Emily Landress December 2, 2013 Analyzing the Female Nude The way that female nudity has been

characterized, stereotyped and brought up historically through our culture has deeply affected not only the structure of our e istence on this earth, but the !ery way that we as human beings process information that has been gi!en to us" Depicting the female nude and e ploring nudity in many different art forms has been compromised by this idealized !iew" #any times the original intentions that many artists ha!e, are deeply affected by how their wor$ is !iewed in the public eye" %nd it&s this !iew that has been ingrained so deeply within our culture throughout history" This brings up this idea of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable for women being displayed without clothing and where is that imaginary line drawn between what is !iewed as art or !iewed as o!ertly se ual" 't is e!ident that there is some form of trauma resulting from this notion in our culture that has encased and trapped women throughout time and is beginning to effect the wide growing culture of art that has (ust begun to re!eal itself outside of what was acceptable" )et still through this ingrained culture, nudity seems to be remaining on a fine line of se ual and beauty" To fully understand how greatly the concept of this infected idea of the female nude has dramatically affected our society and thought processes, let us first understand what the term trauma is" Trauma, as understood and researched by The *enter for +on!iolence and ,ocial -ustice, is a term used to describe e periences or situations that are either emotionally painful or that o!erwhelm society&s ability to loo$ after oneself, and thus entirely left powerless" They theorize that trauma can be related either as intentional or witnessed !iolence, continual discrimination, po!erty, de!eloping a disorderly life style, or something that is related to fear of something or someone, or an iety" Trauma they suggest can also come in more subtle less

paralyzing forms such as discrimination, racism, oppression and po!erty, that in accumulation o!er time can be life.altering" The Trauma Learning *ollaborati!e of ,#* /,anta #onica *ollege0, let&s us $now that there are many different forms and categories within trauma, and that trauma cannot be specifically diagnosed but only obser!ed" 1ne of the categories that they mention is historical trauma" The trauma that is a result of cumulati!e emotional and psychological wounding o!er a life span and across generations" That the results of trauma are neither singled out as something but that they can range from creating many different issues such as an iety, depression, identity disorders, eating disorders, stress, shame and self hatred etc" The reason that ' theorize that the o!erse ualized !iew of the female nude is a traumatic e perience, is because of it&s !ast affect on the way that our culture does !iew women and how and what they do with their bodies" 't&s dealing with how people !iew what and who is accepted to be nude, and that idea of who and what comes down to what the societal definition of that acceptance is" That societal acceptance is defining what is to be beautiful, what is to be accepted as normal and what is to be 2natural"3 These societal definitions that are so deeply rooted in our thought processes, are merely (ust manmade and material ideas of this largely material world and it is because they are so physically on the surface of this culture, that they become this mechanism of sur!i!al and obtaining a societal definition of greatness" 4ithout going too much into detail about the conflicting definitions of greatness and beauty that consistently remains a struggle in our culture, one can begin to see the affects psychologically that these ideas of the human form could ha!e on women" These ideas of acceptance that are far from truly humanly natural but relati!ely material, create issues in our world such as struggles with body image, male dominance, the stereotypical woman, and power among other things" This being ingrained so much so into our culture, that one can now see how it is a form of oppression, predominately affecting the feminine outloo$s because of the largely powerful male standpoint"

't is this predominantly male outloo$ that we ha!e to blame" 5istorically spea$ing, there has always been male dominance" 't is this patriarchal system, defined as male dominance o!er female se uality, to own and ha!e control o!er women, that consistently roams through our culture no matter the amounts of se!erity" -ust as mere e amples today, the 6oman *atholic and the %merican 6epublican party are apposed to women&s right to ha!e control o!er their own bodies" %nd although the se!erity of such female insignificance has greatly impro!ed, women are still haunted by the roles that they ha!e been inflicted on in our society" There are idealizations of femininity that is deemed as what is acceptable and what is not" %nd it&s this male gaze that is affecting the way that one !iew things, rather than as they naturally are" Darcy 7rimaldo 7rigsby writes in her essay Dilemmas of 8isibility, 2"""the female body cannot be seen e cept as it is inscribed by the history of art and style /referring to the dominated male !iew0" Ta$ing away the !eil of clothing only re!eals cultural construction of another s$in"""her tease not only reproduces the authority of male authorship on her own recast self"""but underscored the impossibility of retrie!ing or representing a na$ed female body"""the artist is unable to entirely circum!ent a reading of a woman as timeless nature to man&s historical culture"3 /pg" 9:0 't is this male gaze is what is ob(ectifying and o!erse ualizing women, creating this traumatic lifestyle that constantly has women ha!ing to battle their own body image" 't&s this idea that has women constantly contemplating and struggling with their own acceptance" ,usan 6ubin ,uleiman in The ;emale <ody in 4estern *ulture= *ontemporary >erspecti!es is referring to the idea of body fat in our culture, telling us that 2fat by !irtue of it&s current association"""is a mar$er distinguishing male and female economic and se ual function, has come to signify &feminine status& in a way that is percei!ed as negati!e, not (ust by anore ics, but by the population at large"""anore ics are simply obeying society&s dictates in a more drastic manner than the rest of us"3 /pg" 1?90 4hat is so heartbrea$ingly true about ,uleimann&s statement, is that one is only obeying society&s dictations"

4omen are only obeying what they ha!e been told to do" %nd for centuries, women ha!e been ob(ects of male theorizing, male desires, male fears and male representations, and they&re only (ust following orders in order to sur!i!e" E!en in art the female body is male.authored" 't&s this male gaze that most often depicts the general public outloo$ and desire" %nd as a relati!e e ample, ad!ertisement displays women as a masculine desire" 4omen in ad!ertisement become ob(ects and tools that help a product sell" <ut it&s through se ualization, that it does sell" '+ a commercial aspect we&re often told that se sells doesn&t it@ %ppealing to the male audience but in e change affecting the women, women wanting the product to become more li$e the model because of the se appeal that&s attracti!e to the mass" The female body is the one more 2saturated3 with se and although the righteous thought is to thin$ of women as (ust and fare as men, women and se culturally couldn&t be more intertwined" 'n Linda +ochlin&s essay 4hy 5a!e There <een +o 7reat 4omen %rtists@, written in 1A?1, +ochlin discusses the institutional struggles that women face, she then begins to proceed saying that women found themsel!es able to step foot into the art world as long as they did a little bit of 2whoring,3, on the side" 't&s this se ual appeal attached to women that is fore!er suffocating" -ust lately in the media we&!e e!en been hearing things similar to the idea that women should wear (ust enough clothing to fit society&s standard of se ual attraction and appearance but not so much that they attract rapists" %nd that&s something that is incredibly haunting and almost decepti!e" 4ithout getting into too much detail (ust about se uality and women because e!en (ust that is a huge issue at large, but staying within the realms of the idea of the nude form of women, one begins to see the correlation our culture has with women and se "" 'n the boo$ #odeling Life= art models spea$ about nudity, se uality, and the creati!e process by ,arah 6" >hillips, >hillips e plains the rough life of life models and their acceptance of their 2se 3 wor$" >hillips tells us about how life model&s !ery first concern is the 2general population&s

misperception of their wor$ as se wor$"""in the minds of many people, artistic inspiration seems lin$ed to se ual arousal, and the life model as muse seems to be a font of that se ual inspiration"3 /pg"3?0 %ccording to many life models there&s a thin line between life modeling and se wor$, and it&s as they describe the difference between se ual, and sensual that in popular culture is only !iewed as one, se ual" This brings up my point about !iewing art as o!ertly se ual (ust because of nudity, and the fine line that determines what is natural and what is (ust se ual" This idea that an artist has to consider when wanting to begin to paint the nude form" >hillips goes on to say 2nude modeling is a site for irreconcilable notions about nudity in art /good0 and nudity in life /bad0" ;or while the artist painting the nude was respected, the unclothed lady who modeled for it was not"3 /pg"?30 This ma$es us Buestion how we can loo$ at art that is either of or tal$s about the nude form and how we can not disassociate it from se ualization" There is some hierarchical binary opposition between art and pornography and between the artist and the &whore& that are society struggles to deal with" 't&s almost as if the na$edness cannot be disembodied from a se ual connotation and when in!ol!ing women, women cannot be ripped from the idea of being labeled in a negati!e sense when re!ealed na$ed" There&s an artist %nnie ,prin$le who forces us to thin$ about what is the !alue of women&s agency, 2of not drawing a firm line between obscene pornography on the one hand and defining what is legitimate art on the other"3 %nnie ,prin$le was a former prostitute, but the !ery first to defy the stereotypical ideas that our society has of a prostitute, and has a <;% in photography from the ,chool of 8isual %rts /a well.renowned art college in +ew )or$0, and a degree in human se uality from the 'nstitute for %d!anced ,tudy of 5uman ,e uality /in ,an ;rancisco0" %nnie ,prin$le /figure 1"0 currently is a wor$ing and teaching artist, struggling with the idea of art and how far she can push the limits of what is performance art before it turns into pornography" 't is through this issue that ,prin$le deals with, that one begins to understand how

