museum? I hope not. It's because: There IS a sort of beauty, (also physical beauty of the human form), that CAN please the eye, even be "erotic" in a way, that has nothing to do with sexual impel.

One can have "erotic" or sensual or ecstatic feelings in the presence of a beautiful sunset or after climbing a mountain being amidst (and part of) the most majestic landscape. Of course, that's different, as a sunset or a landscape isn't art. Or is it?

 

[stlukesguild]

So there aren't as many male nudes because there weren't as many female artists. Got it.

I believe we looked up the statistics over on TOS and the number of women entering art schools and majoring in art in colleges and universities outnumbers that of men... but those numbers change when we look at the ratio of men graduating and especially at the number of men graduating from Masters programs. Obviously, gallery dealers have a bias against female artists... and undoubtedly, this is largely due to the biases of collectors. We can't blame men alone, because many wealthy female collectors are more likely to purchase art by male artists than by female artists. It has been argued by some that this is due to the fact that many female artists will not continue to make art over the decade (thus increasing the worth of their art). Instead, they will focus on raising a family. This argument has been employed by the corporate world to explain why they prefer to promote male as opposed to female workers.

This doesn't even touch upon the most obvious reason for the huge difference in number between male and female artists. Until the mid-19th-century it was virtually impossible... and unthought of by women as well as men... for women to be offered an opportunity for higher education... including the training needed to become successful as an artist. There were exceptions: Hildegard of Bingen, Artemisia Gentileschi, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rosa Bonheur, Angelica Kauffman, Judith Leyster, Rosalba Carriera, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, etc... Many of these women had the support of a family of artists and/or mentors who were artists.

Wait though, I was always under the impression that male artists could paint or photograph whatever they wanted to.

Yes.

If we're talking strictly about art, isn't it the job or goal of any artist, regardless of gender, to find interest or beauty in all kinds of things?

No. The job of the artist is to make the art that he or she desires or feels passionate about, building upon the themes and subject matter that he or she is equally passionate about. I'm not likely to paint landscapes, puppy dogs (although I love dogs... especially the my own two "fur babies"), or children any time soon. Monet rarely ever painted people let alone the sort of multi-figure narratives that inspired Rubens and Delacroix. Michelangelo had absolutely no interest in landscape or still life.

If we're talking strictly about art, aren't the male body and the female body equally interesting or beautiful?

So what drew Michelangelo or Paul Cadmus to paint and sculpt the male body far more than the female? Certainly, an artist who is commissioned to paint any given subject... perhaps even cockroaches... will strive to find something of interest... and will still use the experience to explore the abstract elements of painting/drawing/sculpting... but given the choice, an artist will likely choose subject matter that engages him or herself. Something he or she is passionate about and enjoys looking at. It shouldn't seem surprising that for many artists this subject of interest is women (or in the case of many homosexual artists: men).

If we're talking strictly about art, why, for the most part, don't men paint or photograph nude men?

Is art strictly about art? I certainly agree as an artist that leans heavily toward Formalism and l'art pour l'art that what we judge in a work of art should be primarily the art itself. In other words, the fact that a portrait looks like a photograph of the sitter isn't what makes it a good work of art. The fact that the woman in a painting of the nude is "cute" or "hot" isn't enough to deem that painting good or great.

If I were to look at Botticelli's Primavera I'm not certain I'd find myself turned on by the women. One of the finest art-historical explorations of the nude is that of Kenneth Clark's The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. Clark suggests:

"... the human body is rich in associations, and when it is turned into art these associations are not entirely lost... It is ourselves and arouses memories of all the things we wish to do with ourselves; and first of all, we wish to perpetuate ourselves. This is an aspect of the subject so obvious that I hardly need dwell on it...."

