November 7, 2018 • 55 mins
The female nude is a cornerstone of Western art, so how should we interpret her importance? Cristen and Caroline investigate the art history and societal significance of these mysterious unclothed muses.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Stuff I've
Never told you. I don't know if this appeared on
your radar listeners, but it certainly appeared on mine. And
one of the latest issues of the Batman Comics for
(00:28):
the adult aimed DC Black label Batman Damned, readers could
see Batman's penis for the first time. Are Bruce Wayne's penis? Who?
However you want to refer to him? And I want
to make so many jokes, but no, the reason we
wanted to bring it up is not to make jokes.
It's to talk about how shortly after this edition came out,
(00:49):
d C Comics backtracked a bit, announcing future prints of
that edition would be censored. And thanks to the listener
Rose for this tip. And the reason they gave was
quote it did not add to the story, and it
got his thinking. Here at stuff I've never told you
about the plethora of gratuitous female nudity across all of
(01:10):
our media. That didn't add to the story, or I
would argue that it didn't. So in this classic episode,
we take a look at the history of the female
nude censorship and art. Happy're listening. Welcome to Stuff, Mom,
never told you. From how stupp works dot com. Hello
(01:36):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline
and this week's theme is art history, or rather art history.
Ha ha, I love it. Yes, indeed, today we're going
to be talking about the female nude in art, is
particularly in Western art, and this male muse female nude relationship,
(02:00):
which I know I remember seeing on screen for the
first time in the classic film Titanic. That's right, that
was so racy for me in seventh grade. Yeah, I
watched it in the theater with my mother because she
felt like she needed to supervise me seeing this nude scene,
and it was it was a little uncomfortable. I saw
(02:21):
it with Chad that's my father. I saw with my father. Yeah.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Jack painting Kate Winslet as Rose wearing
that wearing that necklace. Yeah, and nothing else. Yeah. Spoiler alert,
she's not wearing anything. She's wearing clothes in the rest
of the movie. But anyway, another spoiler the boat saints No.
(02:43):
But since this isn't a podcast on my memories of
watching James Cameron movies with my mother, let's talk about
the female nude in art history because the history of
this figure is fascinating. The very fact that we refer
to it as a nude and not a naked figure
is really interesting. And then that whole relationship between the
(03:07):
male artist and female muse has so much contains so
much for us to unpack. Yeah, that's right. And so
let's start off with a quote from Lynda Need, who's
an art historian and author of The Female Nude. She
writes issues concerning the female body and cultural value, representation,
feminism and cultural politics, and the definition and regulation of
(03:29):
the obscene are brought into clearer focus when the Female
Nude is read as a historical text. And I mean,
if you think about it, not knowing anything about art,
it would make sense that there is some historical context
to the nude through the centuries. But there really is,
Like you said, so much to unpack, so much different
(03:50):
meaning wrapped up in different representations of the human body. Yeah,
and what we're gonna be doing in this podcast is
trying to do just that. Read the Female Nude as
an historical text, and we're going to be highlighting some
specific paintings and we'll be doing our best to describe
them as not being professional art historians or art critics,
(04:14):
and to kick things off, though it was actually the
group Guerrilla Girls which originally raised this question of do
women have to be naked to get into the MET?
And they were raising issue with the abundance of female
nudes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the abundance
(04:36):
of male painters and sculptors represented by them, and the
statistics they collected just by walking through the museum. We're
a little imbalanced, shall we say. Yeah. So they've done
this campaign a couple of times, starting in nine, and
they ended up putting out a bunch of uh press releases,
(04:56):
billboards basically media around the number verse that they found
in nine, they found that less than five percent of
the artists in the met art sections were women, but
of the nudes were female. Fast forward to two thousand four,
both of those numbers had dropped to three percent and
eight three percent, respectively, and in when they repeated their study,
(05:20):
they found that less than four percent of the artists
in the MET were women, but seventy six percent of
the nudes were female. So we're getting fewer female artists
in the MET and a fewer female nudes which kind
of shakes out to not necessarily progress. But they were painting.
(05:42):
Pun there, painting an important point about obviously what kind
of art is considered important, and also the very gendered
history of art. They were not really going to get
into that much in this episode because for a long
time women were even allowed in art schools. We've been
having to play catch up. Yeah, exactly. And so let's
(06:03):
take a walk, shall we, yes through the history of
of naked lady statues and paintings. So let's start in
classical antiquity, because this is really where the female nude begins. Now,
of course, we should mention that there are some exceptions
(06:23):
to that, such as the Venus of Villendorff Statue of
fertility got Us with the very large breasts and buttocks,
which dates back to around thirty thousand to twenty thousand BC,
and also some ancient Indian temple art depicting female nudes.
But a lot of art historians will tell you that
(06:44):
the nude, and especially the female nude, is a primarily
Western art phenomenon that really begins in Greece. Yeah, and
a lot of this is coming from Larissa Bonfante's paper
Nudity as a costume in classical art. And I was
just telling christ before we came into the studio that
this is a very long paper and it could be
(07:04):
interpreted as a little dry. I'm sorry, Larissa, but it
is so interesting and and me having only taken one
art history class ever in college, um, and I was
such a nerd for it and I loved it. But
you know, journalism called so I couldn't. But anyway, it
is absolutely right up my alley. And she she really
delved so deeply into the context surrounding both the male
(07:27):
nude and the female nude and why one looks the
way it does and why the other one is maybe
not as acceptable or was not as acceptable to begin with.
But she points out that in ancient Greece art culture,
everything really revolved around the male nude and what it meant,
because the male nude was based on this ideal image
(07:48):
of a man, and the ideal image of a man
came from athletes. Greeks were all about working out and
getting buff. Uh in the buff. So yeah, the first
Olympics in the nude, there were no there were no
Nike jerseys and shorts. Now, I mean they did wear
like a loincloth type things sometimes, and she points out
(08:10):
that Greeks throughout throughout ancient Greek history, they themselves weren't
even sure where their tradition of donning the costume of
nudity came from, but that you were supposed to be
this like super hyper masculine, buff guy who was ready
to fight if you were nude. Yeah, And she notes
(08:31):
too how that ideal male nudity was really considered quote
the highest kind of beauty, which is a little bit
in opposition to maybe our perception of beauty in the
twenty one century today, which is often more of a
feminine ideal. But back then, oh, the body was all
about that male chiseled, proportioned body. Yeah. And they were
(08:55):
definitely intended to celebrate perfection and not reflect physical reality
or idea. They weren't trying to like show what you know.
The agreekola down the street looked like they wanted to
show the ideal man who was an athlete or a
hero or a god. Because male nudity equals power. It
really symbolized power. But it's also important to keep in
(09:16):
mind that homo eroticism and homosexuality around this time in
ancient Greece was totally a okay, you know, it wasn't
out of the norm um. And so the male figure,
especially in the gymnasium, uh, the nude male figure was
absolutely accepted and considered to be a thing of beauty. Well.
And it's also worth noting too that in exactly what
(09:38):
you said about how those nudes weren't intended to show
what the average male body looked like. They were in
the oldest school sense of the word photoshopped or airbrush.
Maybe we have been doing that, removing our flaws and
creating these beauty ideals since we first kind of started
all of this to begin with. And the Greek word
(09:59):
coros ko u r o s is meant to describe
these types of sculptures of men who are naked standing
in those kinds of classical power poses. Yeah, and a
lot of time, if they weren't meant to signify a
god like Apollo specifically, then they were used in a
temple maybe to honor him or in a way to
(10:21):
sort of honored divinity. But the female equivalent, the Corey statue,
who's also a a woman standing upright facing forward, is
usually clothed, and she was not based on any ideal
feminine shape or appearance. She was basically the male shape
that they were like, Oh, we're going to put a
dress on this one. It's a lady. And so while
(10:45):
the male was supposed to symbolize divinity and perfection, he
was nude and that was fabulous. The woman was definitely
going to be clothed because the context of nudity versus
clothing in ancient Greek society. I mean, there's so much
that we could get into, but we won't, but I
will just touch on it by saying that a man
was ready to fight basically when he was nude, and
(11:07):
he was ready to work out and get buff and sweat.
Whereas if a woman were seen without clothes on, she
with her pale skin and her soft flesh because she
doesn't go outside that much and do hard work like men.
Do you know, she was considered unprotected if she was
if she was nude or naked, and um would the
nudity for a woman at this time would symbolize something bad,
(11:28):
like she was about to be attacked, or she was
a prostitute or something like that. Yeah, it's symbolized the
exact opposite of the power inherent to male nudity, which
was weakness or powerless ness. Now, Bonfonte also points out
that it could also function as powerful magic. But even
in that regard, it's obviously not something that is as
(11:51):
normalized and accepted. Right, But if we hit the fourth
century b c. Well things get shaken up a little bit.
Weak it and very famous aphrodite sculpture by Praxiteles and
he totally throws convention out the window. Yeah, I mean,
this sculpture is mentioned in pretty much any article that
(12:13):
you would read about the history of the female nude
because it's kind of the first in the sense of
depicting full female nudity. But it's important that Praxiteley does
this on a sculpture of a divinity, the goddess of love.
It's usually um goddesses or you know, these mythological female
(12:34):
figures that are considered acceptable to be shown in the nude,
and especially the association with love, eroticism, sex, and also
to mythological figures representing fertility would be acceptable as well,
because I mean think about how you know, in this
kind of context, the female body is really just a
(12:55):
vessel for sex reproduction. Yeah, exactly, desire, things like that. Yeah,
depicting a naked a nude or naked regular lady is
definitely considered impoor taste. But the gods and the goddesses
were almost above all that. It's almost okay to depict,
you know, the Goddess of love being naked, because you
know you're not. She's not going to care about anything
(13:15):
you say. Yeah, well, she would probably have possessed that
powerful magic through her nudity. And bon Fontin notes even
in classical Greek art, and this is a trend that
will continue into more modern art, naked women, just everyday
women would usually be considered prostitutes in that context and
(13:35):
an art artistic context. But that's not to say that
the work Bipraxitalities was not at some points titilating. Just
because it was a goddess and she's above your scorn
or whatever people doesn't mean that the viewers weren't like,
oh my goodness. Yeah. Jonathan Jones, who is an art
(13:56):
critic writing for The Guardian, notes that, uh, apparently at
least one person, at least one person maybe more, attempted
to copulate with capital inne venus with the statue. Uh,
and she's standing, we should note she's naked and one
of her hands is covering up her mom's pubis and
(14:19):
the other hand is sort of cupping her breast, And
I mean, seeing it from our perspective today, it doesn't
it's not shocking because we see so many We've seen
so many statues, sculptures and paintings like this. Um, but
I can understand how if you don't see this kind
of female figure in such an unclothed state and it
(14:43):
being like okay, and her not just being symbolized as
a prostitute, maybe that's I mean, what do you do
with that? How to be? I can understand how it
would be shocking and perhaps even arousing if this is
the first time you're seeing something like this, right, And
a lot of the source says that Kristin and I
were looking at point out that the very way that
(15:04):
capitaline Venus is standing also sort of informs the way
that people think about it and how they interpret it
as erotic versus art, you know what I mean. Um,
The fact that she's actively trying to cover herself up
is doing even more to draw attention to the fact
that she could be or is a sexual being. You know,
(15:25):
if she weren't marble. Uh, statues are people to Caroline,
statues are people too, and by covering up, it's almost
more erotic than if she were just kind of staying
there with her hands on her hips, like smoking a
marble cigarette, you know, like I'm just hanging out. Well,
and notable too that she's standing next to her her garment.
