ENTRANCE

Why nudity trumps most.

If there is something that catches our attention and sharpens our eyes, then there’s nudity. It’s just as our eyes are almost unwillingly drawn to this all-natural phenomenon, which is usually wrapped up in clothes of all kinds.

Advertisers have known this since 1848, and artists, perhaps unknowingly, since the dawn of time. So I have reflected on this phenomenon not only from a psychological perspective, but also from my own experiences.

The following text is no deep article on this manifaceted issue. Nudity in art is vast field. For a good historical survey I can mention: “The Nude: A study of ideal form”, by Kenneth Clark. Psychologically the field is overwhelming, and has many aspects. It’s both complex and simple at the same time depending on your angling.

A noticeable break with the nudity of art.

Look at the picture below. Note that although she is very beautiful, and many of us would like to eat her up, this is not art! This, on the contrary is commercial sales technique.

For me art was boring.

When I was a kid, I had to go with my mother at art exhibitions and national galleries. I got very bored by these expeditions, and I had to negotiate with her to join. The deal was to get a little Dinky Toy or Corgi Toy car to entertain me while she looked at the art.

• I screamed: I don’t want to go there! (check painting below next paragraph, We norwegians know how to scream!)

I might aswell have gone to the kindergarten. The problem was I hated it, because my friends didn’t go there, and I had never been there on a daily basis. So I felt rather out of place. But with my “new deal” or bargain with my mum, I accepted the vernissages and openings of new exihibitions. Most often we went to the National Gallery in the City of our Capital (Nasjonalgalleriet, see photo below “The Scream” by Munch).

The granite stairs up to some of the gallery rooms felt so tall and heavy, and the staircase too long for a four year old boy. But with the new deal I could use the handrail as a steep road, and drive my Dinky Toys up this steep hill. Then I forgot that I was tired in my very young legs.

– What a big “pee-nis!”

In the beginning i did not notice much of the art there. And I certainly did not mind the nudes in the paintings and sculptures. (They looked like mother and father after a shower, and seemed very common) But once I stood under a giant Greek ancient horse, I asked my mother if it had so much pee in it that it had to have such a big “pee-nis”.

Look at the two paintings below. At the time when famous Edvard Munch painted his nude pictures, there were only boys an men allowed to bathe or swin naked.

She removed all her clothes for me.

After two years and many Dinky Toys later, I suddenly started to take a glance at the paintings and art itself. In the meantime an older girl in our neighborhood had to my great satisfaction shown me all her naked secrets. Like “The birth of Venus” by Botticelli, it was an awakening for me when it comes to female beauty. But unlike the shy and restrained Venus by Botticelli, my little Venus girlfriend removed every veil from her body.

What about “Venus de Milo” below? In a modern perspective as she appears without arms, does she convey the cultural reduction of female power and ability? One might just wonder.

What about the painting below by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres , – the woman on the coach? Isn’t she rather shy and careful with not showing too much of her private parts?

Now shyness seems to have disappeared.

My little girlfriend mentioned above, was much younger than this one on the picture below. But time has changed and nowadays we need to be very careful not to expose children naked on the internet. This is so even if my story is rather innocent and goes back to when I was six years old and she was nine.

In many ways we belong in the West to the shameless era. This is both good and not so good! Our audacity can make us very vulnerable, and be used for purposes we did not consider when we posted a nude photo on the net.

Accepting our natural interest for nudity.

On the other hand we have no reason to be ashamed of our naked bodies. In some so called primitive cultures there are still people walking about as they were born, – without clothes. I mean, we do not need to be ashamed or feel guilt any longer, if we like nudity and nakedness. At least when it does not involve looking at children with the intention of using them as objects of our sexual preferences.

However, I think the shame nowadays very often is covered by defiance. That in reality we haven’t gotten rid of the shame attached to nudity altogether. Perhaps we just deny it with the same counterforce that in earlier days held us back. Or we feel it ever so strongly, because we don’t experience that our bodies matches our notion of the ideal body.

Mother and father as the prototypes of our body interest.

There is something very natural about nakedness and nudity. Not only are we all born naked. We also rely totally on the body and mind of our mothers, and in some way also our fathers. As for our mother, we feel as infants her skin against our own skin, smell her breast and suck on her nipples for nourishment. Her body is literally crucial to our survival.

• Naked skin and bodily power, beauty and satisaction.

Basically in our own psychological universe, naked skin will normally represent joy, satisfaction, safety and yes, be associated with beauty. We also cling to daddy and notice that he holds around us differently. His skin also smells different from mother’s. Perhaps he has some strange hair in his face, and if we see him naked we will also observe a difference. But beyond all, at the beginning of our lives, mother and father are the image of power, beauty and love.

Now you may think that your parents are old and do not look very attractive to you! That maybe as it is! But remember when you was born they were young and probably very attractive in their youth.

The next picture is of Venus from Willendorf . She was a symbol of beauty and fertility about 24.000 to 22.000 years BCE. Today she would have been sent to a surgeon and put on a strict diet.

The ambiguety of prominent art

The piece of art by Charles Ray in the picture below, is very ambiguous. There is something totally wrong with it. But unlike the ambiguety in the photo of the naked woman on the yellow car, this doubleness, or equivocal quality, is it’s strength! I mean it can make us think and wonder, even if it immediately makes us sick.

What about Henry Moore and his female sculptures?

