The Oppression Of The Female Nude In Art

In art history, the female nude in art is both at the center and the edge of cultural acceptance. According to Art Historian Lynda Nead, this acceptability, if found, has always become under threat, for the female nude stands at the edge of the art category. The female nude risks, and has always stood to lose, its respectability in the art world if it spills out and over into the pornographic--meaning images associated with eroticism and obscenity. The trouble has always been the vagueness and instability of cultural definitions of both art and pornography. For the meanings of eroticism and obscenity continue to change over time, as the boundaries of acceptable art are shaped by culture and society (Nead 323-325). Artists of the 20th century,
For, Renaissance artists such as Titian had incorporated the nude female in their art, which “indicated that the goals of art had changed” (Bernstein 60). For example, Titian’s Danae is considered one of the “most sensual paintings of the Renaissance”. It depicts the goddess Danae reclining nude, with the god Jupiter appearing in the disguise of a shower of gold coins. Anabeth Guthrie of the National Gallery of Art, states that the painting, while obviously sensual, was deemed acceptable by “classical precedent” (Guthrie) due to the mythological pretense of the painting. Titian’s Danae helped established the “accepted” female nude in art that showed women “to be flawless, skin pale, pubes shaved, and poses classical” (Clark 163). Furthermore, artists did not stray from this readily held precedent until the latter half of the
Like Courbet before him, Degas had integrated characteristics associated with obscenity into his art. Art, which, prior to the Impressionist period, could have gotten Degas arrested, is now being sold for over “$27.9 million dollars” (Vogel) at auctions--according to Sarah Hyde, a curator at the Courtauld Institute of Art's gallery in London. Although Degas was popular during the late 19th century, his real importance was that he went on to influence a new generation of artists that pushed the boundaries of acceptability and truly influenced the nude female form in modern