Nude in art

Some parts: Clark C. 1956 The Nude: A study of Ideal Art. London: John Murray. Pp. 3-29

naked: to be deprived of our clothes (implies embarrassement)

nude: the body re-formed; it is an artform invented by the Greeks in the century B.C; it is not the subject of art but a form of art

p. 6

[the nude] is ourselves and arouses memories of all the things that we wish to do with ourselves; and first of all we wish to perpetuate ourselves… o nude should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling

the naked body provides a vivid reminder of other human eperiences as well: harmony energy, ecstasy humility, pathos

p. 9

The Gothic artsts could draw animals because this ivolved no intervening abstraction. ut they could not draw the mude because it was a idea: an idea which their philosophy of orm could not assimilate.

… in our Diogenes search for physical beauty, our instinctive desire is not to imitate but to perfect.

… everything as an ideal form of which the phenomena of experience are more or less corrupted replicas —> eistance of ideal beauty

p. 11

Sir Joshua Reynolds: the ideal is composed of the average and the habitual

p. 13 > link between sensation and order