(15:46):
She's just come from bathing herself, so there's a reason
for her nudity. She's not just hanging out for the
naked for the sake of being naked, because that would
be awful. Well, that would be yes, that would be
inappropriate totally. Um. But we see things start to shift
um in the Byzantine Era and in the Middle Ages
(16:07):
with the spread of Christianity, female nudes start to get
covered up basically until classical antiquity gets rediscovered and becomes
exalted in the Renaissance. And so when we start in
the Byzantine Era, like in the fourth century through to
the Middle Ages, nudity was associated with guilt or shame
or even low brow humor, especially women's and overall, naked
(16:31):
men and women were associated closely with pagan Greek culture,
which was not okay. And then when you get into
the Middle Ages and the fifth to about the fourteenth century,
things take a turn because at this point nudity is
considered down right sinful. Yeah, the emphasis is completely on chastity.
So Christianity is kind of like shutting down put on
(16:52):
a robe. But then with this sort of rediscovery and
newfound appreciation for Greco Roman cultural values, and you see
this big time in the artwork, and you see these
kinds of images starting to pop up, for instance with
botta Celli's Birth of Venus, which was painted in fourteen
(17:13):
eighty four, and this is a very famous painting. Most
of our listeners have probably seen this. You can probably
recall Venus standing in her seashell, covering her one, you know,
one of her breasts, and then her hair is that
her hair that's covering up her her vulva, So she's
she's she's nude, but again it's not it's not naked, right,
(17:37):
And she's standing very similarly to the way that Capital
and Practicelli's Capital in Venus was standing um, but rather
than kind of looking to the side like the other
Venus was, she's looking directly out at you, being like, yeah,
my goddess, what Yeah, And This is thought to be
one of the renaissances first large scale female nudes, and
(17:57):
it's notable too. The Botall was like, Hey, you know
what I'm gonna do. I'm going to use this whole
mythology plus spiritual, spirituality and divinity thing to make it
okay for me to be depicting a woman like this,
and that playing with religious and mythological imagery and symbolism
is going to be something that other artists as well
(18:18):
will use in order to sort of prevent scandal from happening.
Otherwise it makes it permissible for them to be painting
women in this way. Yeah, and I mean that's something
that we're going to see for the next forever. Yeah. Yeah,
And and and I'm glad that you mentioned the gaze too,
because that's something that comes up a lot as well
(18:39):
in terms of how, at the time that these paintings
were being shown for the first time, how they were
in the level to which they were interpreted as scandalous
or not. Well, speaking of scandalous, we get to Titians
Venus of Urbino in fifteen thirty eight, and there's a
lot happening in this picture. Speaking of the gaze, the
(19:02):
subject of the painting is staring right out at the viewer.
The subject is completely naked, and she has a hand
again over her volva, but nothing covering her breasts, and
she is I mean, she is staring right at you
and like here I am, I'm on this chaise lounge
and I'm holding grapes, and there's a dog and a kid,
and there's another lady in the room who knows what's
(19:22):
going on. Yeah, I mean you have like presumably her
child and maybe the nursemaid in the background. But the
thing though about her hand, her left hand, which is yes,
covering up her volva, and though there is a shadow
in that region, there are no definitive pubic hairs visible,
(19:42):
which we will revisit. But her fingertips are not entirely visible.
And some people found that a bit much as well,
because it's this question of Titian what were you getting at?
What is she really doing here? Are we catching her
in a moment of pleasure or is her hand just
(20:03):
benignly resting in that spot, just resting in that spot
there could be a breeze, yeah, I mean, holding a
pose for a portrait, it would get a little chili. Yeah,
One would assume. But it's interesting too, talking about playing
with symbolism. In contrast, you have this, you know, rather
(20:25):
erotic female body in the foreground, but then in the
background you have motherhood, the child, the maid of the
sleeping puppy next to her. It's really interesting how all
of that sort of balances out right now. Meanwhile, in
the fifteenth century, drawing from life had really become part
of workshop practice. Although women typically we're not used as
(20:49):
models because Michael Angelo's women, for instance, we're just modified men.
And this was the same thing that we saw with
the Greek statues of the Karai, which were male figures
sort of modified to be female. Yeah, and this is
something that Ellen Graves, writing for the University of Dundee
Museum uh points out. And I mean, considering that women
(21:10):
were excluded that much from the artistic process that of
course they weren't in art schools or receiving any kind
of formal training at that point, and certainly weren't painting
any nudes. It was even questionable that they would even
be able to pose nude for for these paintings. And
yet them being pictured in this way presented is still
(21:34):
more acceptable as long as they're not actively involved in it,
then it's okay. But we can look at them and
appreciate them from afar, from behind a frame, the gilded frame.
It's all a metaphor. But jumping forward to the seventeenth century,
the Baroque period begins to embrace more realism. Example, Flemish
(21:56):
Peter Paul Rubens, who was the seventeenth centuries go to
two female nude dude. Rubens was all about some some
cravaceous lady nudes. And I first learned about Rubens Caroline
when I was a kid because and I need to
ask them about this, because I have no idea why.
My parents had this huge Rubens coffee table book that
(22:19):
they kept in our formal dining room that we never
really went into all that much. And I remember playing
in there one time as a child randomly and pulling
out this book and be like whoa, oh, WHOA Should
I even be looking at this? And it was like, yeah,
I don't. For my pretty conservative parents. It was a
(22:39):
little bit of a curveball to find at the time,
but uh, yeah, I kinda. You gotta love his fleshy ladies.
I was just gonna say they're very fleshy, and I
was also going to say that, I mean, I think
that's your The whole thing about your parents having that
book is a perfect snippet of like history and the
way that anyone views art and the nude woman that
(23:02):
like that's safe and that's okay because it's fine art,
you know, and it's it's like harmless almost. It's not
a magazine like an editorial, you know, spread in a
magazine or anything like that. But yeah, I mean Ruben's
Ruben's ladies definitely were moving away from that Greek quote
unquote ideal of like literally using math to achieve the
(23:25):
perfect proportion both for male nudes and female nudes and statues.
Um his women and many other artists of his time
started showing women who, yeah, they have hips, or they
have bellies, or they have butts, they even have a
little bit of cellul life. I know, it makes me
think of us weekly and like showing you know, those
poor celebrities in their bathing suits and like cars, they're
(23:46):
just like us. Yeah, rubens women, They're just like us.
Thank you, rubens Um. Around the same time, though, Bernini
also is using nudity in his sculpture, although anitults are
often covered. For instance, if you look at one of
his sculptures, Apollo and Daphne, it's really interesting because you
(24:08):
have Apollo kind of chasing after Daphne, and in this
context her nudity is considered acceptable because going back to
hearkening back to that classical Greek association of female nudity
with vulnerability and weakness. Clearly she is being like caught
in one of those vulnerable states, and she's trying to
(24:30):
escape Apollo. She's turned away from him rather than toward
him to suggest willingness. But you have to keep in mind,
I mean, while all of this is going on through
the centuries, the Catholic Church is definitely trying to put
a stop to all of this nudity, all of these
naked ladies and naked gents. You know, they're saying that
it's so pagan. This hearkens back to some like Greek
(24:51):
pagan ritual and we hate it. And can't you just
like put a T shirt on her, you know, or
like the sixteenth century equivalent of a T shirt. But anyway,
we have so many more great pieces of art to
talk about, and so much more historical context to get into.
We come right back from a quick break, so welcome
(25:15):
back to this stuff. Mom never told you Art History Museum,
which really only contains trying to count up the number
of pieces we're talking about. It's a small collection but important.
And we wanted to kick off this half of the
podcast with my favorite historical anecdote that we ran across
in this female nude research, and it has to do
(25:39):
with Diego Valesquez's rokeby Venus, which is I mean, there's
a lot to talk about with this portrait because we
have it's thought of as one of the most famous
buttocks is of all times. But yes, beautiful, she's got
a great butt. So you've got this slender but curvy
(26:00):
woman lying. Uh, she's facing away from the viewer, so
you just see her back. She's looking into a mirror
that's being held up by a chubby little cupid. But
she's she is looking into that mirror. Is it at you?
Is it at her? Is she contemplating her nudity? Is
she contemplating how vulnerable she is? Or is she just
(26:20):
admiring herself? Who knows? Who knows? So many layers going
on here. So Alaska has completed this work in the
mid seventeenth century, and fast forward to nineteen fourteen. And
I know I'm jumping out of our timeline for a moment,
but it's worth it for this story. So fast forward
to nineteen fourteen in England. This painting is hanging in
(26:44):
the National Gallery and a suffragette by the name Mary
Richardson has had enough of the rogue b Venus and
she walks in and slices it at least five times
with a meat cutter. What was going on, Caroline, Well,
she was she was really upset about how Emmeline Pankhurst
(27:07):
had been treated during her arrest, and she was disgusted
not only with that but also the idea of men
ogling this naked woman and her fabulous milky skin in
her butt. She was like, no, this naked lady is
not going to be around anymore. You're not going to
be staring at this naked woman and you know, getting
all excited and twitter painted and also free free am ALIGNE,
(27:30):
free mlne and so she the media though nicknames her
as a result of this slasher Mary, which really makes
her sound like a serial killer, but she was just
a rugby venus killer. Although the painting was restored, even
though you can if you google image this, you can
see images of it with the slashes in it. She
really went for it. I think my first reaction to
(27:52):
hearing that story was like one of horror that that
you would slash any piece of art, I mean, no
matter what the context is or whatever. But the more
the more I thought about it, the more I realized that,
I think that adds more value to it because now
historical piece of art that in and of itself is
so precious, now contains the scars of a really important
(28:14):
period of history. Yeah. Well, and also too in terms
of what we're talking about at the beginning of the podcast,
reading these works as historical texts and how it intersects
with the actual real life women on the other side
of these paintings and how they were dealing with their
bodies in society like it's it definitely speaks volumes. But
(28:40):
back to our art historical timeline. Let's get into the
eighteenth century with Rococo. Rococo gets a little playful. I
kind of love Rococo. Yeah, lots of swirls. Yeah, they're
just like, hey, Rocco, here's something I love it. Yeah.
