Female Nude

This article considers the emergence of the nude in European art 1400-1600. It explains social understandings of nakedness and how this is affected by class, gender and age; and draws a distinction between the "academic" and "erotic" approaches to the naked body, also investigating the use of both male and female life models in the early modern period. Artists considered include Dürer, Titian, MIchelangelo and Rubens.

in Pierre Rosenberg et Louis-Antoine Prat (dir.), De David à Delacroix. Du tableau au dessin, Onzièmes rencontres internationales du Salon du Dessin, actes du colloque (30-31 mars 2016), Paris : Société du Salon du dessin / Dijon : L’Echelle de Jacob, 2016.

En las ceremonias previas a la boda el baño es imprescindible: confiere a la recién desposada la fascinación necesaria para atraer al esposo y, al mismo tiempo, la función purificadora del agua realza las nociones de castidad y juventud. La novia arrodillada y desnuda tomando un baño se incorpora a la iconografía del casamiento hacia el 430 a.C. Antes de esa fecha la desnudez de una mujer era juzgada como negativa a diferencia del desnudo masculino, símbolo de virtud que comprendía belleza física, nobleza de nacimiento y perfección espiritual. A partir de fines del siglo V los artistas confieren al cuerpo de la novia refinadas alusiones eróticas que se justifican por el matrimonio. La imagen de la novia desnuda, con su aura de respetabilidad y compromiso social, colaboró eficazmente en la aceptación del desnudo femenino como un paradigma de virtud y la pintura sobre cerámica jugó un papel fundamental en la difusión y popularización del concepto.

This essay looks at the role of "touch" in Renoir's paintings of the female body. I argue that Renoir's obsession with the tactile, while certainly an expression of sexual desire, is also connected to the shifting cultural values of the industrial era.

As eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian collectors filled their galleries with painting and sculpture, they followed European precedents in observing the academic hierarchy of genres and paying homage to the work of Old Masters.  This paper will highlight some of the particularities of Russian collections of this period by focusing on a single theme: the female nude. Drawing on recent studies of the art market in St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as rare primary sources, it will trace the patterns of collecting and display that emerge when this distinctly European subject arrives in Russia.

Peter the Great was the first Russian to form a significant art collection when he imported hundreds of sculptures for palace gardens in and around St. Petersburg in the 1710s. The Roman Venus he acquired for the Summer Garden was so precious that he placed her in a special gallery, open on all sides, and watched over by a guard. Aristocrats followed the tsar’s example as they acquired sculpture and painting to furnish their own palaces. When art collecting spread beyond the elite, however, men who had less exposure to European conventions of depicting and displaying the female form also added nudes to their gardens and galleries. While some conformed to the practices of their highly cultured social superiors, others had expectations of naturalism and believability that shaped their ideas about displaying idealized images of women in their collections.

This study dispels Soviet-era myths about a supposed innate Russian modesty that carried over into artistic tastes. More importantly, it helps to provide a more complete picture of European ideas about collecting and displaying art as they spread to distant cultures.

El presente trabajo recoge y ordena toda una serie de tipos iconográficos relacionados con el desnudo femenino bajomedieval, describe la situación de la mujer en la Baja Edad Media de la península Ibérica y reflexiona acerca de ello desde una perspectiva de género.

WONDER WOMEN: SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA, LAVINIA FONTANA AND ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE SELF-PORTRAIT PAINTING BY FEMALE ARTISTS

by Rosa Lena Reed Robinson

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts in Art History at
Studio Art Centers International
Florence, Italy

2017


This  thesis is focused on the self-portrait painting practice by three female artists from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods: Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi. Chapter I introduces the self-portrait as it developed specific to the Renaissance and in relation to a Greco-Roman classical ideal. The chapter focuses on Renaissance concepts of art and the very role of the artist. Chapter II studies the numerous self-portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola, the first great Renaissance female artist to have an international career. The artist’s self-portraits both became a foundation for those of later female artists and self-consciously expressed the new elite status achieved by this Lombard artist of noble lineage who worked as court portraitist for the Spanish monarchy. Chapter III examines the self-portraits and innovative identity self-portraiture of Lavinia Fontana of Bologna. It is demonstrated how her two early self-portraits built on the precedent established by Sofonisba, and yet, are of somewhat greater iconographic complexity. While in her maturity the artist developed self-portraiture into the identity self-portrait through the subject of Judith and Holofernes. Within her treatments of the theme in some examples she put herself into the figure of Judith and in others into Judith’s maid Abra. Lavinia Fontana’s final masterpiece, the improbable painting Minerva Dressing done at the end of her extensive career was likewise arguably an identity self-portrait. Minerva Dressing constitutes the first female fully nude figure painted by a female artist. Chapter IV focuses on Artemisia Gentileschi. This thesis designates the artist’s Pommersfelden Susanna and the Elders as both Artemisia’s first exact self-portrait and the first female full-length nude self-portrait painted by a female artist. The work is also an identity self-portrait. This chapter continues with a discussion of both versions of Artemisia’s infamous Judith and Holofernes (Capodimonte/Uffizi). Both works are arguably exact self-portrait paintings and identity self-portraits. Artemisia’s Allegory of Painting in London, often referred to as a self-portrait in scholarship, is suggested a perhaps better understood as an ideal identity self-portrait rather than a literal self-representation. The Allegory of Painting is considered together with other attributed self-portraits and portraits of the artist. A major theme in Chapter IV is the transition from literal self-representation to allegorical and ideal portrayal of the self. This thesis suggests that, as the artist’s career advanced, Artemisia Gentileschi did continue to paint both the exact and the ideal self-portrait. Finally, in the Conclusion, the legacy of the self-portraits of the Wonder Women, to adopt a phrase from Giorgio Vasari, is considered in reference to future female artists such as Elisabetta Sirani, Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vigée Le-Brun and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

À propos de Robert Morris, Vera Mantero, Gaëlle Bourges et Carolee Schneemann.
L'art de la performance depuis les années 1960 a le potentiel de mettre en acte un trouble des frontières de tout ordre - social, politique, moral, esthétique, etc. - que le nu à la fois signale et amplifie. Si l'histoire de l'art chorégraphique suit ses propres lignes, elle croise sans cesse les autres arts de son temps et ses lignes fusionnent tout particulièrement avec celles de l'art de la performance par cet intérêt commun pour la mise en avant du corps de l'artiste, dans sa dimension esthétique et politique et sa confrontation avec un public. Les travaux de Anna Halprin (depuis le milieu des années 1950) et la communauté artistique du Judson Dance Theater (1962-64) en témoignent, qui associent les chorégraphes à des figures marquantes de l'art de la performance. Le Judson Dance Theater à New York, porté par des chorégraphes, est traversé par une interdisciplinarité qui relève autant d'un modèle de collaboration entre artistes que d'une suspension des catégories de danseur, plasticien ou compositeur. Se définir comme performer - artiste qui agit, accomplit face à un public - est une façon d'échapper aux catégories conventionnelles et de s'autoriser, alors qu'on est danseur de formation, à composer (Steve Paxton, James Waring...) ou faire du cinéma (Elaine Summers, Rainer) ou à danser alors qu'on est plasticien (Robert Rauschenberg, Carolee Schneemann, Morris). Certains projets du Judson (comme Halprin en 1965) choisiront le nu comme mode d'expression : à quelles fins ? Quelles formes prend le nu en mouvement ? Et quelles frontières vient-il troubler ? Chacun des exemples examinés ici engage une forme de tension politique et un dialogue direct et parfois cinglant avec l'histoire de l'art et ses conventions. C'est que le nu ne fait pas toujours effraction dans un contexte donné : le nu a ses formes convenues (esthétiques ou sociales) - formes que la performance affronte.

