Riding, Alan (September 25, 1995). "The School of London, Mordantly Messy as Ever". The New York Times . Retrieved February 16, 2013. Grimes, William (July 22, 2011). "Lucian Freud, Figurative Painter Who Redefined Portraiture, Is Dead at 88". The New York Times. The presentation of nudity in art has evolved dramatically throughout history, leading to an incredible array of artwork exploring themes of the body and socio-cultural identity. Monaghan, Peter (January 2, 2011). "Unveiling the American Nude". The Chronicle of Higher Education. During the 5th century BC, nude art became popular in Ancient Greece. A new language of naturalism and realism, as well as a pursuit of anatomical knowledge, led to an immense focus on the body.

In 1916, she painted Nude Arranging her Hair, which depicts a woman carrying out a mundane task in a frank, un-sexualised and non-erotic way. [44] The end of the twentieth century saw the rise of new media and approaches to art, although they began much earlier. In particular installation art often includes images of the human body, and performance art frequently includes nudity. "Cut Piece" by Yoko Ono was first performed in 1964 (then known as a " happening"). Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting away her clothing until she was nearly naked. Several contemporary performance artists such as Marina Abramović, Vanessa Beecroft and Carolee Schneemann use their own nude bodies or other performers in their work. Neo-realist figurative artists such as Jenny Saville continue this dialogue today. Saville’s visceral, grotesque representations of women, resolutely painted in the vein of Lucian Freud, challenge modern expectations and ideas of the female body.Nochlin, Linda (1986). "Courbet's "L'origine du monde": The Origin without an Original". October. 37: 76–86. doi: 10.2307/778520. JSTOR 778520.

Hammer-Tugendhat, Daniela; Zanchi, Michael (2012). "Art, Sexuality, and Gender Construction". Art in Translation. 4 (3): 361–382. doi: 10.2752/175613112X13376070683397. S2CID 193129278.Eventually the beefy young Connery would be encouraged to enter the Mr. Universe contest, during which he caught the eye of a local casting director who gave him his first acting role in a London production of South Pacific.

Patai, Raphael (1990). The Hebrew Goddess (3ded.). Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2271-9. Gimbustas, Marija (1974). The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-052001995-9. One often cited book on the nude in art history is The Nude: a Study in Ideal Form by Lord Kenneth Clark, first published in 1956. The introductory chapter makes (though does not originate) the often-quoted distinction between the naked body and the nude. [5] Clark states that to be naked is to be deprived of clothes, and implies embarrassment and shame, while a nude, as a work of art, has no such connotations. Mary Seton Watts, the artist's wife, wrote: 'When painting, Signor [Watts] referred to the studies made in charcoal on brown paper from this most splendid model [Long Mary] - noble in form and in the simplicity and innocence of her nature - a model of whom he often said that, in the flexibility of movement as well as in the magnificence of line, in his experience she had no equal. Many of the studies made from her are now in the possession of the Royal Academy and at the British Museum, while some are preserved in the Sculpture Gallery at Compton. They inspired his work from the first half of the 'sixties to the end of his life. The pictures 'Daphne', 'The Judgement of Paris', 'The Childhood of Zeus' - the Eve trilogy - 'Dawn', 'Olympus on Ida', 'The Wife of Midas', are notable examples of paintings in which he referred to these studies...'.During this period, study of the nude figure was something all male artists were expected to go through to become an artist of worth and to be able to depict historical subjects. [64] With regard to the distinction between art and pornography, Kenneth Clark noted that sexuality was part of the attraction to the nude as a subject of art, stating "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". According to Clark, the explicit temple sculptures of tenth-century India "are great works of art because their eroticism is part of their whole philosophy". Great art can contain significant sexual content without being obscene. [10] There is no specific reaction recorded to this particular painting, but it set me wondering if this had been a common occurrence in galleries throughout the land. In 1985, a group of anonymous feminist artists was formed in New York City called the Guerrilla Girls. Their mission is to expose gender and ethical bias in the arts, thereby encouraging greater gender and racial diversity and representation in art, politics, film and popular culture.

I can’t stress enough, if you are uncomfortable in any way it’s really important for you to say it out loud,” said White. “Good people don’t want you to feel uncomfortable in a work environment, so if they don’t react well to you telling them you feel uncomfortable then they aren’t a good person and you probably are not in a good work environment.”Other New York artists of this period retained the figure as their primary subject. Alice Neel painted nudes, including her own self-portrait, in the same straightforward style as clothed sitters, [47] Three Labors of Hercules, about 1530, Michelangelo Buonarroti, red chalk. Image: Royal Collection Trust / For Lynda Nead, the female nude is a matter of containing sexuality; in the case of the classical art history view represented by Kenneth Clark, this is about idealization and de-emphasis of overt sexuality, while the modern view recognizes that the human body is messy, unbounded, and problematical. [41] If a virtuous woman is dependent and weak, as was assumed by the images in classical art, then a strong, independent woman could not be portrayed as virtuous. [42] Late modern [ edit ] However, by the end of his life his works had become icons of the Postmodern era, depicting the human body without a trace of idealization, as in his series working with an obese model. [52]