Um yeah, So this is the mid eighteenth century ro
a Co painter Frand Swas Bouchet's nude painting of Marie
(29:03):
louise Oh Murphy. What's a name, Marie louise O Murphy. Right, So,
in the mid eighteenth century Rococo painter Frand Swas Boucher
paints a nude of Marie louise O Murphy, the mistress
of Louis the fifteen, and it is described as playfully
erotic because she's not dainty. She's not like daintily covering anything,
(29:25):
or she is looking away from the viewer. But she
girlfriend is totally splayed out on her blanket. She's sprawled out,
just just hanging out on sort of a chaise lounge.
I like to imagine that she's watching the Real Housewives,
like over the edge of her of her sofa bed
or whatever this is. If you TOAs some stretchy pants
on her, she is me on the weekends, No, I know,
(29:50):
but I mean she's she's definitely also fleshy as well.
You know, she is not what you would call like
the Greek ideal of the perfect nude virginal woman. I mean,
this woman is a mistress of a member of the
royal family. Yeah, I mean it kind of puts it
all out there. And it's also the exemplary of Rococo's
(30:11):
playful eroticism right where they still got their hangups, but
they're like, well, but let's add some flourishes to I mean,
look at if you look at the fabrics that are
in this painting, I mean they're beautiful, They're so rich.
I mean, she's lying on it looks like pink and
white fabric, but it's just like the pink just pops,
and there's also some orange, kind of brownish rust colored
(30:33):
fabric all around her, and it's like you can almost
feel the texture of the fabric. I get lots of
velvet associations with it. But yeah, she's why wouldn't you
be split out on that fabric? It looks great hanging
out just you know, Marie Louisa Murphy, rubbing my rubbing
my bits on all of this pink silk. It's great.
What a life. Bring me a sandwich. Now, when we
(30:56):
move though into the nineteenth century, the boundaries of the
female nudes start to get tested. Some artists start to
get a little bit more experimental, but at the same
time putting a little broader context on this. The exclusion
of women from life drawing classes, academies, and art schools
(31:18):
continues for most of the century. So even though by
this point male artists have been around for so long,
they're like, we've painted so many female nudes, We're gonna
start to get a little more experimental, especially envelope, and
women are like, can we just get into one of
those life drawing classes. I mean, I'm fine with my
watercolors over here, but I wouldn't well in terms of
(31:38):
testing those boundaries and getting more experimental. We see Mayonnaise
Infamous Olympia in eighteen sixty three, and what is so
interesting about this painting, which features a woman positioned almost
exactly like Titian's Venus of Urbino. She's covering well, she's
kind of got her legs crossed, but so she has
(31:59):
her hands sort of a cross her lap, but I mean,
you can see her breast, she's not covering it up,
and she's looking directly at the viewer with a maid
or some sort of servant next to her um. But yeah,
she's defiedly looking at the audience, which adds to the
fact that man A definitely use nudity in this picture
to shock rather than to idealize, because this woman, the
(32:22):
subject of this painting was a famous prostitute, and a
lot of the people who came through the gallery and
saw this might have recognized her. Oh, hello, Olympia, I
just saw her. Hello, I owe you some money. Now.
On the flip side of that, though, Eugene Delacroix, Liberty
Leading the People uses female nudity in a different sense.
(32:46):
It's not so much to shock and titillate. It echoes
classical Greek nude motifs with Lady Liberty showing her breast,
exposing her breast to symbolize revolution and liberty. It's depicting
the French Revolution. She's holding up the French flag and
she is leading the charge with all of these men
(33:09):
behind her. So that's a totally different kind of context
to see. So talking about the kinds of experimentation going on, Yeah,
so much symbolism because she's right in the middle of
this smoky, bloody, dirty battle scene, but she herself is
still very pale, and yeah, those exposed breasts are such
a such a symbol. It's not just yeah, like you said,
(33:29):
it's not just to titillate. It's to show This is
harkening back to those Greek ideals of democracy. It also
reminds me too of Amazonians, where their whole thing was
going into battle with with the exposed breast singular. You
show those men, that's right. Um. This is also, though,
the century where we start to see more depictions of
(33:51):
female nudes as a dangerous women. Lots of eves Delilah's
salamis popping up, um. One example is the eight six
Edvard Monk painting Jealousy too, where you have this eve
like figure who is sort of halfway nude in the
background reaching up to pluck what looks to be an apple.
(34:14):
Standing next to a man in the foreground. You have
a guy who looks really bummed out. It's a creepy painting. Yeah,
he's like, I should have known better than to trust
that Eve. She will lead that other guy astray as well.
But again, if we look at her, if we look
at all of these venuses, what what what is missing
(34:37):
aside from any skin color but white, what is missing, Caroline,
We're missing some body hair, specifically pubic hair. There is
no body hair. Yeah, and oh my god, this I
mean we could have done an episode purely on just
pubic hair, or the lack thereof in classical and neo
classical art fascinating. I mean, to be fair, when you
(35:01):
look at male nudes, there's not a ton of pubic hair,
but there's at least a suggestion, whereas when it comes
to the women, it really looks like a Barbie doll
in that sense. Yeah, and a lot of that goes
back to that Bonfonte paper about the ideal image of
the of the human form and where that came from,
(35:22):
and the fact that you know, the ideal male form
is the buff athlete, but the ideal female form, or
the even the ideal idea of a female human is
one who is virginal, pure, very young. So that's why
a lot of the time you saw Greek statues of men,
even though they're buff and they're like supposed to be
the ideal, they have smaller penises because that meant youth.
(35:45):
Younger men have smaller penises. And I know it's getting
sort of sort of iffy here, but stick with me.
And it was the same for the female figure. A
lot of times she would have smaller breasts to signify
that she's younger. And what went along with that is
a lack of body hair, and so what are all
of these images that we're talking about based on classical
(36:08):
Greek art? Yeah, yeah, and this was something that was
discussed in a chapter very read in Modern Art, a
critical introduction, because yeah, we read textbooks sometimes on the podcast. Um,
there's this whole artistic distinction too, between being nude and naked,
because it's really important that these women, in order to
(36:30):
be appreciated and almost exalted in an artistic sense, to
be these romantic muses, they were nude because to be
naked would be to have body hair, would be to
show pubic hair, and just really what our bodies look
like when we are actually naked. But the nude is
(36:51):
something more elevated. It's it's airbrushed in a lot of ways. Yeah,
and of course we have to mention the story of
the art critic who was terrified by p a care. Yeah,
and this this is an alleged story that circulates a lot,
so it's grain of salt, but it's fantastic regardless. Yeah,
So there's this story about Victorian era art critic John Rushkin,
(37:13):
who you know, he was super familiar with hairless nudes
in the art gallery. But when he went home with
his wife on their wedding night, he supposedly refused to
consummate the relationship because he was shocked. Shocked, I tell
you to see her pubic hair. But the happy ending
(37:34):
to that is that apparently Ruskin's wife was like, okay,
i'll see you later. That's not okay, And then she
married remarried another guy who I think it was aware
that pubic hair existed. And I mean I think that
ties in to a lot of the attitude about pubic hair,
(37:54):
which is that and and the nude versus the naked
thing or the naked thing for people who ever read
Lewis Grizzard. But um, somebody with body hair, male or female,
is somebody who's like a real, real human, fleshy person
that you might have sex with or who might be
having sex with someone else. But the marble, cold, stark,
(38:16):
white nude is something that is it's like perfect and
precious and pure. Yeah, but it's it's notable too that
with those classical female nudes, yes they're all bald, but
sometimes early sketches of them might contain hints of pubic hair,
so they just kind of gradually edited it out. Um,
(38:39):
and early modern artists also kept with that convention or
used either a woman's hand or the angle to conceal
where pubic hair would be. So that's why you always
see these venuses throughout the centuries in repose, but with
usually like their left hand just conveniently covering up their vula,
(39:00):
which I mean, to be fair, that is a natural
way that all women lay on a chaise lounge. You
automatically put one hand, whether your clothes or not, over
you just have to go there. It's just the hand.
It just it just seeks it out like a missile.
I mean, it is warm. Um. Well, something else they
got people warm and hot and bothered was Francisco Goya's
(39:24):
eighteen hundred painting Lamya dan Nuda, which is one of
the first paintings to intentionally show lady pubic hair. Yeah,
and here's the thing. It showed just a hint, just
the tiniest, tiniest bit of pubic hair. And she I
mean also, let's talk about her gaze. She's laying back,
(39:46):
her hands are behind her head, and she is looking
directly at the viewer. Um and the addition of a
little bit of pubic hair made it rather scandalous, to
the point that when it was owned by the Spanish
Prime Minister, it was kept in a private room. You
wouldn't put out something like that in your drawing room
(40:07):
where other people might come and be like, WHOA, oh goodness,
who was that prostitute on the wall? I know? And
it's it's funny though, because this is from but she's
posed in a way that we would be very familiar
with in like pin ups poses, and the amount of
pubic hair that is featured in this painting is so
minimal it's it's almost as minimal as Maria Bellows in
(40:30):
that movie that almost received an n C seventeen rating.
Remember she almost received an n C seventeen rating until
they cut the scene that had her little landing strip
and suddenly it was fine. It got an R rating.
But again, like, it's just helpful to point out that
people have and will always be scared of ladies body hair.
But it's also that triple threat almost literally of pubic hair,
(40:54):
the direct gaze, and also a more inviting kind of pose.
She is rather open with her her hands behind her
head like that, but that is absolutely nothing compared to
what French artists Gustave Courbet painted on commission in eighteen
sixties six and it's a painting called The Origin of
(41:14):
the World. And it is unlike anything we have seen
up to this point because it is a full on
close up of a woman's volva with pubic hare, with
ample pubic butt crack. I mean, it's basically she's lying
down with her legs spread and you, your view as
the viewer, is straight on. Yeah. And it's really interesting
(41:38):
that the painting as it is, as it's known now
is headless, legless. It's really just a close up of
her mid section and her volva. But apparently it's only
part of a full nude that he painted. And then
some art historians think that the guy who commissioned the painting,
(42:01):
who's really into erotic art, chopped out everything else and
just blamo made it what it is today. It's a
nice piece to hang above the fireplace. Yeah, it's really homy,
you know, it is, yeah, the Origin of the World.
But it was so surprising, like, especially as we were
researching this and kind of walking through this timeline of
like okay, oh, the demure nude after demure nude and
(42:24):
then whoa wow. Even though the image itself, considering if
you have seen it a naked female body, it's not
all like, it's not shocking, but in the context of
female nudes it is. Yeah, it's very shy because it's
just it's so real, like that got real. Yeah, it
got real, photo realistic, photo realistic. Yeah. And then in
(42:45):
nineteen seventeen, police closed a Paris exhibition of Madigliani's paintings
because again they revealed pubic hair. It is a signifier
of sex, and thus it is associated with, like we've said,
prostitutes and pornography. Yeah. And even again though too, with
Madigliani's paintings, there is very little pubic hair shown and
(43:09):
it's really not even that graphic. Like his style is
not realistic at all. But these women are, they're looking
at you, their hands are above their heads. Also, this
one in front of us has a little bit of
armpit hair as well. She does, she does even more
than that. That's like the most body hair we've seen
so far. She's also orange. She is orange, which is
(43:30):
sort of neked and ora neked and orange. Uh. Yeah,
the tanning went awry that day. She stayed in a
little too long. Um. The art world's discomfort, though with
female pubic hair is still palpable, which is kind of
wild to consider. In two thousand and fourteen, for instance,
artist Lena McCall's portrait of Ms. Ruby May was removed
(43:54):
from the Society of Women Artists Annual exhibition because it
was deemed porner graphic and unfit for quote children and
vulnerable adults vulnerable to what pubic hair? I guess, yeah,
I mean the painting was this woman, Um, basically, she's
she's fully clothed, but she has her pants on zipped
(44:15):
and sort of pulled down a little bit so that
you can see pubic hair, and she's looking right at you.
She's got an eyebrow cocked and I think she's smoking
a piper a cigarette or something. But yeah, again, the
combination of a woman with agency seemingly looking right at you,
being like, what here I am wearing my little suit
with my pube showing, and that kind of outrage though
(44:35):
happening exactly a century after Slasher Mary is cutting up
the rogueby Venus in the National Gallery is I mean,
it's astounding and in addition to this mystery of the
missing pubic hair, one other glaring similarity with all of
(44:56):
these female nudes that we've talked about is how they
are all white. When it comes to female nudes in
Western art, you rarely see women of color, except for instance,
in the case of Mana's Olympia, there is a woman
of color, but she is in the background and clothed
and is obviously uh made or a servant of some sort. Right. Yeah.
(45:20):
We read a paper called a Pedagogy of the Black
Female Body by ao A. Klie and she talks a
lot about how and why the black female body is
missing from art, and it's really sort of a complicated,
multilayered point that she brings up about slavery and about
the way that African women's bodies were displayed, and how
(45:44):
post colonial era, post slavery, there was an effort to
combat that image of the hyper sexual black woman, and
so her figure was covered up. But then there's the
question of, well, why are we covering this woman up this,
you know, hypothetical women are subject of a painting up
when she could be the subject of a beautiful painting
(46:05):
or sculpture just like anyone else. Yeah, And it's for
that reason that she writes, quote, the female nude has
not been an ideologically correct artistic pursuit for African American artists.
And this also hearkens a lot to our podcast on
Women's Butts and Sarki Bartman a k. A. HoTT and
(46:27):
taught Venus who is the primary example of that kind
of scientific pornography really that was happening at the time,
of putting African women on display to naked, are almost naked,
to ogle their bodies in that kind of way. And
then on top of that, of course, like you said,
(46:47):
this hyper sexualization that was going on. And this was
something also explored in the book Skin Deep, Spirit Strong,
The Black Female Body in American Culture, which discusses how
art historian Judith Wilson in the early nineties looked for
and found zero black female nudes painted by African American
(47:08):
artists in the nineteenth century, again because the subject was verboten.
And then further, this project called the Image of the
Black Woman in Western Art research identified only one full
nude of an African American woman from the nineteenth century,
and it was created though by a visiting Swiss artist.
And then the author goes on to talk about how
(47:30):
there are beyond that very few nineteenth and early twentieth
century nudes of black women. It's just, I mean, it's
really just doesn't exist in a lot of ways, right, because,
as we've touched on throughout this episode, what we see
on on the canvas or in marble is typically an
(47:51):
artists or a group of artists concept of what ideal
feminine beauty or ideal male beauty is, and frequently black
or African American subjects were completely left out of that
because black men and women in our country were definitely
thought to be dangerous or hyper sexual WHEREA, and so
they therefore could not fit this sort of pure virginal
(48:15):
idea of what femininity should be. Well, and it seems
like we we end up with then this hierarchy of
almost morality and like what is deemed beautiful in art,
where at the top you have these idealized, classical, young, virginal,
hairless female nudes, and then that image of the more
(48:37):
mature with hair prostitute, usually white, and then women of color. So,
I mean, it's so you start to see all of
these kinds of patterns emerging, which leads us to these
questions of, well, what is all of us, all of
this telling us what are we supposed to think. Now
when we walk through the met, say and see you
(48:58):
know that of all those female nudes going on, and
especially considering the fact, yes, they're painted almost exclusively by
male artists, and you don't see that reciprocal relationship with Oh, well,
we also have this huge body of uh no pun
intended of male nudes that are painted by female artists
(49:19):
because those guys were their muses. Yeah, because women, like
you said, were excluded from those schools, from those academies.
It's not like they were out there in the sixteenth
century or you know, seventeenth century getting a commission because
that was unfeminine and inappropriate. Um. So, a lot of
female artists, and there there were female artists, a lot
(49:39):
of them would never ever be able to achieve the
standing that some of these men did with their nudes.
And it's interesting too to see how with more contemporary
female artists there's not so much an interest in like, well,
let's paint a lot of penises, will show them, but
rather read an intent to reclaim the female nude. Yeah,
(50:03):
and I wonder yes, and I and I think that,
um seeing some contemporary nudes by women of women are
fascinating and they're definitely more on the Reuben and Ruben's
end of the spectrum than than not um. But I
do this does make me wonder about the context of
that that forever, the female nude has just equaled perfection, purity,
(50:30):
the man's ideal of what femininity is. So it's it's
interesting when you have women like those painting uh, paintings
like Ruby may Um, what that means to them and
what they wanted to mean to their audience, because it
obviously means something different than the capitaline venus for instance. Well,
and that's something that contemporary artist Jenny Saville, whose body
(50:54):
of work has really focused on the female nude and
sort of playing around with that and reclaiming it and
painting it in less flattering ways than you you might
see in classical art. Um She has said, quote, there's
a thing about beauty. Beauty is always associated with the
male fantasy of what the female body is. I don't
think there's anything wrong with beauty, it's just what women
(51:17):
think is beautiful can be different. So it's interesting to
see how that how the nude, the female nude changes
when the artist is also female again, so lovely to
get different people's perspectives into art and life. That's right.
Diversity is important, So now I want to hear listeners
(51:38):
perspectives on these things. I have a feeling that we
have some art history students listening, perhaps some practicing artists,
maybe some painters. We would love to get some more
expert insight into this whole female nude thing. So let
us know all of all of your new thoughts. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
(52:00):
You can also tweet us at mom stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Okay, I have a
letter here from Bethany about our director's episode. She says,
I recently listened to your podcast about the first female directors,
(52:20):
and oh my gosh, was I inspired and a bit angered.
As a film student wanting to be a director, we're
required to take film history lessons. The three women you
mentioned were never discussed in any of my classes, and
that really ticks me off. This truly is a man's industry,
and I, for one, am inspired by these three ladies
and others to change that. After I listen to the podcast,
(52:42):
I immediately began searching YouTube for their works, especially Lois
Webber's Hypocrites. When I have viewed a number from each,
I'll definitely email back with my thoughts. However, for a
film that isn't necessarily directed by a female but stars
Gina Rowland and is phenomenal, please watch A Woman under
the Influence, directed by her husband John Cassavetti's and also
drying Peter Folk. It's a great film. Thank you ladies
(53:03):
for doing this podcast and opening my eyes to how
much I didn't know about my career in terms of
being a woman, and who has paved the way for
me to have the opportunities I can. So thank you.
Bethany Well, I've met the letter here from Samantha who
was inspired to write us after listening to our interview
with Julie SEAgel, founder of Dear Kate, and also a
(53:23):
listener letter about um someone else who was doing the
same thing of going into a stem field and then
turning toward the apparel industry. And she writes here, I
am getting a science degree in textiles. We often overlook
the science part of the garment and textile industry. A
lot of effort is put into keeping people comfortable and
(53:45):
safe and there are laws to follow in tests that
have to be done on almost every garment that you see.
There are acts in the US that states specifically what
and how textiles are labeled, and there are a lot
of specific regulations regarding flammability, children's a pair al and
even regulations on how to label fibers that come from bamboo.
Most of these regulations have at least one test to
(54:07):
prove that the textile falls within the acceptable limits, and
this must be done in an accredited lab. There is
also a ton of current research and development in medical
textiles and protective textiles. So with all these tests and
all this research being done, it's surprising to me that
these women feel weird going into apparel. With the science background,
anyone can design a pair of panties or a shirt
(54:29):
or a dress with a little bit of creativity and
a pencil. It takes an understanding of the science behind
the scenes to understand the best fabric choice, how, when, why,
tests are done, and to make educated decisions regarding things
like which die to use and which finish. I think
having a background in science and an understanding of business
gives you a leg up in the industry and will
(54:49):
come in handy as you grow your business and encounter
all these regulations being placed on the textile and apparel industry.
