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Style, Fashion and the Full Monty
The Art of the Nude in Photography
WC 3835
“To boldly go where no man has gone
before” are words which ring out across the
galaxies inhabited by the self‐styled
“Trekkies”, those legions of fans of the Star
Ship Enterprise and its indomitable crew.
Star Trek began as a comic in 1966 but
morphed into several feature‐length sci‐fi
movies and a tv series which comes only
second after Dr Who as the most prolific
series in tv history.
Spock, Captain James T. Kirk, Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy -
Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley
Of course, over such a long production run, Star Trek, like even Dr Who, had to
make changes to accommodate to changing fashions, not only in clothes (sci‐fi
wardrobes don’t usually show their age anyway) but more importantly, in
changing ideologies and currents of thought.
One of the biggest challenges facing what began as a male chauvinistic comic
was to adapt to the influences of feminism. By the time “Star Trek – The
Second Generation” went to air, the mission statement read by William
Shatner at the beginning of every episode1 had changed to “To boldly go where
no one has gone before” and the sister ship, Voyager, had acquired a female
captain.
The half‐Vulcan/half‐human character, Spock the one with the pudding‐
basin haircut and plucked eyebrows was played by veteran actor, Leonard
Nimoy. Born in Boston in 1931, Nimoy was the son of Yiddish‐speaking
Russian (Ukrainian) parents. He began acting at the age of 8 and has had an
extensive film and tv career, including “The Man from Uncle”… But acting has
not been the only string to his bow: this Renaissance Man studied
1
Trekkies tell me that two episodes were not prefaced by this introduction.
1
photography at UCLA as well as having an MA in education and an honorary
doctorate from Antioch University in Ohio.
Perhaps not known to most Trekkies, however, is that Nimoy has conducted a
very successful career as a professional photographer for the last 40 years,
and it is in this context we will look at him and his art a little later, because
Nimoy actor and photographer demonstrates very well how changing
social ideologies and artistic fashions can be reflected in an artist’ work. In
particular, I want to use Nimoy along with others, to demonstrate how
changing attitudes to the human body influence what in art circles is
generally called “The Nude”, a term which puts a rather genteel spin on a
subject which can range from the abstract through the distorted and
disguised to the down‐right erotic.
The changing memes of the nude in art
Back in 1976, Richard Dawkins2 coined the term “meme” by which he meant
….any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets
transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances
and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity3.
Dawkins explained why he needed to invent the term:
…to describe how one might extend Darwinian principles to explain the
spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples tunes, catch-
phrases, beliefs, clothing-fashions, and the technology of building arches.
Memes, he said
…propagate themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner
similar to the behavior of a virus. As a unit of cultural evolution, a meme in
some ways resembles a gene.
There are three memes or perhaps “clusters of memes” I want now to
examine in relation to photography and its practise down the last century or
so. These concern (1) the value placed on the shape or form of the body; (2)
the manner in which the body is displayed the “pose” as we usually say,
2
Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene 1976 and alter editions.
3
This and the following quotations are from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
2
but this also includes which body parts are shown; and (3) the gender of the
sitter.
(1) Fat Is A Feminist Issue
Back in 1978 when Susie Orbach, now a professor at the LSE, proclaimed that
Fat Is A Feminist Issue4 we were perhaps less aware how fat people were
becoming in the Western world and the medical dangers attached thereto, but
she had a good point: popular fashion in the latter half of the 20th century
dictated that women had to be thin to be
desirable.
We know, of course, that this has not always been
so: for example, one of our remote Gravettian
ancestors back in the Upper Paleolithic (about 24
kya) carved a tiny figurine of a woman whose
obesity was probably the ideal of the time. We
know too that
great painters,
such as
Reubens
painted the
more
generous
figure.
The Venus de Willendorf: 24-22 kya, Gravettian culture.
Peter Paul Reubens: Les Trois Graces
4
Penguin Books, 1978.
3
Renoir: A Nymph by a Stream, 1869-70
More recently even Renoir whom we usually associate with pictures of
fresh‐faced young girls frequently chose his amply‐padded companion,
Lise Tréhot, as his model. She can be seen in his work, “A Nymph by a
Stream”,5 a traditional theme in French painting of the time when the female
nude was associated with Nature and the great outdoors.
5
1869-70. Oil on canvas, 66.7 x 122.9 cm., National Gallery, London.
4
(2) Posing the Nude
There is another meme which was transmitted from painting to photography in the
19th century and this seems to have been that one of the most desirable features of
the female nude was her buttocks as displayed in what is known as the odalisque
pose. The best-known example of this “odalisque” pose is the 1814 painting, later
reproduced en grisaille by Ingres:
As we saw earlier in this course,
this odalisque pose was again
used by Louis Jules Duboscq in
1854 when he photographed his
model in stereo, the better (one
presumes), to appreciate her
ample curves.
Ask an artist painter or photographer why he would choose this pose and the
probable answer would include reference to “curving forms” and “rotundity”.
