Female nude
Parent categories: women - nudity
The Female Nude (1992) - Lynda Nead [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Related: erotic art - Venus
Venus is the Roman goddess of love and in art terminology a synonym for a female nude.
Dressed men/nude women trope
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe/"The Lunch on the Grass" (1863) - Edouard Manet
Phryné before the Areopagus () - Jean-Léon Gérôme
Attempting the Impossible (1928) - René Magritte [Google gallery]
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - Stanley Kubrick [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
see also: Alain Robbe-Grillet - René Magritte - Edouard Manet - Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - Jean-Léon Gérôme - dressed - nude - trope
The Female Nude (1992) - Lynda Nead
Synopsis
Anyone who examines the history of Western art must be struck by the prevalence of images of the female body. More than any other subject, the female nude connotes art'. The framed image of a female body, hung on the walls of an art gallery, is an icon for Western culture, a symbol of civilization and accomplishment. But how and why did the female nude acquire this status? In recent years, the female nude has received renewed attention from feminist artists and art historians. By examining the dissemination of the high art female nude through art education and the life class, through art publications and the language of art criticism itself, The Female Nude brings together, in an entirely new way, analysis of the historical tradition of the female nude and discussion of recent feminist art. The book also explores the way in which acceptable and unacceptable images of the female body are produced and maintained, and by surveying the legal and social regulation of the obscene, renews recent debates on high culture and pornography. The Female Nude represents the first feminist survey of the most significant subject in Western art. It reveals how the female nude is now both at the centre and at the margins of high culture. At the centre, and within art historical discourse, the female nude is seen as the visual culmination of enlightenment aesthetics; at the edge, it risks losing its respectability and spilling over into the obscene. --via Amazon.com