The Way Of All Flesh Response Essay

Reclining nude female is a common subject matter in art history since the Venetian Renaissance, Titian’s Venus of Urbino painted in 1538 is one of the earliest reclining nude female in painting history. It described a beautiful young female laying on her bed with her sleeping dog, on the back ground is her maids looking for cloth or her in the cassone. Manet’s Olympia that painted in 1865 is a painting with a similar composition, A nude young female who was suggested a prostitute, behind her is her black female maid holding a big bouquet of flower which is possibly from her customer. On the same part of the composition, there is an animal as well, but this time it is a cat. Titian and Manet’s reclining nude female have a same composition and subject matter, however They are very different in art history, both stylistically and culturally.

The reading claims that nudes throughout artistic history have been an important source of beauty and controversy. Nudes began to spike during the Baroque period as they were used for the more expressive and emotional arts of the time. In the nineteenth century, nudes became more common, yet became more sensitive. Artists would train by drawing nudes of ancient Greek statues and figures from myth. However, many artists would then move on to create works depicting prostitutes or peasant naked women. This would not please patrons as they were extremely societally taboo. However, this did not start artists from making them, as they moved into the twentieth and twenty-first century. This shows the importance of artistic nudes and their impact

Artist and people viewing the art work have always had a fascination with the female nude. Even when I was a child my attention was captured by the nude art not because I was a kid and I saw a nude lady , but it forced me to wonder more about why the female nude was so amazing as a tool for art and why this is repeated so many times throughout the centuries. One female nude painting in particular was the subject of controversy and exposed the syncretism and or the power of the female nude painting.

“How powerful is the dragon?’ What even is the dragon?”, “Both Flesh And Not”, an essay, written by David Foster is a childhood tale with a deeper meaning. A gallant knight risks his life fighting the dragon, who is protecting the castle, to get what he wants, which is the “fair maiden” also known as a “good-looking virgin”. Is that what the essay is really about? No, Foster uses an allusion to express a deeper meaning to the tale. The piece can be interpreted, in which ever way you best understand. The gallant knight refers to a male, who is risking his life to fight the dragon, referring to AIDS, just to get what he wants, which i think is to get sex from any lady that looks good, in my interpretation. Fosters’ intentions in the piece was to bring awareness to society about the sexual choices people made and its consequences, the views of AIDS in a positive perspective, and to show that sex is first nature in human life.

After watching, "The Way of All Flesh" it gave me a better understanding about the book. In the second or third chapter of the book it talked about how Henrietta had syphilis and gonorrhea from her husband running around on her. Then finding out she had cancer. I feel like the doctors could have treated her and stopped the cancer before it spread all over her body, but they didn't. Instead they kept telling her that they didn't see anything spreading in her body and that she should be fine as long as she came back for radium treatments. Doctors wouldn't tell what was wrong in order not to confuse the patient or upset them anymore. I find that competently wrong. On top of the doctors mistreating her, Henrietta also didn't know that the treatments

In the story the naked and the nude by Robert Graves talks about how naked and nude are the same but can be interpreted differently.

Many artists in the early 1900’s and those of today, started to paint because of seeing Van Gogh’s work and style. As I stated in the beginning of this essay, his artwork was very different than the other artists of his time period. His paintings were a direct reflection of his mood and mental state. A lot of his works of were dark and gloomy, while others were uplifting and inspiring. I have also noticed that ever since Van Gogh’s era, a lot of new artists follow Van Gogh’s lead and paint with a very similar technique.

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

Historicaly, women have been used as subjects for art by male artists. These images represent women as sexualized objects for the male gaze or as an ideal figure. Most of these women have no identity beyond their physical bodies. The paintings of passive nude reclining women began to appear in the 15th century Renaissance in Western Europe. These reclining nude women are commonly shown in compositions that accentuate the glow of their skin. The paintings show a close-up image of the naked woman reclining on a bed, and their sexualized naked bodies span the entire width of the canvas. The hands and feet of these reclining nude women commonly remain inside the picture's frame, and the women are sometimes shown as asleep, often facing the viewer

I think that classical art of Greece and Rome continued to affect art through the 1700’s in a number of ways. One way, for example, is the continued and enhanced practice of the belief of humanism. Humanism was an ancient practice in Greece and Rome, which believed that human accomplishments should be respected while also emphasizing “the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively” (“Humanism”, n.d.). The ancient Greeks, for example, always sculpted the gods that they revered as nude figures since they equated nakedness with heroism. So, it is only natural that all of the statues of these respected and worshiped gods were sculpted as nude figures.

I will consider the women in Titian painting, Venus of Urbino, to be in the nude. Even though the artist painted her in a seductive way, I see her as confident, a beautiful women not afraid of posing in the nude. There is a different in being nude a being naked, but only the one is seeing the nude picture can decide if it’s a nude or naked image. For some people a nude person in a painting is art because they see it as beautiful and perfect and for some people a naked person in a painting as just a person not having clothes on, also ugly and a shameful image. Only that individual person that is observing the painting can make the judgement of is it nude or naked.

Nudeness expresses a person’s beauty and freedom. Freedom is the release from the tight chamber of

Gustav Courbet did not just “record the manners, ideas, and aspects” of his day and time. His art was his personal view of the times and commented on the values he did not accept. He only wanted to be considered as part of the “regime of liberty.” Reactions to what already is or claiming to be free as an artist also has emotions and expressions of belief. Maybe Courbet felt like established rules with the art schools or style were too limiting for his own style or subjects. The Origin of the World is probably not as shocking to many people today, but the focus on just that part of the woman’s body rather than an entire nude may have been different. All human life comes from within the woman, and 19th century

While the human form has always been acceptable in art, the nude female form continues to stir

In many works of art throughout history, female breasts have been featured prominently and in the nude. The symbolic meaning credited to the breast was usually associated with fertility and nourishment, both spiritual and physical, and in the wider sense, with life. Eroticism, nourishment, abundance, expression, feminine power, as well as feminine subservience, are different contradicting themes of the breast played out in time.