However, one cannot help but wonder the role sexuality plays in such a choice:
while modern humans are upright bipeds, our remote ancestors went about on all
fours. In that stance, the genitalia are far more visible and some biologists
5
argue the stage of the oestrus cycle can more readily be observed. Such
speculation could probably also be applied to our obsession with female breasts in
the art of the Nude. However, the more obviously erotic aspect of female anatomy,
the vulva, is and has been off-limits for centuries in Western art even though it has
played an important part in art of other cultures. For example, the Judy Chicago
ceramic dinner service decorated with female genitalia was and still does
raise more than eyebrows.
(3) Who looks at who?
There is a meme in our culture that “artistic nudes”, no matter in what medium, are
female. In fact, the French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was once reported
as saying words to the effect that “in our society, it is women who are looked at
and men do the looking”.
6
Carl Van Vechten: Henri Matisse, 1933.
Yet, despite Matisse’s misgivings, male nudes appeared in quantity in 19th and 20th
Century photographs. For example, OG Rejlander the master of “combined
printing” using multiple negatives to produce one print took this “Wrestling
Study” c1855. In 1885 and in a similarly “manly” vein, Eadweard Muybridge
took sequential photographs of men wrestling as part of his rather famous studies
of horses galloping, men walking and other subjects in motion in order to observe
the movements involved. More
recently, elite athletes are photographed
in the same way, the photographs
serving as an aid to improve their
technique…
6
in conversation with André Verdet
7
Eadweard Muybridge: Two Men Wrestling, c1885.
Although the Rejlander photograph is readily classified as “art”, the
Muybridge work is fairly strictly speaking a “scientific” photograph. Even so,
when I first saw these photographs as an undergraduate in the Fisher Library
at Sydney University in 1954, there were still some restrictions surrounding
the release of the works for “scientific study” and the book was kept in a
securely locked cupboard along with the Kama Sutra and photographs of the
sculptures on the Khajuraho Temple in south India.
Some of the sculptures on the
Khajuraho Temple in south India
So, what are the conventions surrounding photographs of the male nude?
8
The Nude in Action
Earlier on, I suggested that among others, three clusters of memes dominated the
nude in photography. These were body shape, pose and gender. I wish now to take
a close look at some important photographs of the nude, in particular of the male
nude and later, of the fat nude, and see how these memes might have influenced
how and what the photographers produced.
The nude, no matter what else it might be, is always political because we have
surrounded our bodies with such a plethora of considerations to do with
power and morality. Without doubt, the most politically charged subject these
days would have to be the nude photography of children, but that aside, there
are parts of the human body which are still more or less “off limits”, one of
which is as already mentioned, the vulva. Another is that part the French
poets, Paul Verlaine and his lover, Arthur Rimbaud immortalised in their
parody, the only poem they ever wrote together, Le Sonnet Du Trou Du Cul7.
A third is the penis but not so much in its usual state, but erect or, for that
matter, in close‐up.
In the following photographs we will look at how these memes have been dealt
with by a variety of artists over the last century and a half. First, we will examine
photographs of the male body.
7
In his collection l’Idole, the French Parnassian poet Albert Mérat composed a sonnet to every
part of his mistress’ body except one; Verlaine and Rimbaud collaborated to complete the
picture. The first quatrain, composed by Verlaine, reads:
Obscur et froncé comme un oeillet violet
Il respire, humblement tapi parmi la mousse
Humide encor d'amour qui suit la pente douce
Des fesses blanches jusqu'au bord de son ourlet
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Is it “Art”?
That I am afraid is a question I must leave you to answer for yourselves because I
know of no criteria able to provide the definitive answer…. However, I must say
that one of the common criticisms of photographs
of the male body and especially of the genitalia, is
that “it is ugly”. But beauty, they say, is in the eye
of the beholder… In this context, personally I
believe beauty is in the eye of the photographer and
his or her challenge is to communicate this to the
viewer.
For me, at least, this photograph breathes male sexuality, the power and strength
of the man’s body, all emphasised by the phallic-like shape of the head in its
thrown-back pose. The fact that it is in black-and-white and not in colour also
helps to add to this illusion. This is “man abstracted” or “the essence of man”
because all other personal details have been pared away to leave this
quintessentially male form, albeit of only a part.
Although the Victorian well, some of them did put bloomers on piano legs,
those posing pouches and fig leaves were not always used. Round about 1880, for
8
This and following photographs have been reproduced from Peter Weiermair: The Hidden Image – Photographs of
the Male Nude in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, The MIT Press, 1988.
9
Leotard was the strong man in the Cirque Parisien after whom the dancers’ tights have been subsequently named.
10
instance, G. Marconi posed this photograph of a full-
frontal, totally naked Christ on a cross which even
today, would outrage many…
So, truth was, ever since 1840 when
Hippolyte Bayard posed naked for his self‐
study The Drowned Man, there has been a
constant flow of photographs of the male
nude even though their public access might
have been restricted. The German historian
Peter Weiermair called his book The Hidden
Image10 for good reason in that for a
century or so there has been censorship of
images exposing male genitalia.
Edward Weston, 1925
10
Peter Weiermair: The Hidden Image – Photographs of the Male Nude in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries,
The MIT Press, 1988.
