Chapter 3 Summary, Ways of Seeing Essay

Nude figures have been featured in art works since around 30 to 25,000 B.C. And throughout the history of art, we can see a lot of artists being inspired and influenced by great talents before them, in one way or another they would carry the style or ideas of those previous artists into their own art and create new masterpieces. One particular example is Édouard Manet’s Olympia from the Realism period, and Yasumasa Morimura’s Futago. The two paintings share great similarities in their composition, but the content and purpose of the paintings, and style wise the two pieces are very different.

The woman painted is sitting in what seems to be a domestic setting. However, unlike many other painted black women in the Enlightenment, she is seated alone. She is not depicted serving a white woman or doing any labour. The white cloths wrapped around her head and body along with the light background creates a dramatic contrast between the light colours and her dark skin. Her breast is exposed, but she is not sexualized like in many paintings of white women of the period. Despite her less-than-modest exposure, the woman does not show any signs of embarrassment. She is not blushing and her gaze is fixed on the viewer in neither a demure nor passionate way. In fact, she seems nonchalant about her exposure.

In the traditional European oil painting, the nude, the principal protagonist (the painter) is never painted, but what does gets painted is a result of what appeals to him sexually. A woman’s body hair and fat dimples are never painted, since it is not sexually appealing to the painter. When a woman is depicted with her lover, her attention is rarely painted as directed towards the male lover if one is present instead it is directed toward the spectator—the painter. Most Renaissance European oil paintings with sexual imagery are frontal, literally or metaphorically. Of course there are exceptions, let’s not dwell. The oil-paintings of this era feature stark nakedness. I chose the paintings that I did of the women that were clothed on purpose, they are still supplying a demand and these women still have makeup on their faces and are wearing very nice clothing which is appealing. Neither one of the paintings of the women have anything unappealing of their face i.e. pimples, warts, unibrows or a mustache. However in the painting of Diogenes he is depicted half naked and you can see his nipple and very defined muscles. Could one say that this artist was interested in men? As “attractive” attributes are depicted? Could I Berger declare that this is a hack work on the men?

Nudity has been an essential aspect in Western art. After the Renaissance, this is when the nudity was exploited as humans in their natural state. The nude form first was conquered by the ancient Greeks from approximately two thousand five hundred years ago. The Greeks celebrated the human body and cultivated the mastery of the human body through these sculptures of David. Rubens captures the nudity of Venus and makes her seen pure and compelling. When taking a glance at this masterpiece, one is immediately fixated and dragged in, it is a piece that cannot be missed. Ruben’s expression in this piece can be defined as timeless. Historians conclude that besides the magnificent Michelangelo, no other painter had a greater knowledge of the human body and visual power as Rubens. This is how he is able to cultivate these mythological pieces, and incorporate much detail. There is much life in Rubens’ painting, through the vibrant hues and how he depicts Venus and Adonis as these massive creatures. Figures depicted in art are more often nude then one would think. It is seen the human body is at its ideal state when artist depict the figure as nude. It is seemed as heroic because humans are compelled to see how artist illustrate the human body. Hence why the male and female body is the central theme of western art. When thinking about the human form, there is nothing more compelling, which is why the theme is still prominent in modern and contemporary

Sex workers inhabited the public space of Paris throughout the 19th century, their trade widely accepted as disreputable but necessary. When the French poet Charles Baudelaire was asked what art is, his immediate answer was “prostitution.” This proves that throughout history, artists have used prostitutes as models and muses for their artwork. Prostitution and painting go hand in hand. Among the first painters to use female models were Titian and Giorgione, producing Venetian reclining nudes, which appeared as advertisements for the most successful courtesans of Europe. These paintings hung in homes, showing real women as nothing more than an image to be looked at and judged by men. The interest in representing prostitution in art not

It was one of the first female nude statuaries to have ever been displayed in this era and was revolutionary to the concept of female sculpture. Before this point in time, artists were focused wholly on the male form. The naked male was accepted and even celebrated by Greek Society because of its ties with humanism and intelligence, but the naked female was excluded from this ideology for many years. If a woman was portrayed in a work of art she was clothed, modest, and respectable. As the roles of women changed in society to a more unrestrained status where women were recognized as individuals, their roles in art also began to change.