A study of over 150 Attic representations of naked bathing and dressing women shows a major change ca. 430 BC from sexualized images directed largely at a male audience to respectable nudes, produced for a largely female audience, many in clearly nuptial context. Associated with the kneeling bather type, this reconceptualization of the subject coincides with the date of Zeuxis' famous painting of Helen; it likely showed her as a kneeling bather, establishing the female nude as a respectable subject two generations before Praxiteles' Knidian Aphrodite that merely completed the process.

«It is hard to imagine a contemporary sculptor without relating him to Maillol”. This is how, in 1930, Lionello Venturi began the paragraph dedicated to Arturo Martini’s stylistic sources of an article on the sculptor. The scholar’s instance is not isolated: upon careful examination, the French master had been, for some time, unanimously consecrated as an essential example of modern sculpture by European critics. Therefore, it is far more significant that Venturi’s statement can be applied to another Italian sculptor who, beginning from the mid 1930s, drew the main aspects of his own figurative language from a critical attitude towards Martini: Marino Marini. My paper aims to analyse the complex dialogue between Aristide Maillol’s sculptures and those of Marino Marini by examining the female nudes the Italian artist created from 1935 to 1945. I will formulate the comparison between the two sculptors from two points of view. The first looks at the use both made of a limited number of sculptural typologies, articulated differently. In this way, not only were they able to carry out their work with an impressive continuity, but they also explored the female nude, an academic theme par excellence, with a modernist attitude. I will argue that Marini’s interest in Maillol’s female nudes wasn’t limited to simply using the French master’s preferred subject (the Etruscan goddess of fruitful abundance, Pomona), rather it translated into the definition of a sculpture sustained by precise compositional and architectural norms. Secondly, I will attempt to demonstrate that if Maillol’s sculptures were a lesson for Marini to follow in terms of forms and volumes, the Italian master placed himself in a position diametrically opposite the older colleague in regards to the treatment of the surface. In fact, with the intent to go beyond Auguste Rodin’s expressive impetus, Maillol’s female nudes declare a strong continuity between form and modelling through the smooth surfaces that bind the general tendency of his art towards absolute plastic and abstraction. On the other hand, the skin of Marini’s young women and Pomone seems to disengage itself from the architectural developments of the forms on which the skin itself rests: it is always wrinkled and tormented, cut through by scratches which welcome and reflect the bright accidents and give a breath of life to the artistic material. I will explain this discontinuity between the two sculptors with Marini’s intention to mitigate his works’ abstract values through a naturalistic touch, and I will trace this balancing act between the model’s truth and the form’s stylization back to a conscious overturning of the results achieved by Maillol’s plastics. In light of a new consideration of Maillol and Marini’s work and by reading little-known and unpublished archival documents, I will develop these themes giving attention to the multiple opportunities Marini had to view Maillol’s works (the Venice Biennale of 1934, the 1935 trip to Paris of the Italian sculptor, John Rewald’s 1939 monograph on the French artist); the variation of the stylistic problems faced depending on the different artistic techniques (sculptures in terracotta, plaster and bronze, and drawings on paper); and the conscious ways the coeval press reproduced the statues, which were often the result of the collaboration between artists, photographers and editors.

This is really part I of "The Invention of the Female Nude . . . " (uploaded here). It presents the wide range of female bathing scenes on painted on Greek pottery (primarily Attic) leading up to the introduction of the Classical Kneeling Bather in Attic red-figure ca. 430-20 BCE, a respectable nude shown as a bride, that I argue was most likely copied from Zeuxis' famous Helen, a version of which was painted in Athens, probably before the more famous venation at Croton.

The French novelist Marie Darrieussecq published in 2016 a biography of the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, known for having been the first woman to portray herself naked. This article introduces this text in an interpretive struggle that has marked the reception of Modersohn-Becker’s work in feminist criticism from the 1970s to the present. Contrasting the vision that Darrieussecq offers of the German artist with that of art historians such as Linda Nochlin, Roszika Parker or Griselda Pollock, the reasons that the French author uses to present Modersohn-Becker as a pioneering artist in the developement of an artistic language that is articulated in feminine are identified and analyzed. In addition, a hypothesis that runs through the article is deployed: Darrieussecq constructs Paula Modersohn-Becker as a transdisciplinary referent, a precoursor who, beyond her scope of expression, the plastic, was able to expand the boundaries of female self-representation.

