In the history of art, the unclothed body is an apex of both beauty and anxiety. It represents a litmus test for artistic ability, a captivating subject and in some cases, an affront to societal mores. When English artist J.W. Turner left his work to the nation, people were outraged to discover he had drawn more than landscapes; the erotic nudes he bequeathed were so scandalising that museums had some destroyed.
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Since Adam and Eve, shame and nakedness have entwined and yet, the nude remains a pillar of fine art. Whether seduced, intrigued or implicated by its gaze, we fall irrevocably under the spell of the nude.
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The Romantic Nude
The nude represents some of the most classically beautiful imagery in art. Charles Blackman’s charcoal sketches, wrought from life drawing classes, are all curves and grace. Bill Henson’s painterly photographs recall the Old Masters while Garry Shead paints an artist working in the presence of the nude model. For him, the nude is a symbol for the artist’s muse – it is one with inspiration.
Garry Shead 'Rembrandt and Muse'
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Naked and Afraid!
John Berger famously delineated between the ‘nude’ and ‘naked’ – the former cloaked in cultural connotations while the latter personal, unexpected and surprising. In modern and contemporary art, artists have tested the boundary between the nude and naked, picturing bodies as absurd, political and subversive. Anne Marie Hall’s near abstract nudes are intuitive and deconstructed, any straightforward eroticism denied from the viewer. Eric Thake imagines a dodo in the nude, while Eolo Paul Bottaro finds the seductive body in a raw chook. Yum.
Eolo Paul Bottaro 'Finger Licking Good'
The nude can be read as conventional or complex, simple or scandalous. Against bare flesh anything refracts – desire, fear, beauty, history, humour – often suggesting more about the viewer than the subject. An enduringly pivotal form in art, the nude asks: when stripped bare, what remains?
Arthur Russell 'Untitled (Between Two Points)'
