Research Point: How Women are Portrayed in Art - Part 4, Project 3

Q. Does the female nude exploit women for male gratification? Or does it depend on context? 

Wilendorf Venus, 25000-30000B.C.

My first reaction to this question is that there is no definitive answer. If there were, it would be possible to insert the word "always" before the word "nude" and be sure that there are no exceptions; but there are always exceptions..... According to Breazeale in The Language of the Nude, "the nude (for the past several hundred years in Europe) was a vehicle to express many meanings" including religious, classical and literary. But if we go back further to the first known depiction of a female nude, the Wilendorf Venus (right), we see a female nude who has been interpreted as a fertility symbol, perhaps of a Goddess. Female nudes also appear in Indian temple art from circa the first century B.C., but again are related to Goddesses of Fertility and have religious significance.

There followed a long period in Western European art when females were not depicted nude at all. Why? The Greeks were very skilled at showing heroic nude male figures, notably champions of the Olympic games. In fact the homo-erotic society that was Ancient Greece celebrated male nudity; and erotic displays of delectable perfect young male bodies were commonplace. The penis, erect or otherwise, was not hidden, and hirsuteness was an accepted attribute of mature male gender. Female nudity was quite the opposite, however, and not seen until Praxitales' famous Aphrodite of Knidos (see previous post - 11 June, 2014) which was to influence art for the next several hundred years (but even this was carefully devoid of female genitalia). A double standard definitely existed in public art where male/female nudity was concerned. 

Once Christianity took hold in Western Europe, the only permissible nudity was in religious  scenes depicting Adam and Eve, or the Last Judgement,  and nudity came to be associated with shame. The role of the nude was to stir the mind, not the passions and the Church was in charge.

 Susanna and the Elders (1610): Gentileschi

Portrait of Helene Fourment

It was not until the early 13th century that nudity regained respectability, and became a major theme in Western art. The Italians rediscovered an interest in their Classical past, the Church lost its monopoly on wealth and an art market began to emerge. The idealised female nude prevailed until the 16th and 17th century, when more naturalistic nudes were depicted, like Gentileschi's 1610 painting of Susanna and the Elders; Rubens' painting of his child-bride, Helene Fourment, in 1638; and Velazquez' painting (below) of Rokeby Venus (1647-51).

Rokeby Venus (1647-51): Velazquez

The early 18th century saw female life models being used in art academies in Britain, as in a sketch made by a young Hogarth in 1735. Drawing the female nude became established as the greatest challenge for artists, an area where they could compete to show their artistic prowess. In fact painting the female nude was more popular in Britain than it was in the rest of Europe, with France not using female life-models until the 19th century. One of Britain's best-known-but-later-forgotten painters of the female nude in the 18th century was York-born William Etty, (1787-1849) who became controversial for his "lascivious" portrayal of too much female fleshiness.  (For a 6-minute video of a 2011 exhibition of his work, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TTWeWzzkR8 ) In his defence, he said, 

"Finding God's most glorious work to be Woman, that all human beauty had been concentrated in her, I dedicated myself to painting—not the Draper's or Milliner's work—but God's most glorious work, more finely than ever had been done." 

Etty was in fact one of the major influences on Delacroix's depictions of the female nude in paintings such as the Death of Sardanopolis (1827).

 

Death of Sardanopolis (1827): Delacroix

Youth on the Prow and Pleasure at the Helm: Etty

Certainly his paintings of women were controversial, and he managed to cram so many pink and curvaceous naked subjects into one allegory that his rival JMW Constable called it "a bumboat"! The painting in question, Youth on the Prow and Pleasure at the Helm (right), 1830, was regarded by many as too indecent to be hung in respectable houses, but Etty steadfastly rebuked allegations of smuttiness by declaring,  "To the pure in heart, all things are pure." Etty's persistent denial of anything but purity of mind  makes me question the idea that simply incorporating female nudity in a painting exploits women for male gratification. The pose or activity of the woman, the context in which she appears nude, the behaviours of others in the composition, the intent or meaning ascribed by the artist, all have an effect on the viewer whose subjective experience of the work

When a work of art that displays nudity is being viewed, the responses from all viewers will vary; some might feel exploited, some might be moved by the beauty of the piece; some might see it as erotic, while others might see it as sensual; some might be scandalised while others might be amused. The intent of the artist must also be appreciated.