In 1939, in one of his best-known statements, Marino Marini juxtaposed life-size female nudes with portraiture. Compared to portraiture, the sculptor wrote, “the statue requires a vaster research into forms, lines, masses. My women, whom some find clumsy, are an answer to this concern. Nevertheless, this search for volumes is not the unique purpose of the sculptor, who must never forget that what touches most in a sculpture is always its poetry.” This paper elaborates on Marini’s female nudes of the late thirties and forties in light of the relationship between form and poetry, or in other words, between the plastic construction of volumes and the expressive power of surfaces. Firstly, it discusses the fracture between form and modeling, volumes and profiles, plastic development and surface definition, tracing a path à rebours from the Danzatrice (Dancer) of 1949 now at MoMA in New York to the Maschera (Mask) of 1936 at the Fondazione Marino Marini in Pistoia. Secondly, it offers an examination of Marino’s wooden Nudo femminile (Female nude) traditionally dated to 1932, showing a mechanical dependency between the latter and the 1936 statue, and fixing the chronology between 1936 and 1941.

Este ensayo monográfico examina el repertorio visual del pintor cubano Rubén Rodríguez (cuarenta años de carrera), a partir de nociones como el erotismo, la adoración a la mujer—en su cualidad totémica—desde el ensimismamiento heterosexual, y otras menos estudiadas como diversidad corporal y tecnologías de género, vigentes en su iconografía. Para ello, me auxilio de herramientas básicas del psicoanálisis y los estudios queer, mis charlas miamenses con el artista y valoraciones de colegas que adornan su fortuna crítica.

La operatividad de la imagen en sus contextos de producción y recepción / The effectiveness of the image in its production and reception contexts  (págs. 236-261)
Libro: Violencia política y de género en Latinoamérica: representaciones críticas desde el arte y la fotografía (2017) Ediciones Atlas, Santiago, Chile
ISBN: 978-956-368-835-1
Keyword: Fotografía, Imagen, arte-política

​

The treatment of the nude through the 19 th and early 20 th century. The treatment of the female nude in painting starts with an engagement in history painting, often inserted into a narrative. She was portrayed stretching out or laying, restricting eye contact with the viewer yet offering no obstacle to men's sight on her body. The traditional composition included landscapes filled with mountains and valleys as a metaphor to describe womanly curves. By the wake of the 19 th century, these representations were objects of desire and private enjoyment. In his 1814 painting Large Odalisque, Ingres was deliberately stepping away from the historical tradition of depicting females as unreachable goddesses. Rather, he created Odalisques, an exotized version of aristocratic women portrayed as female slaves or concubines. In this painting, her reclined body is slightly twisted so that she can face the viewer with her direct gaze serving as a compositional device to suggest her sexual availability and lack of purity. Her pose also accentuates the sensuality of her long, curved back and helps to hide her genitals. The artist no longer makes use of landscapes as a background but he follows an orientalist tradition, placing her in a foreign context with peacock fans, exotic fabrics and enormous pearls. As the 19 th century progressed, the female nude became an important subject matter in French painting. As mythological representations were still venerated in the Academy, Alexandre Cabanel created the Birth of Venus in 1863 using Neoclassical techniques and skills derived from his academic training. Therefore it appeals to a more traditional female nude composition. In his work, Venus floats above the waves in leisure while she is looking away from the expectator. Although the picture carries an erotic charge in the languid limbs and arched back, her nudity evoques virginity and purity magnified by the putti surrounding her. At this time there was a slight change in French academic art perhaps due to the invention of photography and painters rather than sticking to the Academy's grand themes, they sought more realism in their subjects. In Manet's infamous Olympia (1863) nudity was intended to shock rather than idealize. This time, the painting does not display a mythological goddess but the image of a prostitute. Manet rejected the long established representations of the nude and challenged the moral values of society. Olympia appears looking at the viewer in a confrontational way, her hand blocking her crotch has been interpreted as symbol for her sexual independence and restricted access to her body in return for payment taking the form of flowers in the scene. The controversial feel of the painting was intensified by Manet's use of bold brushstrokes, dark tones and simplified forms. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) is an abstract portrayal of prostitutes painted by Picasso in 1907 through which he radically contradicts the known conventions of erotic painting. The women in the scene are not the gentle and delicate creatures classically depicted. None of them are feminine or sensual. The two in the center display themselves like Venus rising from the sea, the one sitting on the right might suggest the pose of Manet's Luncheon on The Grass. While arms are raised in accessibility this is contradicted by hard, piercing gazes and tight mouths that convey not pleasure but danger. He also incorporates tribal imagery by using mask-like faces emulating African Art. The combination of references along with the artist's own interpretation resulted in asymmetrical faces and flat bodies broken into angular shapes inhabiting an incoherent and convulsive space. Picasso's deliberate harshness, hostility and simplicity in his depiction of the female nude marked a definite departure from tradition.