Clark continues to point out that some art historians and moralists attempt to close their eyes or censor this aspect of the nude:

" 'If the nude is so treated,' says one professor, 'that is raises in the spectator ideas or desires appropriate to the material subject, it is false art and bad morals.' "

Yet can we imagine approaching paintings or drawings of other subjects in the same way? If a painting of a lush, bucolic landscape makes us wish to live in such a place, is that bad art? If a still life ripe fruit makes us hungry is that bad art? If a painting of the death of Christ makes us sad or repulses us, is that bad art?

Clark continues: "This high-minded theory is contrary to experience."

The nudes by Rubens...

Bronzino...

Titian...

Cranach...

Boucher...

Renoir...

Bonnard...

... and even Matisse...

... all contain much that is "appropriate to the material subject."

continued...

 

[stlukesguild]

Clark continues, "it is necessary to labor the obvious and say that no nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow- and if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgment of what is known as "pure form" is inevitably influenced by it, and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot lie hidden... The amount of erotic content a work of art can hold in solution is very high. The temple sculptures of tenth-century India are an undisguised exaltation of physical desire... yet they are great works of art..."

Could it be that we're not talking about art? Could it be that we're just talking about what a lot of men like to look at?

Certainly... and is it not likely that a lot of men... and women... paint/draw/sculpt/photograph what they like looking at?

That doesn't mean that what a lot of men like to look at can't be art. I'm just saying it doesn't hurt to admit that it may also serve other purposes.

What is THE purpose of Art? It seems to me that Art has no pure single purpose. Art can express any aspect of human experience: physical, optical, emotional, spiritual, political... and erotic... and no subject/theme is of greater or less merit.

"Man, I just wanted to paint a naked woman to look at whenever I want to see a naked woman, but I've accidentally created art! Now what?!"
"Write some books about it being art so we don't look like a bunch of wankers."

Take this narrative and replace the naked woman with nearly any other subject: "I just wanted to paint cute puppies... my children... a bunch of apples... a lovely landscape... etc... What is the difference?

"Oh yeah, I forgot that we write history too! Whew, I was scared there for a second. LOL!"
"Yeah, no worries. It is what we say it is, right? Hey, um, you got any more of her? Like, say, I don't know, one where she's chained to big rocks on the seashore? You know, for art purposes..."
"How about this one? She's tied to a tree with ribbons, playing the oud while a bunch of cherubs rub her ankles. I know it's not the same as the seashore, but..."
"Yeah, now that's what I call art!"

 

[Hannah]

When I'm standing in a museum just in front of a nude by Burne-Jones, no-one would expect me to pull out my thing and start to wank it.

But I don't think you standing in front of a 100 or 150 year old nude painting or photograph in a museum in the 20th or 21st century has anything to do with the world the art was created in. Think about it, if you were a man in the 19th century who never married, you may never see a naked woman (your age, who isn't a prostitute) in your life.

Now put yourself in those old button shoes and look at those paintings again. They may have a different effect when seen in their time and context. I mean, we can't put ourselves in those shoes completely, because we don't have any realistic frame of reference. Which is kind of my point.

Take this narrative and replace the naked woman with nearly any other subject: "I just wanted to paint cute puppies... my children... a bunch of apples... a lovely landscape... etc... What is the difference?

The difference is you didn't post photos of nude puppies or nude children or nude apples, you posted photos of nude women. And my point was (and is) that most of those photographs were made for titillation. That there's nothing particularly artistic about them. They were made to give men a glimpse of what they might not normally be able to glimpse.

That's not a criticism of the photos, or me saying they can't possibly be art, it's just an observation of what they actually are, rather than what I want them to be. You can only look at them now and talk about what you see in them now in hindsight. And out of the context they were created in.

There are photograph collectors who pay a lot of money for Irving Klaw's pictures of Bettie Page. They consider them to be art. But Klaw wasn't making art. He didn't consider it art and his customers weren't buying the pictures as art. They were, in form and intent, dirty pictures. Sold in plain brown envelopes through the mail and at adult book stores.

That's all well and good, and it doesn't mean another generation can't see them as art. But if I make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you say, "Thanks for the stuffed pepper!" one of us is seeing what we want to see, rather than what I put on the plate.

