The nude , as a form of visual art that focuses on the unclothed human figure, is an enduring tradition in Western art. Unclothed figures often also play a part in other types of art, such as history painting , including allegorical and religious art , portraiture , or the decorative arts. From prehistory to the earliest civilizations, nude female figures are generally understood to be symbols of fertility or well-being. Japanese prints are one of the few non-western traditions that can be called nudes, but the activity of communal bathing in Japan is portrayed as just another social activity, without the significance placed upon the lack of clothing that exists in the West. The introductory chapter makes though does not originate the often-quoted distinction between the naked body and the nude. This separation of the artistic form from the social and cultural issues long remained largely unexamined by classical art historians. One of the defining characteristics of the modern era in art was the blurring of the line between the naked and the nude.
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CHRISTIANITY AND THE NUDE
By Artspace Editors. Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders , via Wikipedia. As it turns out, perverts have been around longer than Craigslist, even who knew? But still, how did the tradition of the erotic nude, so resplendently ensconced in the canon by the likes of Rubens, Titian and their horny brethren, worm its way past religious gatekeepers and Papal condemnation? The answer lies at the crossroads of trend, capitalism, and human nature, the same buzzy nexus that gifted us the latest Cats movie trailer, with slightly different results. Peter Paul Rubens, Susanna and the Elders , While the vocabulary of Greek and Roman statuary certainly influenced 14th and 15th century art, nakedness was viewed very differently from one culture to the next.
HUMANISM: THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL
P layboy is to abolish the nude. Many people will celebrate this, even if the magazine once seen as the bible of sexual liberation is getting out of the business of soft porn because it has been outdone by the internet, and not for any idealistic feminist reason. If you look at enough art, you may feel more like putting on a black armband.
The nude—the unclothed or partially clothed human body—has been featured in European art for millennia. After , with the waning of the Middle Ages, artists depicted nudes as increasingly three-dimensional, vibrant, and lifelike— in short, more immediate and real. They employed diverse means: in Italy through a return to the models of ancient Greek and Roman art, and in northern Europe through refinements to the technique of painting in oils that enabled painters to capture textures—of flesh, of hair, of the sparkle in an eye—with unprecedented truth to nature.