Una ambición cosmopolita: La Regeneración y el desnudo académico Francés en Colombia derante el siglo XIX Uma ambição cosmopolita: A Regeneración e o nu da Academia Francesa na Colômbia do século XIX Abstract: In Colombia, the conservative policies of La Regeneración, as championed by Rafael Nuñez, ushered in a new era of political and religious conservatism that paradoxically ran counter to the cosmopolitan ambitions of this new Republic. Against the backdrop of these nationbuilding and institution-building efforts, the Escuela de Bellas Ar-tes reflected the cosmopolitanism of La Regeneracion, through its leadership of internationally trained artists. As Director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes, Epifanio Garay introduced the practice of the live nude model in 1894, and the representation of the female nude in painting in 1899. Through a case study of Garay, a protégé of Nuñez, I argue how the inclusion of the female nude not only established the legitimacy and professionalism of the Escuela de Bellas Artes, and with it the cosmopolitanism of La Regeneración, but also exposed the contradictory role of the female nude as both an academic instrument, which Colombian artists like Garay learned in Paris, and a force of change in the way in which it exposed the limits of religious conservativism and social morality, thus transforming the "academic" nude into the embodiment of cultural tensions in a country, like Colombia, in the midst of transition.

Resumen:
En Colombia, las políticas conservadoras de La Regeneración, defendidas por Rafael Núñez, marcaron el comienzo de una nueva era de conservadurismo político y religioso que paradójicamente iba en contra de las ambiciones cosmopolitas de esta nueva República. Con estos esfuerzos de construcción de naciones e institu- ciones como telón de fondo, la Escuela de Bellas Artes reflejó, a través de su liderazgo de artistas formados internacionalmente, el cosmopolitismo de La Rege- neración. Como director de la Escuela de Bellas Artes, Epifanio Garay introdujo la práctica del desnudo en vivo en 1894 y la representación del desnudo femenino en la pintura en 1899. A través de un estudio de caso de Ga- ray, un protegido de Núñez, este texto argumenta cómo la inclusión del desnudo femenino no sólo estableció la legitimidad y el profesionalismo de la Escuela de Bellas Artes, y con ello el cosmopolitismo de La Regeneración, sino que también expuso el papel contradictorio del des- nudo femenino como instrumento académico que artistas colombianos como Garay aprendieron en París y una fuerza de cambio en la forma en que expuso los límites del conservadurismo religioso y la moral social. Transformando así el desnudo “académico” en la encarnación de las tensiones culturales de un país en plena transición, como lo era Colombia.