On the front page of this article we have a picture of one of the many female sculptures made by the famous modernist Henry Moore. Why is this artist, we may ask, so occupied with these reclining stone or bronze statues in his productions? ( Check also his bronze sculpture of a woman in the first paragraph.)

The saying goes that his mother had rheumatism or constant pain in her back. This condition made the very young boy Henry, help her with massaging her painful body. We can just imagine that his mother’s body seemed huge compared to his small hands and body. Is this the subconscious reason for his later massive and huge motherlike sculptures?

Curiosity and excitement.

A naked body as you can see in all the pictures above, has lines, arches and curves that create an aesthetic effect. In addition, it has pits and cavities that seem to create curiosity and excitement.

When “David” moved from Florence to Houston, Texas.

When Michelangelo was 30 years old he sculptured David below. David was as far as I know not made in Florence, but he was moved to Florence later, and here he has been standing stark naked ever since. I don’t know really if that still is true. I have not been to Florence recently. According to the next photo of him, however, it seems that he has moved to America!

And what happened to David after one and a half year in Houston, Texas? Did he eat too much fastfood, Hamburgers and Pizza, using the car much more than his legs?…. I think the artist that made this big replica, most likely by photo manipulation,(I don’t know) – he too makes us reflect. Or what do you think?

See me, like me, desire me, want me, love me!

Today there is a beauty and handsome terror in the world! There is a hard competition for being seen, liked and idealized! Who has the perfect “summer body” is an issue not only for teens, but also for their parents.

Fitness centers all over the world make billions of dollars in our hunt for the perfect body. So does also cosmetic surgeons or beauty clinics giving botox treatment and restylane to even good looking people. During the last fifteen years even boys and men have been subjected to severe body pressure.

The photo above is one of the more artistic portraits of this hunt for body perfection as the present ” see and be seen” phenomenon. Look at the many eyes that look at the person in front of the mirror. There is the photographer in the mirror, there is the young man looking at himself in his selfie camera, and there is you and me, looking at all this. Are there even still more eyes watching?

Have we become like show puppets or mannequins?

I will let the work of the artist Charles Ray, with his male puppet talk for itself.

Mature nudity that does not fit into the present ideal:

The mature woman in the painting below by Lucian Freud does not seem to be ridden by too much pressure to fit into the present slim body ideal. Neither does “her husband” underneath. I’ve seen these paintings live at The Fearnley Astrup Museum of modern Art in Oslo, at a special exhibition. They seem brutally real and are wonderfully painted!

Art is supposed to ask the spectator open questions, not to give answers.

What does the art photographer below want to express with his naked classroom? There are many possibilities, can you find a reasonable argument to call this photo,- art?

And what is this sculpture below by Moore supposed to express? How the weakened human being must protect himself with a shield? There’s maybe no answers to this, even if we could ask Moore himself about it. Very often artists work subconsciously with the issues they convey to the public, and are not aware themselves what the meaning really is. If there ever where one right answer to the meaning of a piece of art, as for the meaning of life on earth itself.

And he created us without clothes, even if it seems that Michelangelo meant our holy “Father” had clothes on himself, when he did it.

Back to the Past in the Future.

What happened to me when I many years later returned to the “Nasjonalgalleriet” at highschool, without having been there since my mother died? (You see, mother and I, and sometimes father, had four and a half year together at all kinds of old and new galleries, when she suddenly died at home of aneurism, on a foggy wednesday in February.)

Our teacher took us on a guided tour through the many halls of paintings in that very gallery. And the professor and conservator at the establishment started to ask my class about the paintings and what the conveyed, and were meant to tell the audience. Then something very strange and almost embarrassing happened.

I started to name the paintings, tell everyone who had painted them and what was the intention behind it. I was extremely commited, almost unstoppable and had the same intonation and tone of voice that the old male conservator from my childhood had.

My classmates looked at me with astonishment, it seemed they did not believe their ears and eyes, seeing my standing there in front, pointing at the paintings and waving with my arms. Usually I was a very outgoing boy with interests mostly for cars, boats, airplanes, rockets, James Bond and Bach. Fortunately it was silently accepted that I played the piano, but this…..

Well, end of story was that I was asked both by the conservator and applauded by my teacher, to write an essay on the theme: “A young person’s introduction to the world of arts.” That was absolutely not my plan. But I did it!

If I am allowed to give a piece of advice on this matter: Go to one or two galleries or exhibitions nearby, and open your eyes. Reflect on what the art makes you feel and think. Take your children there when they are small. It widens their horizon and makes them more imaginative in life.

When i Was 16 years old I started to paint myself. Took some courses in drawing and painting, and improved my economy as a student selling big modern paintings. I put much weight on a good composition of form and color, and a neo-classical abstraction from reality. Paradoxically, I have never painted or drawn naked people. Perhaps you will try to do it?

Where does painter Sylvia Sleigh fit in when it comes to nudism in art?

When we talk about nudity in painting, we cannot leave out Sylvia Sleigh. For a long time she was not fully recognized by art critics. She was perceived by women in particular, as a feminist artist who had naked people, mostly men and women as her main motives. She seems very realistic in her style, and in her paintings the characters looks very relaxed and easy going. I leave it up to you to judge if she has something interesting to say to you about the people she portrays.

EXIT

Now we end this little round in one of the many rooms in the “museum and gallery of Nudity in Art.” I thank you for joining me on parts of it, or even some of you, – the whole trip!

As we started with sculptor Henry Moore, we will end this shortcut to nudity in art and life, with one more Moore: