The Body Stripped Bare

WORDS | LUCY CAVENDISH

ConservAtive and liberal thinkers have kept, oftenviolently, to their own sides of the debate, and it is unlikely that a bridge will ever span the torrents raging between them. The discourse, though, belonged historically to a privileged elite until the time of the industrial revolution, when the advent of photography and the mechanical printing press brought nudity to the masses.

Up until then, artists inspired by the nude had drawn traditionally on classical and biblical imagery, as if gilded youth and physical ease belonged always to another time, the far away past, not the real and censorious present. Early Victorian artists veiled their work in references from mythology and literature, but remained careful to select subjects which conveyed moral or religious undertones: the story of Lady Godiva, who rode naked on a horse through the streets of Coventry as a protest against high taxes; the fauns and fairies frolicking in the woods from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; or Diana, the Virgin Goddess of the Hunt, identified with the Virgin in Christian iconography.

Where the nude had become respectable in the rest of Europe, the British were late entrants to the form until a group of progressive young artists in the 1860s' crossed the Channel and returned inspired by the work of French neo-classical painters such as Ingres and Gérôme. They were influenced by the spirit of a lost Greek utopia and began presenting figures as compositions in high art, emphasising classical themes, while elevating style and form above narrative. It was at this time in British art that Venus appears with fuller proportions as the ideal for natural womanhood, acknowledging woman's traditional biological role, but also suggesting more radical notions of female emancipation. Since Botticelli painted The Birth of Venus, artists have returned to the image in constant search of the Renaissance.

Work hung in exhibitions followed codes set down by legislation, but artists were constantly pushing back the boundaries by displaying nude figures in ever more daring arrangements. An
important boost to nude freedom came by Royal Appointment: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert not only admired the form, but the Queen made a point of giving her Consort a print of a nude for his birthday each year as a symbol of her love. Private commissions enabled artists to explore personal ways of representing the nude, giving full expression to desires marginalised by the galleries, and by the end of the 19th century, the human body in positions of subjection and arousal were making their way into galleries to engage the public more provocatively than ever before.

The development of photography created a new demand for the nude, easily made prints blurring the boundaries between the real and imagined body and offering a new immediacy not possible in painting. Where the nude had historically formed only one part of the artist's composition, in photography, the representation of the model became an end in itself.

Painters, influenced by this change, began to move away from the conventions of the idealised nude, transferring their figures from biblical and classical settings, and placing them in contemporary surroundings. French realists Manet and Degas presented the body in seedy domestic interiors that hinted at illicit sexual activity, while British artists by placing the nude outside implied the benefits of fresh air, sun bathing and exercise.

As film followed photography as a means to express the nude in art, the censors were still lying in wait with their strictures on what the public should and should not be allowed to see in the privacy of a darkened auditorium. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalís 1920s' classic L'Âge d'Or was banned from public viewing because of its 'subversive eroticism' and the 'furious dissection of civilised values.'

The film vanished for many years, but has since been shown on television and can be viewed at the surrealist galleries at the Tate Modern in London. It was first screened in Britain in 1950, when the sole complaint was from the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals. Bare breasts and a nun being thrown from a window caused no offence, but one of the characters is seen booting a small dog up the backside. Social mores had changed, but not the English.

The debate over nudity and public morals raged across the two sides of the divide throughout the 20th century, and will no doubt even in our more enlightened times continue to do so. In February this year during the half-time show at the Super Bowl in the United States, Janet Jackson's exposed right breast inspired 200,000 complaints from viewers.