| The following text is from the book The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form written by the eminent art historian Sir Kenneth Clark. Princeton University Press 1956. |
|---|
| In countries where painting and sculpture were practiced and valued as they should be, the naked human body was the central object of art. It is widely supposed that the naked human body is in itself an object upon which the eye dwells with pleasure and which we are glad to see depicted. But anyone who has frequented art schools and seen the model that the students are industriously drawing will know that this is an illusion. The body is not one of those subjects which can be made into art by direct transcription—like a tiger or a snowy landscape. A mass of naked figures does not move us to empathy, but to disillusion and dismay. We do not wish to imitate; we wish to perfect. |
| Although the naked body is no more than the point of departure for a work of art, it is a pretext of great importance. The human body is rich in associations, and when it is turned into art these associations are not entirely lost. For this reason it can be made expressive of a far wider and more civilizing experience. It is ourselves and arouses memories of all the things we wish to do with ourselves. |
| No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow—and if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgment of what is known as "pure form" is inevitably influenced by it; and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot lie hidden. They risk upsetting the unity of responses from which a work of art derives its independent life. |
| Even so, the amount of erotic content a work of art can hold in solution is very high. The temple sculptures of tenth-century India are an undisguised exaltation of physical desire; yet they are great works of art because their eroticism is part of their whole philosophy. The intense application of great artists has made the nude into a sort of pattern for all formal constructions, and it is still a means of affirming the belief in ultimate perfection. The nude remains the most complete example of the transmutation of matter into form, and it is enthroned in the kingdom of the aesthetic sensation. |
|
Clicking on The Nude will allow you to see my efforts at achieving the principles discussed by Kenneth Clark in the paragraphs above. If looking at the nude body offends you, or you don't want to see these images, please use the choices below to return to some other part of this site. |