Nudes - Jp. A. Calosse Mega Square

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>Nudes

      © Parkstone Press International, New York, USA

      © Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA

      © Estate Masson/Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ADAGP, Paris

      © Estate Balthus/Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ADAGP, Paris

      © Estate Munch/Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/BONO

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      © Estate Picabia/Artists Rights Society, New York, USA ADAGP, Paris

      © Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust

      © Estate Man Ray/Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ADAGP, Paris

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      © Estate Brauner/Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ADAGP, Paris

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      © Fernando Botero/Marlborough Gallery

      © Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/Wichtrach, Bern

      © Lucian Freud

      Foreword

      “I wished to suggest by means of a simple nude, a certain long-lost barbaric luxury.”

Gauguin

      The Bather of Valpinçon (The Great Bather)

      Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808

      oil on canvas, 146 × 97.5 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

      Just as there is a fundamental difference in the use of the words naked and nude, the unclothed body can evoke a feeling of delight or shame, serving as a symbol of contradictory concepts – Beauty and Indecency. This distinction is explored by Kenneth Clark at the beginning of his famous book The Nude. Earlier still, Paul Valéry devoted a special section of his essay on Degas to this subject.

      Doryphorus (Spear Carrier)

      c. 440 BC

      marble copy after a Greek original by Polykleitos

      Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples

      It is that which provides grounds for separating depictions of the nude body as a special genre. Deriving from the Ancient World’s cult of the beautiful body and celebrated by the artists of the Renaissance, the nude became an inseparable element of works belonging to various genres. Here there is a whole range of gradations – from the sanctified nude of Christ in His Passion to the extremely free nakedness of nymphs, satyrs and other mythological figures.

      Barberini Faun

      c. 200 BC

      marble copy after a Hellenic original

      h. 215 cm

      Glyptotek, Munich

      This indicates that for a long time the nude was required to be placed in a subject-genre context, outside of which it was perceived as something shameful. The evolution of European painting provides a good demonstration of how the bounds of the possible were expanded and the degree of aesthetic risk in this region decreased. If the word nude might sound odd when used in reference to the noble bareness of Poussin’s characters, it is entirely acceptable for Boucher’s unclothed figures.

      David

      Donatello, c. 1430

      bronze, h. 185 cm

      Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

      The relative autonomy in the depictions of the bare body, which can be taken as a sign of the formation of a specific genre, is a fairly late phenomenon. Théodore Géricault’s Study of a Male Model, for example (Pushkin Museum) is of particular value. It is indubitably a preparatory work, a study of the naked body, and its ancillary character is evident, but a view in retrospective changes the meaning and value of depiction, since today we see this model as one of the future characters in the drama acted out on the Raft of the Medusa.

      The Birth of Venus

      Sandro Botticelli, 1484–1486

      tempera on canvas, 180 × 280 cm

      Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

      The hand of the twenty-year-old Géricault possesses the power of a genius. The energetic chiaroscuro moulding endows the painting with sculptural qualities, but a superb sense of rhythm harmonizes the illusion of volume with flatness. An expressive contrast to Géricault’s study is provided by Thomas Couture’s Little Bather (The Hermitage Museum). The motivation for the nude is of no fundamental significance (the painting has also been called Girl in a Garden), since the girl incarnates sinless beauty and naïveté.

      David

      Michelangelo, 1501–1504

      marble, h. 410 cm

      Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence

      Eloquent testimony to the maturity of the genre comes with Renoir’s magnificent Nude in the Pushkin Museum collection. It seems that all the merits of French taste in painting are reflected in this image of a gloriously flourishing nude. With the elusive combination of natural stance and pose, Renoir achieved just as subtle an effect as with the richness of his palette. The artist’s brush revels in the delights of the nude with that immediacy, which is possible only in the spontaneous relations between painter and model.

      Self-Portrait

      Albrecht Dürer, c. 1503

      Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

      At the same time, Nude signals the fact that the model is already the sovereign heroine of the painting. In this context it is worth recalling that, according to his own words, Degas was representing honest women, who when naked were only engaged in their own affairs. It’s as if they were seen through the keyhole. Degas’s models are indeed entirely independent.

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