Hi Cortney, I found your interpretation fascinating. I think most of us have focused on the themes of rebellion, comfortability, and insecurities. That we did forgot to focus and acknowledged the individual, for he is a beautiful representation of the male nude body. And I must agree, it is far more common to see nude photography displaying women than men, so this photograph is a pleasant change. I think the photographer’s choices for the color of the background, the amount of light the individual is exposed to, and the angle at which the individual is facing the camera all give the portrait a more artistic feel.

Neither of these photographers is charting new territory; artists have been focusing on the female form for thousands of years. While most of this art is PG-13, some classic paintings are overtly erotic in nature. Many old-school painters created works to shake up the artistic world and reject social standards regarding sexuality, justifying these depictions of bare

Throughout history the subject of human body and nudity has always been a topic that artists have taken into consideration when painting, depending on the time period that they were living in and style that they were working in. By looking at the history of art through the 19th century, it is very clear that this subject was by far the most important and most consistent topic throughout this specific time period. Other subject matters such as still life, everyday life, landscapes, biblical and mythical stories and etc at some point were the most important subjects for artists to paint due to the political, social, economical and religious status of the city or country that they were living in. However

The art world has been host to a vast menagerie of talent, intellect, and creativity for about as long as human culture has existed. It has grown, developed, and changed just as humanity has. Naturally, with such an impressively expansive history, various avenues of art are visited time and time again by new artists. Artists seek not only to bring their own personal flavor and meaning to timeless concepts, but to find new ways to approach them. While not every single creator and craftsman can make such a great impact on art or the world, their efforts have given birth to some truly magnificent and unique works. In an effort to create a more meaningful understanding, as well a deeper appreciation, of the nuances, techniques, and design choices employed in these attempts, a comparison will be made between Edouard Vuillard’s Interior With a Screen (1909-1910) and Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) (1907). In this essay, each artist’s approach to the subject of the female nude will be closely analyzed, compared, and contrasted, as will their styles of painting, handling of visual elements, and their use of the principles of design. An interpretation of each work and what the artist intended when creating it will also be provided.

He refuses to follow the convection of how nudes were presented in the salon and goes a different route to display the bodies with conveys, and connotes. And he was going against of the definition of nudes which was created by T.J. Clark that it was, “... a picture for men to look at, in women is constructed as an object of somebody else’s desire.” Aside of just going a different route, he’s going against the grain, because these women don’t look like they are perfect, nor are they mythical women that come from Greek or Roman myths i.e. Venus.

I really like your discussion and point of view about Manet's art work. He has nude women in his paintings. He was not the only artists who painted naked women at that time such as, Raphael's Judgment of Paris and Titian's Pastoral Concert. But the classical references were counterbalanced by Manet's boldness. As you mentioned in your post the people in the painting was real. The woman who is naked is Manet's model and the two men are Manet's brother in law and his brother. I think the viewer make uncomfortable when they see the real people in such kind of situations.

In 1908, Braque produced Large Nude, a painting that signals his imminent departure from Fauvism. Picasso and Braque had recently seen Matisse’s Blue Nude. Braque went for a subdued palette of ochers, browns, and grey-blues. The model’s simplified facial features and the angular drapery resemble Demoiselles, but Braque was not motivated by the sexualized themes of Picasso’s paintings. Braque wanted to produce a new sort of beauty with volume, of line, of mass and of weight.

She is staring straight at the viewer, not ashamed of being naked, suggesting the idea of power and eroticism. Manet haven’t painted the idealized female figure but a real woman making the viewer feel uncomfortable and hostile. Even looking at and comparing Olympia’s hand on her thigh to the hand in Titan’s painting; it is clenched around the thigh, only to be removed to take money. The dog in ‘Venus of Urbino’ has been replaced by a black cat creating an illusion of female

Johann Liss’s Nymph and Shepherd and Camille Corot’s Diana and Actaeon (Diana Surprised in Her Bath) evoke themes of female exposure under male surveillance. Both artists interject two male figures in the background of their paintings, one, the shepherd and Actaeon, is named and the other is unknown. Liss personifies danger and protection through his two men while Corot uses them as a narrative device to illustrate several moments in one space. Liss is particularly heedful of the sinister nature he crafts through the vulnerable, exposed, and unsupported nature of the nymph. Corot, on the other hand, creates a scene where the female subjects have a strong leader in Diana and are connected to and supported by their environment. Both artists achieve these differing interpretations by diverging in their use of space, color, and relationships between figures and landscape.