Origins of the World:- photo courtesy of www.gustavcourbet.org

As the 19th century progressed, there was a revolt among artists in France against the Academies and their stranglehold on artists' freedom of expression. Courbet shunned the idealised female form in favour of more realism and truth. His 1886 painting "Origins of the World" (opp.) looks as if it was intended to shock, given that it is explicitly shows a woman in a position that cannot be understood as anything other than sexual, given that it shows explicitly her genitalia and her legs wide open. I feel a little bit voyeuristic looking at this, as it is not a view of another woman that I  ever see in real life, and it brings back memories of gynaecological examinations where I feel very much powerless and at the mercy of the examiner. Obviously, I expect others to have a different reaction to this painting, as they cannot have the mental associations that I (and/or other women) are likely to make. It is probable that some people whose preferred sexual partner is female might find this painting gratifying because of the mental associations they have of a supine female body, but this might not be the case for, say, homosexual men, who might be unmoved by subject. All viewers, however, are likely to be able to appreciate the technical brilliance of the brushstrokes, the modernity of the composition and the determination to present female anatomy in its natural state rather than the airbrushed version offered by the ancients.


More deliberate attempts to shock followed, using, as Whitney Chadwick states in Women, Art and Society, "an erotically based assault on female form: Manet's and Picasso's prostitutes, Gauguin's "primitives", Matisse's nudes, Surrealism's objects". Renoir is quoted as saying, "I paint with my prick", and referring to his models as "beautiful fruit"; while Picasso said, "Painting......that is actual lovemaking". All of these artists are making a comparison between artistic creativity and sexual energy, and are presenting women as powerless and sexually subjugated. Carol Duncan in her article, "Domination and Virility in Vanguard Painting" points to a long history of male pleasure being the rationale for representations of the female body in art. They have depicted women as obedient animals, powerless before the artist. The liberation of artists like Vlaminck, Van Dongen or Kirchner means the domination of others (i.e.women); the artist's freedom requires their (womens') unfreedom.

Identifying the female body with nature, generation, and the instinctual life have become important areas of identification for some women artists. But this has had its pitfalls, not least because it seems to suppport allegations (by men) that this is the only aspect of existence that women can paint about, and sits well with the gender-stereotype notion that women are consumed by their neuroses. Many of the female artists who turned to the subject they know best - the female body - were sidelined in the debates raging around the modern art movements of the early decades of the 20th century. Two of the first female artists working with nude female forms were Suzanne Valadon and Paula Modersohn-Becker - hardly household names now. Georgia O'Keefe threatened to stop painting altogether unless critics ceased to over-analyse her work with Freudian interpretations of "female" imagery in her flower paintings. Feminism definitely was seen by her as "a burden and a barrier to her development as a painter". What, I wonder, would she have made of the expulsion of Leena McCall's painting of Ms Ruby May from the Mall Galleries this week? Regarded as "too pornographic" by the Mall Galleries after complaints from visitors, the painting was substituted with another nude that does not show any pubic hair.  REALLY??   IN  JULY, 2014???

Fulcrum (1997) Jenny Saville  photo courtesy of The Guardian

Jenny Saville, one of the Young British Artists of the 90's, has concentrated on painting the female nude and transgender/transexual bodies over the last 20 years. She has supported the feminist-led attempt to destroy the role of the muse, model or lover that has been historically assigned to women in the world of art. She constantly challenges the image we have of the stereotypical female/male/transgender body. She has stated that she wants to paint "modern bodies", which I take to mean the bodies we all see around us - in the park, at swimming-pools, on the beach, on the tube........ definitely not the idealised Goddesses of the ancient Greeks. (See a slide-show of her work here ). Her work shows none of the gender-stereotypes of the past - more warts-and-all depictions of fleshiness with no trace of the smuttiness directed at Etty or the faintly veiled sexual urges of Egon Schiele or Lucian Freud. What I see when I look at Jenny Saville's work is openness and honesty. Now there's an idea................... will it catch on?




References:

Burnage,S., Hallet,M.,and Turner,L., (2011) William Etty:Art and Controversy, London, Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd.

Breazeale,W. et al. (2008) The Language of the Nude: Four Centuries of Drawing the Human Body. Surrey: Ashgate
Chadwick, Whitney (1990). Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames and Hudson
Perry, G (ed) (1999). Gender and Art, Yale University Press



http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/djc/lifestudy/graves/
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/object.asp?exhibition=H2Hexhibs=H2HE18&object=913482&row=1 (sketch by Hogarth of a female life-model) 
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/07/painting-pornographic-pubic-hair-outrage 
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/jun/10/jenny-saville-paintings-oxford-solo-show?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487#/?picture=391319278&index=14