The Female Nude
- emily whittle
- May 10, 2017
- 4 min read
The tradition of depicting the female nude is central to Western Art and dates back to the classical period. Although critics have claimed that the image of an unclothed body should only be regarded for aesthetic appreciation purposes (with the body simply another object), it is impossible to disentangle this ‘pure’ artistic vision from other preoccupations. For example, Titian’s Venus of Urbino shows us a young woman reclining on a bed, holding flowers in her right hand while gazing out at the viewer, with her dog asleep at her feet and her maidservants occupied in the background. Again, the woman conforms to ideals of Renaissance beauty, but there is more going on. Her expression is not one of unequivocal modesty, but instead has a more suggestive, almost inviting quality to it. The roses are a symbol of love and the myrtle on the windowsill might be a symbol of forthcoming marriage. The painting was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino and some commentators have seen the painting as serving as ‘an instructive model of sensuality for the extremely young Giulia Varano’ (Fossi 2001) [1] whom the Duke married in 1536 when she was only thirteen. In other words, this was akin to an instruction manual for the Duke’s young bride, educating her in the art of attraction and seduction. In any event, the woman is still a ‘Venus’.
The same pose and image of woman became established as a staple of Western art, and later artists used it either to echo or to subvert it. For example, Manet’s Olympia takes almost exactly the same reclining pose, but here, the subject is a prostitute. Manet wants us to recall the Titian painting, and to recognise the reference, but also to undermine it. The sitter’s look is direct, almost confrontational – certainly far from coy. She is defiant and challenging to the point of insolence. However, there remains the idea in the painting that this is a woman to be used for the service of men. The viewer finds himself in the position of client. In this painting, the maidservant is black, and a dividing background line separates her (and the black cat, a symbol of sexual activity) from the reclining woman. The necklace and bracelet, together with the shoes, only serve to emphasise the woman’s nudity. The light is clinical, harshly exposing its subject, and the fact that the maid’s flowers have brought no smile to the woman’s lips, lets us know that she works in this role, and is not simply an adornment.
When first shown in the Salon of 1865, Manet’s painting aroused scandal and scorn. Later, it was hung in the Louvre next to Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, painted in 1814, and in this context, more properly appreciated in the long tradition of reclining female nudes. However, this painting too, had attracted its share of criticism, not least for the exaggeration of the figure’s proportions. Again, in an effort to emphasise sensuality, the artist sacrificed anatomical realism. The painting isn’t about the woman depicted as an individual personality, but more about what she represents or promises her male viewer. As John Berger commented ‘women are depicted in quite a different way from men…because the “ideal “ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him.’ (Berger 1972) [2]
Perhaps the ultimate misoginistic take on the female reclining nude came in 1929 with Picasso’s Woman in an Armchair (1929).While a prime example of the artist’s revolutionary modernist style, the painting is both grotesque and horrifying, but also betrays a paranoia about women, their ‘power’ and the hate he at times feels toward them. We have to assume that Picasso was trying to capture what he felt to be the essence of femininity, but his cruel depiction of breasts and genitalia are barbarously aggressive. As Laura Payne observed ‘For the feminist movement, the reductive invasion of face and body underlines Picasso’s continual subjugation of the female image, particularly here, with the displaced vagina as mouth, complete with vicious teeth.’ (Payne 1999). [3]
Picasso himself made no secret of his wish to dominate the women who sat for him: ‘To displace, to put eyes between the legs, or sex organs on the face. To contradict…Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them! My painting is a series of cock-and-bull stories…’ (Hughes 1980)[4]
Another artist who challenged the conventional idea of beauty in the nude was Lucien Freud (1922-2011). In his work Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, the artist has posed his model on a sofa, and looks down on her (perhaps not just literally) to render in paint, viscerally, her ‘interesting’ excess flesh. The work is disturbing because, while technically brilliant, it does betray a cold, dispassionate and contemptuous attitude to the sitter. The title of the painting is impersonal, and he paints her while she is asleep, almost as if he wants to be totally disengaged from her personality. She is unconscious while he brings his own consciousness to bear down over her. This might as well be a still-life exercise. He exaggerates and over-emphasizes in a cold light, the shabby green hues of the sofa with their soiled and tattered arms, reflected in the sitter’s fleshy monumentality. The hyper-real image claims to subvert conventional ideas of ideal beauty, but his scrutiny is, in my opinion, not benign. Instead, when tackling his subjects he is ‘mastering their bodies as objects…or as animals as he once declared.’ (Cummings 2011).[5] Although Freud painted many male subjects (notably Leigh Bowery) with the same attitude and techniques, it is hard to feel anything other than misogyny in this work. It was sold at auction for £35m.
[1]Fossi, Gloria. Uffizzi Gallery - Art, History, Collections.Florence, 2001
[2]Berger, John. Ways of Seeing.London: BBC and Penguin Books, 1972.
[3]Payne, Laura. Essential Picasso.Bath: Parragon, 1999.
[4]Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New.London: Thames and Hudson, 1980.
[5]Cummings, Laura. “Lucien Freud: Life Writ Large.” theguardian.com.22nd July 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jul/22/lucian-freud-appreciation-laura-cumming.
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