11
surely offend no one. The concept of “man and boy”, the achievement of the one
and the promise of the other, has been a popular theme throughout all forms of art,
but photography especially has found inspiration in this thought of things to come
and the memories we have of our own childhoods.
Weston of course produced some of the greatest nude studies ever taken in the
history of photography. Let me remind you for a moment of his magnificent study
taken in 1936, and of another of his most famous photographs, of a Nautilus shell.
This last, taken in 1927, in the way it folds upon itself, presages the human nudes
which were to follow.
The 1950s were the most homophobic times, both here in Australia and in the
USA, of the entire 20th Century. Just as in pre-modern Europe, when
homosexuality was conflated with Catharism and thus with heresy, so in the US in
the 1950s, homosexuality and Communism became virtually synonymous. Even
so, there was a flourishing trade in male nude photographs, some soft-core porn,
others of much greater artistic merit.
One of the leading photographers of his day was George Platt Lynes (1907–
1955), a much respected fashion and commercial photographer who was a protégé
of Gertrude Stein and a good friend of Jean Cocteau and Julien Levy. Levy was a
12
New York art dealer who exhibited Lynes’ photographs in his New York gallery.
As the chief photographer to the Hollywood Vogue studios, Lynes photographed
celebrities such as Katherine Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, Rosalind Russel, Orson
Wells, Igor Stravinsky and others of their kind. However, it is not so much for his
fashion and commercial output that Lynes is today remembered and accorded the
status he deserves.
In the 1930s he began to focus on homoerotic
photography, photographing friends such as the
young Yul Brynner, among others. He also
began working with Dr Alfred Kinsey in his
famous sexological research. Indeed, the Kinsey
Institute today holds perhaps the largest
collection of Lynes’ work of this kind.
13
Richard Avedon
Rudolf Nureyev, Paris, France
July 25, 1961
Platt Lynes’ mantle as a fashion
photographer was virtually taken
over by Richard Avedon whose
portraits we have already discussed
back when we were discussing The
Art of Photographic Portraiture
(P17). Avedon also had a reputation
as an innovative photographer of the
male nude, his best‐known (and
perhaps most scandalous) being a
1961 image of dancer, Rudolf
Nureyev. While this is classic Avedon
minimalism (with the pure white
background), there is nothing minimalist in what Avedon (and Nureyev)
chose to display!
Perhaps the most famous photographer of the male nude of recent years,
however, was Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial New York artist who
died at the age of 42 in 1989 from
HIV/AIDS and whom we have already
discussed as a portraitist. While his
photographs of celebrities, flowers and
S&M events have gained the headlines,
his collection usually called “The Black
Nudes” remains as one of his greatest
achievements.
Mapplethorpe once described
photography as "the perfect way to make
a sculpture." And this is no better
demonstrated than in his Black Nudes,
of which Ajitto (1981) is a good example.
Search as I may, I could find only one example of a male nude posed in the
odalisque fashion. Taken by an unknown photographer, this is a card
14
apparently sent in the 1930s to his admirers and signed on the back
“Sincerely yours Lawrence”.11
Anon: Lawrence Woodford, c1930, UK.
That is not to say that men’s
bums are tabu in
photography: far from it,
pictures of men’s muscled
buttocks were legion
although most were posed,
as in this photograph of
Australian footballer, Ian
Roberts, in the standing
position, as though to
emphasise the athletic or
warrior‐like qualities of the body on view. Roberts posed nude in 1995 for
Paul Freeman and the magazine, Blue12 and created a minor stir in football
clubs around the nation, although perhaps more because he “came out” as gay
in the accompanying article rather than because he “bared all” for the camera.
And so I read a view of the male bottom is preferred by women when
asked to choose which part of the male anatomy they find the most sexy!
11
Emmanuel Cooper: Fully Exposed – The Male Nude in Photography, Allen and Unwin, 1990, p. 45.
12
(not only) Blue, premiere issue, Australia, February 1995, p.55
15
eyes, he has been able to convey it to the eyes of his beholders. Quiroz’
photographs give the lie to that old saying, “Sex raises its ugly head!”
On shape and form
If ‘ugly” is the term often applied to
parts of the male anatomy, “ugly”
too is fat. In recent times,
photographs of fat people women
especially are considered either
offensive or comic. As mentioned
earlier, this has not always been so
in Western art but it has been a very
strong meme in recent decades.
13
Carlos Quiroz: Exhibition, Vertigo Publishers, Barcelona, 2001.
16
As we all know, the price of conformity in the matters of body shape is high: what
Nead called a fearsome self-regulation means that women have to view
themselves as others see them and in order to “measure up”, embark on that
endless round of diets if not personal trainers in a gym….
While the fashion industry and advertising is currently being blamed for creating
and perpetuating this meme, not all fashion photographers have seen fat as ugly.
The doyen of fashion photographers, Irving Penn, was renowned for his elegant
photographs of slim models in gorgeous dresses…
17
Another, but not so famous, photographer
of the female nude who scornes the
conventions, is Greek photographer Eleni
Mylonas whose “Amphora” is a classic in
more ways than one.
18