So thanks Samantha for highlighting this step field that we
might not often think of, and thanks everybody else who's
written into us. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address and for links to all
of our social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
(55:11):
and podcasts, including this one with our sources. So you
can read more about female nudes, head on over to
stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Stuff I've
Never told you. I don't know if this appeared on
your radar listeners, but it certainly appeared on mine. And
one of the latest issues of the Batman Comics for
(00:28):
the adult aimed DC Black label Batman Damned, readers could
see Batman's penis for the first time. Are Bruce Wayne's penis? Who?
However you want to refer to him? And I want
to make so many jokes, but no, the reason we
wanted to bring it up is not to make jokes.
It's to talk about how shortly after this edition came out,
(00:49):
d C Comics backtracked a bit, announcing future prints of
that edition would be censored. And thanks to the listener
Rose for this tip. And the reason they gave was
quote it did not add to the story, and it
got his thinking. Here at stuff I've never told you
about the plethora of gratuitous female nudity across all of
(01:10):
our media. That didn't add to the story, or I
would argue that it didn't. So in this classic episode,
we take a look at the history of the female
nude censorship and art. Happy're listening. Welcome to Stuff, Mom,
never told you. From how stupp works dot com. Hello
(01:36):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline
and this week's theme is art history, or rather art history.
Ha ha, I love it. Yes, indeed, today we're going
to be talking about the female nude in art, is
particularly in Western art, and this male muse female nude relationship,
(02:00):
which I know I remember seeing on screen for the
first time in the classic film Titanic. That's right, that
was so racy for me in seventh grade. Yeah, I
watched it in the theater with my mother because she
felt like she needed to supervise me seeing this nude scene,
and it was it was a little uncomfortable. I saw
(02:21):
it with Chad that's my father. I saw with my father. Yeah.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Jack painting Kate Winslet as Rose wearing
that wearing that necklace. Yeah, and nothing else. Yeah. Spoiler alert,
she's not wearing anything. She's wearing clothes in the rest
of the movie. But anyway, another spoiler the boat saints No.
(02:43):
But since this isn't a podcast on my memories of
watching James Cameron movies with my mother, let's talk about
the female nude in art history because the history of
this figure is fascinating. The very fact that we refer
to it as a nude and not a naked figure
is really interesting. And then that whole relationship between the
(03:07):
male artist and female muse has so much contains so
much for us to unpack. Yeah, that's right. And so
let's start off with a quote from Lynda Need, who's
an art historian and author of The Female Nude. She
writes issues concerning the female body and cultural value, representation,
feminism and cultural politics, and the definition and regulation of
(03:29):
the obscene are brought into clearer focus when the Female
Nude is read as a historical text. And I mean,
if you think about it, not knowing anything about art,
it would make sense that there is some historical context
to the nude through the centuries. But there really is,
Like you said, so much to unpack, so much different
(03:50):
meaning wrapped up in different representations of the human body. Yeah,
and what we're gonna be doing in this podcast is
trying to do just that. Read the Female Nude as
an historical text, and we're going to be highlighting some
specific paintings and we'll be doing our best to describe
them as not being professional art historians or art critics,
(04:14):
and to kick things off, though it was actually the
group Guerrilla Girls which originally raised this question of do
women have to be naked to get into the MET?
And they were raising issue with the abundance of female
nudes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the abundance
(04:36):
of male painters and sculptors represented by them, and the
statistics they collected just by walking through the museum. We're
a little imbalanced, shall we say. Yeah. So they've done
this campaign a couple of times, starting in nine, and
they ended up putting out a bunch of uh press releases,
(04:56):
billboards basically media around the number verse that they found
in nine, they found that less than five percent of
the artists in the met art sections were women, but
of the nudes were female. Fast forward to two thousand four,
both of those numbers had dropped to three percent and
eight three percent, respectively, and in when they repeated their study,
(05:20):
they found that less than four percent of the artists
in the MET were women, but seventy six percent of
the nudes were female. So we're getting fewer female artists
in the MET and a fewer female nudes which kind
of shakes out to not necessarily progress. But they were painting.
(05:42):
Pun there, painting an important point about obviously what kind
of art is considered important, and also the very gendered
history of art. They were not really going to get
into that much in this episode because for a long
time women were even allowed in art schools. We've been
having to play catch up. Yeah, exactly. And so let's
(06:03):
take a walk, shall we, yes through the history of
of naked lady statues and paintings. So let's start in
classical antiquity, because this is really where the female nude begins. Now,
of course, we should mention that there are some exceptions
(06:23):
to that, such as the Venus of Villendorff Statue of
fertility got Us with the very large breasts and buttocks,
which dates back to around thirty thousand to twenty thousand BC,
and also some ancient Indian temple art depicting female nudes.
But a lot of art historians will tell you that
(06:44):
the nude, and especially the female nude, is a primarily
Western art phenomenon that really begins in Greece. Yeah, and
a lot of this is coming from Larissa Bonfante's paper
Nudity as a costume in classical art. And I was
just telling christ before we came into the studio that
this is a very long paper and it could be
(07:04):
interpreted as a little dry. I'm sorry, Larissa, but it
is so interesting and and me having only taken one
art history class ever in college, um, and I was
such a nerd for it and I loved it. But
you know, journalism called so I couldn't. But anyway, it
is absolutely right up my alley. And she she really
delved so deeply into the context surrounding both the male
(07:27):
nude and the female nude and why one looks the
way it does and why the other one is maybe
not as acceptable or was not as acceptable to begin with.
But she points out that in ancient Greece art culture,
everything really revolved around the male nude and what it meant,
because the male nude was based on this ideal image
(07:48):
of a man, and the ideal image of a man
came from athletes. Greeks were all about working out and
getting buff. Uh in the buff. So yeah, the first
Olympics in the nude, there were no there were no
Nike jerseys and shorts. Now, I mean they did wear
like a loincloth type things sometimes, and she points out
(08:10):
that Greeks throughout throughout ancient Greek history, they themselves weren't
even sure where their tradition of donning the costume of
nudity came from, but that you were supposed to be
this like super hyper masculine, buff guy who was ready
to fight if you were nude. Yeah, And she notes
(08:31):
too how that ideal male nudity was really considered quote
the highest kind of beauty, which is a little bit
in opposition to maybe our perception of beauty in the
twenty one century today, which is often more of a
feminine ideal. But back then, oh, the body was all
about that male chiseled, proportioned body. Yeah. And they were
(08:55):
definitely intended to celebrate perfection and not reflect physical reality
or idea. They weren't trying to like show what you know.
The agreekola down the street looked like they wanted to
show the ideal man who was an athlete or a
hero or a god. Because male nudity equals power. It
really symbolized power. But it's also important to keep in
(09:16):
mind that homo eroticism and homosexuality around this time in
ancient Greece was totally a okay, you know, it wasn't
out of the norm um. And so the male figure,
especially in the gymnasium, uh, the nude male figure was
absolutely accepted and considered to be a thing of beauty. Well.
And it's also worth noting too that in exactly what
(09:38):
you said about how those nudes weren't intended to show
what the average male body looked like. They were in
the oldest school sense of the word photoshopped or airbrush.
Maybe we have been doing that, removing our flaws and
creating these beauty ideals since we first kind of started
all of this to begin with. And the Greek word
(09:59):
coros ko u r o s is meant to describe
these types of sculptures of men who are naked standing
in those kinds of classical power poses. Yeah, and a
lot of time, if they weren't meant to signify a
god like Apollo specifically, then they were used in a
temple maybe to honor him or in a way to
(10:21):
sort of honored divinity. But the female equivalent, the Corey statue,
who's also a a woman standing upright facing forward, is
usually clothed, and she was not based on any ideal
feminine shape or appearance. She was basically the male shape
that they were like, Oh, we're going to put a
dress on this one. It's a lady. And so while
(10:45):
the male was supposed to symbolize divinity and perfection, he
was nude and that was fabulous. The woman was definitely
going to be clothed because the context of nudity versus
clothing in ancient Greek society. I mean, there's so much
that we could get into, but we won't, but I
will just touch on it by saying that a man
was ready to fight basically when he was nude, and
(11:07):
he was ready to work out and get buff and sweat.
Whereas if a woman were seen without clothes on, she
with her pale skin and her soft flesh because she
doesn't go outside that much and do hard work like men.
Do you know, she was considered unprotected if she was
if she was nude or naked, and um would the
nudity for a woman at this time would symbolize something bad,
(11:28):
like she was about to be attacked, or she was
a prostitute or something like that. Yeah, it's symbolized the
exact opposite of the power inherent to male nudity, which
was weakness or powerless ness. Now, Bonfonte also points out
that it could also function as powerful magic. But even
in that regard, it's obviously not something that is as
(11:51):
normalized and accepted. Right, But if we hit the fourth
century b c. Well things get shaken up a little bit.
Weak it and very famous aphrodite sculpture by Praxiteles and
he totally throws convention out the window. Yeah, I mean,
this sculpture is mentioned in pretty much any article that
(12:13):
you would read about the history of the female nude
because it's kind of the first in the sense of
depicting full female nudity. But it's important that Praxiteley does
this on a sculpture of a divinity, the goddess of love.
It's usually um goddesses or you know, these mythological female
(12:34):
figures that are considered acceptable to be shown in the nude,
and especially the association with love, eroticism, sex, and also
to mythological figures representing fertility would be acceptable as well,
because I mean think about how you know, in this
kind of context, the female body is really just a
(12:55):
vessel for sex reproduction. Yeah, exactly, desire, things like that. Yeah,
depicting a naked a nude or naked regular lady is
definitely considered impoor taste. But the gods and the goddesses
were almost above all that. It's almost okay to depict,
you know, the Goddess of love being naked, because you
know you're not. She's not going to care about anything
(13:15):
you say. Yeah, well, she would probably have possessed that
powerful magic through her nudity. And bon Fontin notes even
in classical Greek art, and this is a trend that
will continue into more modern art, naked women, just everyday
women would usually be considered prostitutes in that context and
(13:35):
an art artistic context. But that's not to say that
the work Bipraxitalities was not at some points titilating. Just
because it was a goddess and she's above your scorn
or whatever people doesn't mean that the viewers weren't like,
oh my goodness. Yeah. Jonathan Jones, who is an art
(13:56):
critic writing for The Guardian, notes that, uh, apparently at
least one person, at least one person maybe more, attempted
to copulate with capital inne venus with the statue. Uh,
and she's standing, we should note she's naked and one
of her hands is covering up her mom's pubis and
(14:19):
the other hand is sort of cupping her breast, And
I mean, seeing it from our perspective today, it doesn't
it's not shocking because we see so many We've seen
so many statues, sculptures and paintings like this. Um, but
I can understand how if you don't see this kind
of female figure in such an unclothed state and it
(14:43):
being like okay, and her not just being symbolized as
a prostitute, maybe that's I mean, what do you do
with that? How to be? I can understand how it
would be shocking and perhaps even arousing if this is
the first time you're seeing something like this, right, And
a lot of the source says that Kristin and I
were looking at point out that the very way that
(15:04):
capitaline Venus is standing also sort of informs the way
that people think about it and how they interpret it
as erotic versus art, you know what I mean. Um,
The fact that she's actively trying to cover herself up
is doing even more to draw attention to the fact
that she could be or is a sexual being. You know,
(15:25):
if she weren't marble. Uh, statues are people to Caroline,
statues are people too, and by covering up, it's almost
more erotic than if she were just kind of staying
there with her hands on her hips, like smoking a
marble cigarette, you know, like I'm just hanging out. Well,
and notable too that she's standing next to her her garment.