closely $nit se uality is with women and how the two are !ery hard to separate" %nd it&s through this struggle that one also begins to see the struggle in art of depicting the female nude and trying to disassociate that from being labeled as the whore or the prostitute in the painting" 4hether an idealized !ersion of beauty or the ordinary non.glamorous woman, se uality is engrained in the idea of nudity and as a result is a degradation to women" #anet&s e traordinary painting 1lympia /figure 2"0 was deemed indecent for it&s shameless display of what was $nown as &commercial& se uality, o!ertly showing off the body to appeal and attract attention" 5is painting held high contro!ersy because of the in tune thought of the female nude being correlated to &whoring"& %s well as #anet&s painting displaying a women who was glorifying the prostitutes life, rather than (ust being seen as the nude female form, the painting could not be seen passed the pornographic stance of the model"" This painting was offensi!e /at the time and partially now0 because of the lac$ of social acceptance and social identity that women ha!e" The whole idea behind his painting that cannot be unseen, is that the woman is so openly na$ed, this being deemed embarrassing and impure" >redominantly !iewed as prostitution and adultery, highly far from the nude male form, deemed presentable and respectable" The struggle that artists ha!e to endure when painting the female nude, is the historical baggage that comes with the idea and how !ery tied together the ideas are" 1ne has to consider these ideas as their own because of the ine!itability of the sub(ect being brought up" *arolee ,chneemann /figure 3"0 is a multidisciplinary artist who largely focuses on the human body as an art form, and mainly her own, the female nude" ,he studies !ery tightly in her wor$ the idea of separating the thoughts between what is eroticism and the politics of gender" Largely popular in the mid C0s through the ?0s, ,chneemann e pressed her lo!e of her own body and describes the human body as one of the most natural and beautiful forms of art in e istence" 6ather than focusing so much so on the negati!e connotations that come with the na$ed form of

women, ,chneemann li$es to focus on the se ual e pression and liberation of the female form" ,chneemann argues her stance that she does not o!ertly ma$e her wor$ to intentionally portray pornographic images but rather e pressing the nude form in a casual and artistic way" %nd it&s this struggle that the artist deals with, forced to accept the public $nowledge and !iew of nudity" %rtists ha!e to accept that if they decide to paint the female nude, they will be raised to Buestion the authenticity of art and or erotica, and through this the artist must struggle to either obey or defy the accusations to pro!e their point" 'n 1A?D, ,chneemann performed 'nterior ,croll /figure :"0, where she proceeded to e tract her famous 2feminist scroll speech3 from her genital area and read it" ,he then began to read ,he 4as a 7reat >ainter, by *@zanne" 't is through this piece that we find a profoundly great influence in the art world" ;or instead of !iewing this piece as o!ertly pornographic, art critic 6obert *" #organ argues that through understanding women&s stance in the ?0s and ,chneemann&s o!ertly se ual focus on the female genitals, ,chneeman is changing the masculine undertone of the male desire and rather changing it to that of feminist e ploration of the body" <ut it&s through this undertone that the artist must go to and understand when wanting to stray from the pornographic !iew of the na$ed form and the negati!e connotation with the female na$ed form" 'n a more contemporary standing, -enny ,a!ille is a brilliant painter that begins to defy the masculine gaze of the female nude and begins to help shape the art world and how the nude form is !iewed" ,a!ille highly popular in the A0s to the present" ,a!ille in an inter!iew with ,uzie #ac$enzie for The 7uardian, ,a!ille tells us 2as a child, '&d loo$ through art boo$s and there were no women artists /born in 1A?00" 1f course you start to as$ why not@ %nd could ' ma$e a painting of a nude in my own !oice@ 't&s such a male.laden art, so historically weighted" The way women were depicted didn&t feel li$e mine, too cute" ' wasn&t interested in idealized beauty"3 ,a!ille wor$s !ery much so against the male.dominated idealized portraits of women, strongly

focusing on painting modern bodies and the open and honest form as it truly is" ;ocusing on the modern body, including deformities, scars, fat etc" ,a!ille e aggerates her nude forms /figure D"0 focusing on the angle and the !iewers confrontation with the fran$ness of the way that the body naturally is and dealing with the natural perception that women face with their bodies" 't is through this e ploration and fran$ness of the female body that ,a!ille defies the idealized body and the historical conte t of the female nude representing prostitution" The strongly male depicted !iew in this world holds such a prominent public !iew of the female form, especially in the affect on !iewing such nude form in art" <ut one must accept that in order to discuss the female nude not only in generality, but in art itself, one must accept that they will be faced with the historical conte t that women hold" That there is no escaping the baggage of the female form, but there is, as pro!ed by -enny ,a!ille, %nnie ,prin$le, and *arolee ,chneemann, the ability to pro!e against the idealized !ersion of feminine se uality"

/;igure 1"0 %nnie ,prin$le 2,ir3 >erformance piece, 1A?C"

/;igure 2"0 Edouard #anet 21lympia3 1il >ainting, 19CD"

/;igure 3"0 *arolee ,chneemann 2Eye <ody3 >erformance piece, 1AC3"

/;igure :"0 *arolee ,chneemann 2'nterior ,croll3 >erformance piece, 1A?D"

/;igure D"0 -enny ,a!ille 2>lan3 1il on *an!as, 1AA3

Bibliography:

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