 

[stlukesguild]

Think about it, if you were a man in the 19th century who never married, you may never see a naked woman (your age, who isn't a prostitute) in your life.

I highly doubt that would be true of the audience for whom paintings were made. But I'm not certain what the point is.

Now put yourself in those old button shoes and look at those paintings again. They may have a different effect when seen in their time and context. I mean, we can't put ourselves in those shoes completely, because we don't have any realistic frame of reference. Which is kind of my point.

Again... what is your point? Artists have explored just about every aspect of human experience. Eroticism... desire... lust are a fundamental part of human nature. I have no use for censorship or imposing moral judgment upon art.

The difference is you didn't post photos of nude puppies or nude children or nude apples, you posted photos of nude women.

And? had I posted pictures of puppies or children would you have questioned the aesthetic merit of these based upon the subject matter?

And my point was (and is) that most of those photographs were made for titillation.

Again, this seems to presume that there are proper and improper purposes for art.

That there's nothing particularly artistic about them.

That is debatable. What makes this "artistic":

... but not this?

Does it all come down to that quote: "The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting?"

That's not a criticism of the photos, or me saying they can't possibly be art, it's just an observation of what they actually are, rather than what I want them to be. You can only look at them now and talk about what you see in them now in hindsight. And out of the context they were created in.

That is all we can do when speaking of any work of Art. Shakespeare during his lifetime was not the same as Shakespeare for the Romantics, Shakespeare for the Modernists or Shakespeare of our own time and place.

There are photograph collectors who pay a lot of money for Irving Klaw's pictures of Bettie Page. They consider them to be art. But Klaw wasn't making art. He didn't consider it art and his customers weren't buying the pictures as art. They were, in form and intent, dirty pictures. Sold in plain brown envelopes through the mail and at adult book stores.

This is not uncommon. The Ukiyo-e prints of Japan were though of a low populist art... not far removed from our comic book illustrations, celebrity posters, posters of sports heroes, picture postcard picked up while on vacation, comic books, illustrations in ghost stories, and even pornography. Today... indeed, since the Impressionists... the Ukiyo-e prints have been highly admired and sought after and many of the artists are better known than the elite court painters of the time.

That's all well and good, and it doesn't mean another generation can't see them as art. But if I make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you say, "Thanks for the stuffed pepper!" one of us is seeing what we want to see, rather than what I put on the plate.

Ultimately, the artist's intentions are irrelevant to a greater or lesser extent... especially with the passage of time.

Alphonse Mucha worked in Paris and the US as a commercial artist. Posters such as the one above made for Sarah Bernhardt's theater were in no way thought of as "fine art" or "high art". They were to be hung for a period of time... and then torn down or pasted over with new posters. In spite of the intention of these works, the populace of Paris scrambled to take down these posters and keep them. Mucha likely had more impact on the visual arts of the time than any of the big name "fine artists". His stylistic elements spread throughout Europe and the US. Today, he is still one of the most popular artists of his era as measured by book publications, posters, greeting cards etc...

Later in his career, Mucha returned to Czechoslovakia and worked upon a great cycle of epic scale paintings entitled Slav Epic. Although impressive, none of these "serious" works resonates today to the same extent as his frou-frou commercial works.

 

[Artyczar]

I've said it in the unpopular opinions thread that if the artist intends it to be art, then so it is. Similarly, if someone is viewing it as art, same goes.

I have been a lot more embracing than mjp of what is and isn't art, although for me not much falls into the isn't. But I'm not sure he's actually stating that any of these images are not art. He didn't say that. As I'm understanding it, he might just be wanting to shed some light on their original context in the times they were created vs. how they are seen/accepted in the present--not making a right vs. wrong point, but just making an observation. But I can't speak for him. I just have to live with him and deal with his contrarian attitudes about practically everything. It's his go-to stance, but not necessarily his final opinion to life's answers.

mjp, I hope you didn't mind me making this comment. ❤ Happy anniversary.