(15:46):
She's just come from bathing herself, so there's a reason
for her nudity. She's not just hanging out for the
naked for the sake of being naked, because that would
be awful. Well, that would be yes, that would be
inappropriate totally. Um. But we see things start to shift
um in the Byzantine Era and in the Middle Ages
(16:07):
with the spread of Christianity, female nudes start to get
covered up basically until classical antiquity gets rediscovered and becomes
exalted in the Renaissance. And so when we start in
the Byzantine Era, like in the fourth century through to
the Middle Ages, nudity was associated with guilt or shame
or even low brow humor, especially women's and overall, naked
(16:31):
men and women were associated closely with pagan Greek culture,
which was not okay. And then when you get into
the Middle Ages and the fifth to about the fourteenth century,
things take a turn because at this point nudity is
considered down right sinful. Yeah, the emphasis is completely on chastity.
So Christianity is kind of like shutting down put on
(16:52):
a robe. But then with this sort of rediscovery and
newfound appreciation for Greco Roman cultural values, and you see
this big time in the artwork, and you see these
kinds of images starting to pop up, for instance with
botta Celli's Birth of Venus, which was painted in fourteen
(17:13):
eighty four, and this is a very famous painting. Most
of our listeners have probably seen this. You can probably
recall Venus standing in her seashell, covering her one, you know,
one of her breasts, and then her hair is that
her hair that's covering up her her vulva, So she's
she's she's nude, but again it's not it's not naked, right,
(17:37):
And she's standing very similarly to the way that Capital
and Practicelli's Capital in Venus was standing um, but rather
than kind of looking to the side like the other
Venus was, she's looking directly out at you, being like, yeah,
my goddess, what Yeah, And This is thought to be
one of the renaissances first large scale female nudes, and
(17:57):
it's notable too. The Botall was like, Hey, you know
what I'm gonna do. I'm going to use this whole
mythology plus spiritual, spirituality and divinity thing to make it
okay for me to be depicting a woman like this,
and that playing with religious and mythological imagery and symbolism
is going to be something that other artists as well
(18:18):
will use in order to sort of prevent scandal from happening.
Otherwise it makes it permissible for them to be painting
women in this way. Yeah, and I mean that's something
that we're going to see for the next forever. Yeah. Yeah,
And and and I'm glad that you mentioned the gaze too,
because that's something that comes up a lot as well
(18:39):
in terms of how, at the time that these paintings
were being shown for the first time, how they were
in the level to which they were interpreted as scandalous
or not. Well, speaking of scandalous, we get to Titians
Venus of Urbino in fifteen thirty eight, and there's a
lot happening in this picture. Speaking of the gaze, the
(19:02):
subject of the painting is staring right out at the viewer.
The subject is completely naked, and she has a hand
again over her volva, but nothing covering her breasts, and
she is I mean, she is staring right at you
and like here I am, I'm on this chaise lounge
and I'm holding grapes, and there's a dog and a kid,
and there's another lady in the room who knows what's
(19:22):
going on. Yeah, I mean you have like presumably her
child and maybe the nursemaid in the background. But the
thing though about her hand, her left hand, which is yes,
covering up her volva, and though there is a shadow
in that region, there are no definitive pubic hairs visible,
(19:42):
which we will revisit. But her fingertips are not entirely visible.
And some people found that a bit much as well,
because it's this question of Titian what were you getting at?
What is she really doing here? Are we catching her
in a moment of pleasure or is her hand just
(20:03):
benignly resting in that spot, just resting in that spot
there could be a breeze, yeah, I mean, holding a
pose for a portrait, it would get a little chili. Yeah,
One would assume. But it's interesting too, talking about playing
with symbolism. In contrast, you have this, you know, rather
(20:25):
erotic female body in the foreground, but then in the
background you have motherhood, the child, the maid of the
sleeping puppy next to her. It's really interesting how all
of that sort of balances out right now. Meanwhile, in
the fifteenth century, drawing from life had really become part
of workshop practice. Although women typically we're not used as
(20:49):
models because Michael Angelo's women, for instance, we're just modified men.
And this was the same thing that we saw with
the Greek statues of the Karai, which were male figures
sort of modified to be female. Yeah, and this is
something that Ellen Graves, writing for the University of Dundee
Museum uh points out. And I mean, considering that women
(21:10):
were excluded that much from the artistic process that of
course they weren't in art schools or receiving any kind
of formal training at that point, and certainly weren't painting
any nudes. It was even questionable that they would even
be able to pose nude for for these paintings. And
yet them being pictured in this way presented is still
(21:34):
more acceptable as long as they're not actively involved in it,
then it's okay. But we can look at them and
appreciate them from afar, from behind a frame, the gilded frame.
It's all a metaphor. But jumping forward to the seventeenth century,
the Baroque period begins to embrace more realism. Example, Flemish
(21:56):
Peter Paul Rubens, who was the seventeenth centuries go to
two female nude dude. Rubens was all about some some
cravaceous lady nudes. And I first learned about Rubens Caroline
when I was a kid because and I need to
ask them about this, because I have no idea why.
My parents had this huge Rubens coffee table book that
(22:19):
they kept in our formal dining room that we never
really went into all that much. And I remember playing
in there one time as a child randomly and pulling
out this book and be like whoa, oh, WHOA Should
I even be looking at this? And it was like, yeah,
I don't. For my pretty conservative parents. It was a
(22:39):
little bit of a curveball to find at the time,
but uh, yeah, I kinda. You gotta love his fleshy ladies.
I was just gonna say they're very fleshy, and I
was also going to say that, I mean, I think
that's your The whole thing about your parents having that
book is a perfect snippet of like history and the
way that anyone views art and the nude woman that
(23:02):
like that's safe and that's okay because it's fine art,
you know, and it's it's like harmless almost. It's not
a magazine like an editorial, you know, spread in a
magazine or anything like that. But yeah, I mean Ruben's
Ruben's ladies definitely were moving away from that Greek quote
unquote ideal of like literally using math to achieve the
(23:25):
perfect proportion both for male nudes and female nudes and statues.
Um his women and many other artists of his time
started showing women who, yeah, they have hips, or they
have bellies, or they have butts, they even have a
little bit of cellul life. I know, it makes me
think of us weekly and like showing you know, those
poor celebrities in their bathing suits and like cars, they're
(23:46):
just like us. Yeah, rubens women, They're just like us.
Thank you, rubens Um. Around the same time, though, Bernini
also is using nudity in his sculpture, although anitults are
often covered. For instance, if you look at one of
his sculptures, Apollo and Daphne, it's really interesting because you
(24:08):
have Apollo kind of chasing after Daphne, and in this
context her nudity is considered acceptable because going back to
hearkening back to that classical Greek association of female nudity
with vulnerability and weakness. Clearly she is being like caught
in one of those vulnerable states, and she's trying to
(24:30):
escape Apollo. She's turned away from him rather than toward
him to suggest willingness. But you have to keep in mind,
I mean, while all of this is going on through
the centuries, the Catholic Church is definitely trying to put
a stop to all of this nudity, all of these
naked ladies and naked gents. You know, they're saying that
it's so pagan. This hearkens back to some like Greek
(24:51):
pagan ritual and we hate it. And can't you just
like put a T shirt on her, you know, or
like the sixteenth century equivalent of a T shirt. But anyway,
we have so many more great pieces of art to
talk about, and so much more historical context to get into.
We come right back from a quick break, so welcome
(25:15):
back to this stuff. Mom never told you Art History Museum,
which really only contains trying to count up the number
of pieces we're talking about. It's a small collection but important.
And we wanted to kick off this half of the
podcast with my favorite historical anecdote that we ran across
in this female nude research, and it has to do
(25:39):
with Diego Valesquez's rokeby Venus, which is I mean, there's
a lot to talk about with this portrait because we
have it's thought of as one of the most famous
buttocks is of all times. But yes, beautiful, she's got
a great butt. So you've got this slender but curvy
(26:00):
woman lying. Uh, she's facing away from the viewer, so
you just see her back. She's looking into a mirror
that's being held up by a chubby little cupid. But
she's she is looking into that mirror. Is it at you?
Is it at her? Is she contemplating her nudity? Is
she contemplating how vulnerable she is? Or is she just
(26:20):
admiring herself? Who knows? Who knows? So many layers going
on here. So Alaska has completed this work in the
mid seventeenth century, and fast forward to nineteen fourteen. And
I know I'm jumping out of our timeline for a moment,
but it's worth it for this story. So fast forward
to nineteen fourteen in England. This painting is hanging in
(26:44):
the National Gallery and a suffragette by the name Mary
Richardson has had enough of the rogue b Venus and
she walks in and slices it at least five times
with a meat cutter. What was going on, Caroline, Well,
she was she was really upset about how Emmeline Pankhurst
(27:07):
had been treated during her arrest, and she was disgusted
not only with that but also the idea of men
ogling this naked woman and her fabulous milky skin in
her butt. She was like, no, this naked lady is
not going to be around anymore. You're not going to
be staring at this naked woman and you know, getting
all excited and twitter painted and also free free am ALIGNE,
(27:30):
free mlne and so she the media though nicknames her
as a result of this slasher Mary, which really makes
her sound like a serial killer, but she was just
a rugby venus killer. Although the painting was restored, even
though you can if you google image this, you can
see images of it with the slashes in it. She
really went for it. I think my first reaction to
(27:52):
hearing that story was like one of horror that that
you would slash any piece of art, I mean, no
matter what the context is or whatever. But the more
the more I thought about it, the more I realized that,
I think that adds more value to it because now
historical piece of art that in and of itself is
so precious, now contains the scars of a really important
(28:14):
period of history. Yeah. Well, and also too in terms
of what we're talking about at the beginning of the podcast,
reading these works as historical texts and how it intersects
with the actual real life women on the other side
of these paintings and how they were dealing with their
bodies in society like it's it definitely speaks volumes. But
(28:40):
back to our art historical timeline. Let's get into the
eighteenth century with Rococo. Rococo gets a little playful. I
kind of love Rococo. Yeah, lots of swirls. Yeah, they're
just like, hey, Rocco, here's something I love it. Yeah.