Resumo:
Na Colômbia, as políticas conservadoras da Regenera- ción, promulgadas pelo Rafael Núñez, caracterizaram o início de uma nova era de conservadorismo político e religioso que, paradoxalmente, ia contra as ambições cosmopolitas da nova república. Com o cenário doble da construção de identidades nacionais e de instituições republicanas, a Escuela de Bellas Artes tento refletir o cosmopolitismo, desde a Regeneración, e com artistas nacionais formados fora do país. Como diretor da Escue- la, Epifanio Garay introduziu a prática do modelo nu ao vivo em 1894 e a representação do nu feminino em 1899. Por meio do estudo do caso de Garay, que era mesmo um protegido de Núñez, este texto analisa a forma na que o nu feminino estabeleceu a legitimidade e o pro- fissionalismo da Escuela de Bellas Artes e, a traves dela, o cosmopolitismo da Regeneración. Na mesma linha, estuda como a Escuela expôs o papel contraditório do nu feminino como um instrumento académico (que os artistas colombianos como Garay aprenderam em Paris) que serviu mesmo como meio para revelar os limites do conservadorismo religioso e a moral social. Assim, o nu “académico” voltou a encarnação das tensões culturais de uma Colômbia em transição à modernidade.

The female bodies in the work ofLisa Yuskavage (1962, Philadelphia) initially appear to be erotic figures that are masterfully painted in sweet
pastel colors. Everything in the work seduces our gaze towards the work, which seem to please the viewer. Howeve4, the works confront us in a way that hinders a pure erotic experience. The theory of the male gaze, where the male viewer is made aware of his voyeuristic gaze, and  the concept of emotional formallsm, based on a s)rmbiotic relationship between the erotic visual language and the traditional application of the formal aspects underlie this confrontation. Elements such as color, light and composition determine the atmosphere in Yuskavage's
works. She combines a challenging, seductive visual language, partly inspired by pornographic sources such as the Penfftouse, with the traditional medium of oil pain! which she uses to portray her figures in a naturalistic way. The formal aspects in her work not only serve to create an illusion of reality, but attain a certain value ofthemselves through their associations and connotations. The traditional application of oil paint is avoided by many female artists for its sexist connotations and associations with the male gaze,butis used by Yuskavage precisely
for that reason. In Yuskavage's works, a swee! feminine and seductive atmosphere is created. Your gaze is lured into work, but what follows is
a slap in the face. The works confront the viewer and make you aware of the consequences of looking and the power of the gaze.

In a long-ignored text, the painter Gabriele Mucchi recalls Marino’s relationship with a fine arts student named Sistina. According to Mucchi, this girl “posed for some versions of the Pomona” and “stayed with Marino until he abandoned her for a girl who oddly resembled her: Mercedes.” This sentence helps to better understand the so-called “portrait” Sistina (c. 1938). This terracotta head, though, seems to have nothing to do with Marini’s several portraits of Mercedes. Instead, it is similar to the faces of some of his female nudes of the late 1930s. Considering both these observations and Mucchi’s testimony, the work cannot be defined as a “portrait” in the strict sense of the word. It is, more likely, a part of a full-length figure, from which it was detached at an unknown date. In other words, Sistina is the model, but she is not portrayed. The Sistina episode leads us to reconsider some differences in the artist’s work on female nudes, on the one hand, and portraits, on the other. Starting from this reflection, the second part of the paper is devoted to Marini’s dialogue with antiquity in the two genres taken into account. Firstly, the text focuses on the sculptor’s attention to some ancient models. In his full-length figures, for example, Marini mainly refers to the seductive bodies and the static faces of Greek art. In particular, the latter seem to be employed as inexpressive “masks” useful for bringing out, by contrast, the vital sensuality of the female nudes. Contrariwise, his portraits seem rather linked to Etruscan, Roman, Egyptian, and Renaissance models, conceived as examples of strong individual characterization. Secondly, the article aims to analyze the surface treatment in the two distinct genres. On the one hand, the scratches on the female nudes provide a new intense humanity and pictorial allure to the plastic construction of volumes. On the other, scraping interventions on the portraits were employed especially to avoid excessive realism and to accomplish an elegant archaeological effect. In both cases, Marino was like an imaginative archaeologist. Through opposite ways, he created his fascinating characters, ancient yet modern.