Just for starters......
It is interesting that humans are the only animal species on earth that don't operate in their daily life existance as they were created, but rather metaphorically paint and disguise themselves in endlessly creative ways through clothing. Why? I have no real idea. It must just be universally fun to dress up!
I have not yet read "The Nude" so I'll just tentatively ramble for a few sentences. While as individuals from varied backgrounds and experiences, we can expect to have just as much individuality in our responses, personal affinities, or filters applied to nudes in the context of fine art, there may be some underlying universal generalities in common operation as well.
It seems to me more often than not, the nude has been employed as a representational conveyance of a truth, beauty, and ideal in the human experience, but often more in a general allegorical or mythical sense, rather than as a representation of a specific individual's portrait. There have been exceptions, mostly where individuals have been heroically personified in the nude, or semi-nude, but usually as an apotheosis form of portraiture, making them in a sense equated to a god or goddess.
What does this imply about a nude in art? Can a nude ever fit within the context of a simple and direct individual personal portrait? As for myself, the only two nude portraits I have ever generated in paint have both been self-portraits; both conveying a definite and penetrating opinion of how I viewed myself. In both cases they are merciless and unidealized images that have nothing to do with the classic representation of the nude, but rather become transcending images without the distracting mask of clothing, and convey an arresting sense of vulnerability and honesty; at least to me. But I am speaking of, and relating these images within the context of late-twentieth-century American cultural filters and morales. In a different culture and era, a nude portrait would likely produce a different range of viewer responses. Perhaps I should return and zoom back to the more general nude in art, viewed within an historic context.
Perhaps it is interesting to consider that it was at the height of ancient Greece when the proper attire for a man interacting within society was frankly no dress at all (!), that this genesis of Western culture simultaneously produced and evolved the very epitome of the sculpted, anatomically ideal, classical male nude, which has been the paragon or model of all that has followed (through various subsequent periods of renaissance and decline), right through to the present. Of course, the supremacy of anatomical knowledge in the nude took an incredible nose-dive, both in the Roman era, leading into the Dark Ages, and once again, frankly, in the Twentieth Century! Currently we are generally impovished as artists in our anatomical awareness, coming out of a twentieth century dark age, where art aesthetics exploded into any number of new tangents. In the process, we seem to have lost what inherited thread of knowledge we had still flourishing just a hundred years ago before classicism went out of fashion. It seems there may be another fledgling renaissance on the horizon once again, regarding an educated response to the nude in art, by the recent trend of small ateliers becoming established, devoted to this field of anatomical classicism.
The Greek nude was not a real person or any individual, but a synthetic cultural ideal representing human perfection in a god-like image. They all adhered to a prescribed and mandated proportional formulation; including the norm of 8 1/2 heads to determine height. This beauty and human perfection represented, manifested and inspired a sense of absolute truth. It was not really until within the last one hundred fifty years that we have come around to accepting a more honest proportional ratio of 7 1/2 heads in more modern nudes. Nudes more and more tend to be increasingly honest representations of individuals, sometimes devoid of any classical ideals and proportioning. One of my favorite instructors, Arthur DeCosta, persisted in being steadfast in preserving a tiny thread of Classicism in Philadelphia through the 1950's, '60's, and '70's, when it was highly unfashionable to do so; all the while painting hundreds of sophisticated and inventive allegorical nudes who were individually and unideally human and lovingly personal derivations of a particular favorite model. Could the Greeks have ever understood Professor DeCosta's aesthetic and truth, so beautifully, lovingly represented?
I better stop rambling on for the moment for it has become quite late and I need to retire until the morrow. Would anyone like to expand on the conversation?
Garth
Human On My Faithless Arm