Um yeah, So this is the mid eighteenth century ro
a Co painter Frand Swas Bouchet's nude painting of Marie
(29:03):
louise Oh Murphy. What's a name, Marie louise O Murphy. Right, So,
in the mid eighteenth century Rococo painter Frand Swas Boucher
paints a nude of Marie louise O Murphy, the mistress
of Louis the fifteen, and it is described as playfully
erotic because she's not dainty. She's not like daintily covering anything,
(29:25):
or she is looking away from the viewer. But she
girlfriend is totally splayed out on her blanket. She's sprawled out,
just just hanging out on sort of a chaise lounge.
I like to imagine that she's watching the Real Housewives,
like over the edge of her of her sofa bed
or whatever this is. If you TOAs some stretchy pants
on her, she is me on the weekends, No, I know,
(29:50):
but I mean she's she's definitely also fleshy as well.
You know, she is not what you would call like
the Greek ideal of the perfect nude virginal woman. I mean,
this woman is a mistress of a member of the
royal family. Yeah, I mean it kind of puts it
all out there. And it's also the exemplary of Rococo's
(30:11):
playful eroticism right where they still got their hangups, but
they're like, well, but let's add some flourishes to I mean,
look at if you look at the fabrics that are
in this painting, I mean they're beautiful, They're so rich.
I mean, she's lying on it looks like pink and
white fabric, but it's just like the pink just pops,
and there's also some orange, kind of brownish rust colored
(30:33):
fabric all around her, and it's like you can almost
feel the texture of the fabric. I get lots of
velvet associations with it. But yeah, she's why wouldn't you
be split out on that fabric? It looks great hanging
out just you know, Marie Louisa Murphy, rubbing my rubbing
my bits on all of this pink silk. It's great.
What a life. Bring me a sandwich. Now, when we
(30:56):
move though into the nineteenth century, the boundaries of the
female nudes start to get tested. Some artists start to
get a little bit more experimental, but at the same
time putting a little broader context on this. The exclusion
of women from life drawing classes, academies, and art schools
(31:18):
continues for most of the century. So even though by
this point male artists have been around for so long,
they're like, we've painted so many female nudes, We're gonna
start to get a little more experimental, especially envelope, and
women are like, can we just get into one of
those life drawing classes. I mean, I'm fine with my
watercolors over here, but I wouldn't well in terms of
(31:38):
testing those boundaries and getting more experimental. We see Mayonnaise
Infamous Olympia in eighteen sixty three, and what is so
interesting about this painting, which features a woman positioned almost
exactly like Titian's Venus of Urbino. She's covering well, she's
kind of got her legs crossed, but so she has
(31:59):
her hands sort of a cross her lap, but I mean,
you can see her breast, she's not covering it up,
and she's looking directly at the viewer with a maid
or some sort of servant next to her um. But yeah,
she's defiedly looking at the audience, which adds to the
fact that man A definitely use nudity in this picture
to shock rather than to idealize, because this woman, the
(32:22):
subject of this painting was a famous prostitute, and a
lot of the people who came through the gallery and
saw this might have recognized her. Oh, hello, Olympia, I
just saw her. Hello, I owe you some money. Now.
On the flip side of that, though, Eugene Delacroix, Liberty
Leading the People uses female nudity in a different sense.
(32:46):
It's not so much to shock and titillate. It echoes
classical Greek nude motifs with Lady Liberty showing her breast,
exposing her breast to symbolize revolution and liberty. It's depicting
the French Revolution. She's holding up the French flag and
she is leading the charge with all of these men
(33:09):
behind her. So that's a totally different kind of context
to see. So talking about the kinds of experimentation going on, Yeah,
so much symbolism because she's right in the middle of
this smoky, bloody, dirty battle scene, but she herself is
still very pale, and yeah, those exposed breasts are such
a such a symbol. It's not just yeah, like you said,
(33:29):
it's not just to titillate. It's to show This is
harkening back to those Greek ideals of democracy. It also
reminds me too of Amazonians, where their whole thing was
going into battle with with the exposed breast singular. You
show those men, that's right. Um. This is also, though,
the century where we start to see more depictions of
(33:51):
female nudes as a dangerous women. Lots of eves Delilah's
salamis popping up, um. One example is the eight six
Edvard Monk painting Jealousy too, where you have this eve
like figure who is sort of halfway nude in the
background reaching up to pluck what looks to be an apple.
(34:14):
Standing next to a man in the foreground. You have
a guy who looks really bummed out. It's a creepy painting. Yeah,
he's like, I should have known better than to trust
that Eve. She will lead that other guy astray as well.
But again, if we look at her, if we look
at all of these venuses, what what what is missing
(34:37):
aside from any skin color but white, what is missing, Caroline,
We're missing some body hair, specifically pubic hair. There is
no body hair. Yeah, and oh my god, this I
mean we could have done an episode purely on just
pubic hair, or the lack thereof in classical and neo
classical art fascinating. I mean, to be fair, when you
(35:01):
look at male nudes, there's not a ton of pubic hair,
but there's at least a suggestion, whereas when it comes
to the women, it really looks like a Barbie doll
in that sense. Yeah, and a lot of that goes
back to that Bonfonte paper about the ideal image of
the of the human form and where that came from,
(35:22):
and the fact that you know, the ideal male form
is the buff athlete, but the ideal female form, or
the even the ideal idea of a female human is
one who is virginal, pure, very young. So that's why
a lot of the time you saw Greek statues of men,
even though they're buff and they're like supposed to be
the ideal, they have smaller penises because that meant youth.
(35:45):
Younger men have smaller penises. And I know it's getting
sort of sort of iffy here, but stick with me.
And it was the same for the female figure. A
lot of times she would have smaller breasts to signify
that she's younger. And what went along with that is
a lack of body hair, and so what are all
of these images that we're talking about based on classical
(36:08):
Greek art? Yeah, yeah, and this was something that was
discussed in a chapter very read in Modern Art, a
critical introduction, because yeah, we read textbooks sometimes on the podcast. Um,
there's this whole artistic distinction too, between being nude and naked,
because it's really important that these women, in order to
(36:30):
be appreciated and almost exalted in an artistic sense, to
be these romantic muses, they were nude because to be
naked would be to have body hair, would be to
show pubic hair, and just really what our bodies look
like when we are actually naked. But the nude is
(36:51):
something more elevated. It's it's airbrushed in a lot of ways. Yeah,
and of course we have to mention the story of
the art critic who was terrified by p a care. Yeah,
and this this is an alleged story that circulates a lot,
so it's grain of salt, but it's fantastic regardless. Yeah,
So there's this story about Victorian era art critic John Rushkin,
(37:13):
who you know, he was super familiar with hairless nudes
in the art gallery. But when he went home with
his wife on their wedding night, he supposedly refused to
consummate the relationship because he was shocked. Shocked, I tell
you to see her pubic hair. But the happy ending
(37:34):
to that is that apparently Ruskin's wife was like, okay,
i'll see you later. That's not okay, And then she
married remarried another guy who I think it was aware
that pubic hair existed. And I mean I think that
ties in to a lot of the attitude about pubic hair,
(37:54):
which is that and and the nude versus the naked
thing or the naked thing for people who ever read
Lewis Grizzard. But um, somebody with body hair, male or female,
is somebody who's like a real, real human, fleshy person
that you might have sex with or who might be
having sex with someone else. But the marble, cold, stark,
(38:16):
white nude is something that is it's like perfect and
precious and pure. Yeah, but it's it's notable too that
with those classical female nudes, yes they're all bald, but
sometimes early sketches of them might contain hints of pubic hair,
so they just kind of gradually edited it out. Um,
(38:39):
and early modern artists also kept with that convention or
used either a woman's hand or the angle to conceal
where pubic hair would be. So that's why you always
see these venuses throughout the centuries in repose, but with
usually like their left hand just conveniently covering up their vula,
(39:00):
which I mean, to be fair, that is a natural
way that all women lay on a chaise lounge. You
automatically put one hand, whether your clothes or not, over
you just have to go there. It's just the hand.
It just it just seeks it out like a missile.
I mean, it is warm. Um. Well, something else they
got people warm and hot and bothered was Francisco Goya's
(39:24):
eighteen hundred painting Lamya dan Nuda, which is one of
the first paintings to intentionally show lady pubic hair. Yeah,
and here's the thing. It showed just a hint, just
the tiniest, tiniest bit of pubic hair. And she I
mean also, let's talk about her gaze. She's laying back,
(39:46):
her hands are behind her head, and she is looking
directly at the viewer. Um and the addition of a
little bit of pubic hair made it rather scandalous, to
the point that when it was owned by the Spanish
Prime Minister, it was kept in a private room. You
wouldn't put out something like that in your drawing room
(40:07):
where other people might come and be like, WHOA, oh goodness,
who was that prostitute on the wall? I know? And
it's it's funny though, because this is from but she's
posed in a way that we would be very familiar
with in like pin ups poses, and the amount of
pubic hair that is featured in this painting is so
minimal it's it's almost as minimal as Maria Bellows in
(40:30):
that movie that almost received an n C seventeen rating.
Remember she almost received an n C seventeen rating until
they cut the scene that had her little landing strip
and suddenly it was fine. It got an R rating.
But again, like, it's just helpful to point out that
people have and will always be scared of ladies body hair.
But it's also that triple threat almost literally of pubic hair,
(40:54):
the direct gaze, and also a more inviting kind of pose.
