Naked & Nude

This week we were looking at the Naked and Nude in Art and Design. There is an understanding to be had when explaining the effect the word Naked has and the effect that the word Nude has. If you say that someone is Naked then it comes across as being initially quite shocking as if that person should not be Naked. I believe it is the sharpness of the 'K' when pronouncing it. However when you pronounce the word Nude it comes across as being very subtle and innocent as if you are accepting that they are Nude.

Naked in art or design to me comes across as being a way of showing someone in a rude sort of manor, whereas Nude in art or design comes across in a way that we are celebrating the human form. There are many forms of both in art and design, however the majority is used to show people Nude. The first example of Nude art is dating back to Ancient Greece, when an artist called Michelangelo crafted a sculpture of David. It is a very large statue, which shows the human body of a man in very good health, as the muscles are very defined. Michelangelo studied the human body a lot before he produced this masterpiece, so he understood how to scale different parts of the body.

David, Michelangelo, 1501-1504 [1]

Men being shown Nude in art was only something that happened in the Ancient period and in today's world is a very uncommon thing to see. Mainly it is females that are shown nude in today's world, which I believe is down to them continuously being shown nude in artwork. I am going to look at a campaign called 'No More Page 3' which is to do with The Sun newspaper displaying topless women on the third page in each of its Newspapers. The group behind the campaign used the idea of cutting out all of the men and women in the magazine, to compare how they were each perceived in The Sun. They done this for 6 months and the results are quite shocking. They show that most of the males are sports figures who are fully clothed, with the closest to them being naked/nude, is them having their tops off. Now onto the women, the majority of the women are topless and wearing just underpants, this is showing women, although it does also show women who are wearing clothing. However The Sun is known as being a sports newspaper, it works well for that of the males, however there was not one single female sports person displayed in The Sun over the 6 month period of the experiment. Below is an image of the final piece along with a video to show the construction of the main piece of the campaign.

No More Page 3, The Sun Newspaper, 2014 [2]

Next I am going to look at a surrealist type of artwork by someone called Sarah Lucas. She produced a piece called 'Au Naturel' to link with the natural human body. However the piece consists of a mattress that is sat up at a 90 degree angle. There is then 2 oranges and a cucumber positioned to represent a mans genitals, and beside that is a bucket laid on its side to represent the female genitals and 2 melons sat into a ripped area of the mattress to represent breasts.

Au Naturel, Sarah Lucas, 1994 [3]

Another piece that she has produced under the title 'Chicken Knickers', is another example of ways to represent human genitalia. In this instance she has represented the female genitalia with a chicken. The image shows a chicken positioned over plain white knickers, and the light has been aimed upwards onto the chicken to highlight the opening. A very shocking piece of imagery.

Chicken Knickers, Sarah Lucas, 1997 [4]

Finally I am going to look at how a particular artist called Jenny Saville used her own body to create naked portraits. To create these portraits she laid onto some Plexiglas and was photographed from underneath, but she didn't just lay onto the Plexiglas. She distorted her body by pulling and twisting her skin, dragging her body around the Plexiglas and in many other ways to make herself look misshapen. I believe that she is trying to show how unattractive the human body can be made.

Closed Contact, Jenny Saville, 1995-1996 [5]

Closed Contact, Jenny Saville, 1995-1996 [6]

Closed Contact, Jenny Saville, 1995-1996 [7]

I have looked at many different ways that the human form has been shown in Art and Design through both Naked and Nude. Naked art is that which is more shocking visually, whereas Nude art is more naturally beautiful. I have given examples of both above along with representations of the Naked/Nude human genitalia. I believe that art will never go back on itself to a time where being Naked/Nude is acceptable as society has shaped it to be unacceptable.

Image Reference:
[1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Michelangelo's_David.JPG
[2]http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/02/no-more-page-3-the-sun-women-pictures-cut-out_n_6253238.html
[3]https://imageobjecttext.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/lucas-au-naturel-1994.jpg
[4]http://sartle.com/sartle_images//imagesi/1000690.jpg
[5]http://jennysavilleverticalanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/vi-british-youth-art-of-1970s.html
[6]http://jennysavilleverticalanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/vi-british-youth-art-of-1970s.html
[7]http://bumbumbum.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/JENNY-SAVILLE-GLEN-LUCHFORD2.jpg