She is rather open with her her hands behind her
head like that, but that is absolutely nothing compared to
what French artists Gustave Courbet painted on commission in eighteen
sixties six and it's a painting called The Origin of
(41:14):
the World. And it is unlike anything we have seen
up to this point because it is a full on
close up of a woman's volva with pubic hare, with
ample pubic butt crack. I mean, it's basically she's lying
down with her legs spread and you, your view as
the viewer, is straight on. Yeah. And it's really interesting
(41:38):
that the painting as it is, as it's known now
is headless, legless. It's really just a close up of
her mid section and her volva. But apparently it's only
part of a full nude that he painted. And then
some art historians think that the guy who commissioned the painting,
(42:01):
who's really into erotic art, chopped out everything else and
just blamo made it what it is today. It's a
nice piece to hang above the fireplace. Yeah, it's really homy,
you know, it is, yeah, the Origin of the World.
But it was so surprising, like, especially as we were
researching this and kind of walking through this timeline of
like okay, oh, the demure nude after demure nude and
(42:24):
then whoa wow. Even though the image itself, considering if
you have seen it a naked female body, it's not
all like, it's not shocking, but in the context of
female nudes it is. Yeah, it's very shy because it's
just it's so real, like that got real. Yeah, it
got real, photo realistic, photo realistic. Yeah. And then in
(42:45):
nineteen seventeen, police closed a Paris exhibition of Madigliani's paintings
because again they revealed pubic hair. It is a signifier
of sex, and thus it is associated with, like we've said,
prostitutes and pornography. Yeah. And even again though too, with
Madigliani's paintings, there is very little pubic hair shown and
(43:09):
it's really not even that graphic. Like his style is
not realistic at all. But these women are, they're looking
at you, their hands are above their heads. Also, this
one in front of us has a little bit of
armpit hair as well. She does, she does even more
than that. That's like the most body hair we've seen
so far. She's also orange. She is orange, which is
(43:30):
sort of neked and ora neked and orange. Uh. Yeah,
the tanning went awry that day. She stayed in a
little too long. Um. The art world's discomfort, though with
female pubic hair is still palpable, which is kind of
wild to consider. In two thousand and fourteen, for instance,
artist Lena McCall's portrait of Ms. Ruby May was removed
(43:54):
from the Society of Women Artists Annual exhibition because it
was deemed porner graphic and unfit for quote children and
vulnerable adults vulnerable to what pubic hair? I guess, yeah,
I mean the painting was this woman, Um, basically, she's
she's fully clothed, but she has her pants on zipped
(44:15):
and sort of pulled down a little bit so that
you can see pubic hair, and she's looking right at you.
She's got an eyebrow cocked and I think she's smoking
a piper a cigarette or something. But yeah, again, the
combination of a woman with agency seemingly looking right at you,
being like, what here I am wearing my little suit
with my pube showing, and that kind of outrage though
(44:35):
happening exactly a century after Slasher Mary is cutting up
the rogueby Venus in the National Gallery is I mean,
it's astounding and in addition to this mystery of the
missing pubic hair, one other glaring similarity with all of
(44:56):
these female nudes that we've talked about is how they
are all white. When it comes to female nudes in
Western art, you rarely see women of color, except for instance,
in the case of Mana's Olympia, there is a woman
of color, but she is in the background and clothed
and is obviously uh made or a servant of some sort. Right. Yeah.
(45:20):
We read a paper called a Pedagogy of the Black
Female Body by ao A. Klie and she talks a
lot about how and why the black female body is
missing from art, and it's really sort of a complicated,
multilayered point that she brings up about slavery and about
the way that African women's bodies were displayed, and how
(45:44):
post colonial era, post slavery, there was an effort to
combat that image of the hyper sexual black woman, and
so her figure was covered up. But then there's the
question of, well, why are we covering this woman up this,
you know, hypothetical women are subject of a painting up
when she could be the subject of a beautiful painting
(46:05):
or sculpture just like anyone else. Yeah, And it's for
that reason that she writes, quote, the female nude has
not been an ideologically correct artistic pursuit for African American artists.
And this also hearkens a lot to our podcast on
Women's Butts and Sarki Bartman a k. A. HoTT and
(46:27):
taught Venus who is the primary example of that kind
of scientific pornography really that was happening at the time,
of putting African women on display to naked, are almost naked,
to ogle their bodies in that kind of way. And
then on top of that, of course, like you said,
(46:47):
this hyper sexualization that was going on. And this was
something also explored in the book Skin Deep, Spirit Strong,
The Black Female Body in American Culture, which discusses how
art historian Judith Wilson in the early nineties looked for
and found zero black female nudes painted by African American
(47:08):
artists in the nineteenth century, again because the subject was verboten.
And then further, this project called the Image of the
Black Woman in Western Art research identified only one full
nude of an African American woman from the nineteenth century,
and it was created though by a visiting Swiss artist.
And then the author goes on to talk about how
(47:30):
there are beyond that very few nineteenth and early twentieth
century nudes of black women. It's just, I mean, it's
really just doesn't exist in a lot of ways, right, because,
as we've touched on throughout this episode, what we see
on on the canvas or in marble is typically an
(47:51):
artists or a group of artists concept of what ideal
feminine beauty or ideal male beauty is, and frequently black
or African American subjects were completely left out of that
because black men and women in our country were definitely
thought to be dangerous or hyper sexual WHEREA, and so
they therefore could not fit this sort of pure virginal
(48:15):
idea of what femininity should be. Well, and it seems
like we we end up with then this hierarchy of
almost morality and like what is deemed beautiful in art,
where at the top you have these idealized, classical, young, virginal,
hairless female nudes, and then that image of the more
(48:37):
mature with hair prostitute, usually white, and then women of color. So,
I mean, it's so you start to see all of
these kinds of patterns emerging, which leads us to these
questions of, well, what is all of us, all of
this telling us what are we supposed to think. Now
when we walk through the met, say and see you
(48:58):
know that of all those female nudes going on, and
especially considering the fact, yes, they're painted almost exclusively by
male artists, and you don't see that reciprocal relationship with Oh, well,
we also have this huge body of uh no pun
intended of male nudes that are painted by female artists
(49:19):
because those guys were their muses. Yeah, because women, like
you said, were excluded from those schools, from those academies.
It's not like they were out there in the sixteenth
century or you know, seventeenth century getting a commission because
that was unfeminine and inappropriate. Um. So, a lot of
female artists, and there there were female artists, a lot
(49:39):
of them would never ever be able to achieve the
standing that some of these men did with their nudes.
And it's interesting too to see how with more contemporary
female artists there's not so much an interest in like, well,
let's paint a lot of penises, will show them, but
rather read an intent to reclaim the female nude. Yeah,
(50:03):
and I wonder yes, and I and I think that,
um seeing some contemporary nudes by women of women are
fascinating and they're definitely more on the Reuben and Ruben's
end of the spectrum than than not um. But I
do this does make me wonder about the context of
that that forever, the female nude has just equaled perfection, purity,
(50:30):
the man's ideal of what femininity is. So it's it's
interesting when you have women like those painting uh, paintings
like Ruby may Um, what that means to them and
what they wanted to mean to their audience, because it
obviously means something different than the capitaline venus for instance. Well,
and that's something that contemporary artist Jenny Saville, whose body
(50:54):
of work has really focused on the female nude and
sort of playing around with that and reclaiming it and
painting it in less flattering ways than you you might
see in classical art. Um She has said, quote, there's
a thing about beauty. Beauty is always associated with the
male fantasy of what the female body is. I don't
think there's anything wrong with beauty, it's just what women
(51:17):
think is beautiful can be different. So it's interesting to
see how that how the nude, the female nude changes
when the artist is also female again, so lovely to
get different people's perspectives into art and life. That's right.
Diversity is important, So now I want to hear listeners
(51:38):
perspectives on these things. I have a feeling that we
have some art history students listening, perhaps some practicing artists,
maybe some painters. We would love to get some more
expert insight into this whole female nude thing. So let
us know all of all of your new thoughts. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
(52:00):
You can also tweet us at mom stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Okay, I have a
letter here from Bethany about our director's episode. She says,
I recently listened to your podcast about the first female directors,
(52:20):
and oh my gosh, was I inspired and a bit angered.
As a film student wanting to be a director, we're
required to take film history lessons. The three women you
mentioned were never discussed in any of my classes, and
that really ticks me off. This truly is a man's industry,
and I, for one, am inspired by these three ladies
and others to change that. After I listen to the podcast,
(52:42):
I immediately began searching YouTube for their works, especially Lois
Webber's Hypocrites. When I have viewed a number from each,
I'll definitely email back with my thoughts. However, for a
film that isn't necessarily directed by a female but stars
Gina Rowland and is phenomenal, please watch A Woman under
the Influence, directed by her husband John Cassavetti's and also
drying Peter Folk. It's a great film. Thank you ladies
(53:03):
for doing this podcast and opening my eyes to how
much I didn't know about my career in terms of
being a woman, and who has paved the way for
me to have the opportunities I can. So thank you.
Bethany Well, I've met the letter here from Samantha who
was inspired to write us after listening to our interview
with Julie SEAgel, founder of Dear Kate, and also a
(53:23):
listener letter about um someone else who was doing the
same thing of going into a stem field and then
turning toward the apparel industry. And she writes here, I
am getting a science degree in textiles. We often overlook
the science part of the garment and textile industry. A
lot of effort is put into keeping people comfortable and
(53:45):
safe and there are laws to follow in tests that
have to be done on almost every garment that you see.
There are acts in the US that states specifically what
and how textiles are labeled, and there are a lot
of specific regulations regarding flammability, children's a pair al and
even regulations on how to label fibers that come from bamboo.
Most of these regulations have at least one test to
(54:07):
prove that the textile falls within the acceptable limits, and
this must be done in an accredited lab. There is
also a ton of current research and development in medical
textiles and protective textiles. So with all these tests and
all this research being done, it's surprising to me that
these women feel weird going into apparel. With the science background,
anyone can design a pair of panties or a shirt
(54:29):
or a dress with a little bit of creativity and
a pencil. It takes an understanding of the science behind
the scenes to understand the best fabric choice, how, when, why,
tests are done, and to make educated decisions regarding things
like which die to use and which finish. I think
having a background in science and an understanding of business
gives you a leg up in the industry and will
(54:49):
come in handy as you grow your business and encounter
all these regulations being placed on the textile and apparel industry.
So thanks Samantha for highlighting this step field that we
might not often think of, and thanks everybody else who's
written into us. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address and for links to all
of our social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
(55:11):
and podcasts, including this one with our sources. So you
can read more about female nudes, head on over to
stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com
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