Nudes and artists

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 17

Nudes and artists

From Naked to Nude: Life Drawing in the Twentieth Century. By George k Eisler. Thames and Hudson. 104 pp. $7.90. F (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) The artist-author of tiiis brief, but comprehensive collection of modern studies of the nude introduces them by thoughtful comments on the meaning of representation of the human body, of which there is a wealth of examples through all periods of art. Through such drawing from nature we are all, at various levels of competence, able to participate in one of the fundamental creative aspects of visual art. By the portrayal of the body, not only was man able to understand himself better, but he was led to modern medicine as the study of anatomy ceased to be mystical guesswork. A group of sculpture students in Florence once made a plaster caste of a beautiful human model which, to their distress, came out as a “hideous cadaver.” It had not moved from being naked to becoming a nude. A nude is not, the author says, “the subject of art, but a form of art.” It appeals to our senses, but more than this, it moves into the sphere of creation rather than remaining simply as representation. It was not until the nineteenth century that the nude finally became a subject in its own right. Before that the numerous nude studies had been placed in appropriate historical settings. The artists who now portrayed the nude for itself lived in direct contradiction to smug respectability, flouting the values of their societies.

While the depicting of the naked body fed secret envy and fascination, the artist assumed a new sociological significance. Degas, with his bathtub as permanent studio furniture, worked in the antithesis of romantic poses, observing his women in usually unnoticed moments, such as when washing or drying themselves, thus bringing sensuality into everyday occurrences. This, in turn, gave way to Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a brothel scene of an unashamedly non-erotic style of representation. With increasing specialisation and its socialogical reflection in the artist, machine-like nudes, sweating warriors, and women of fecund breeding potential became the passing phases. Over all, however, since antiquity there has been a search for the perfect mathematical proportions of the human body. This functional logic must always be the beginning if artistic abstraction is to remain meaningful, no matter how disturbed. The use of the naked female, rather than male, is explained not only by the predominance of male artists finding their models more sensually attractive, but also in that the female body offers a greater variety of forms and contours to draw and surfaces to define. A short section on materials to be used, and on pencils and poses for the aspiring artist, round off this short contribution to the world of art. Its main value for the layman is in the author’s descriptive words, and for the artist in the opportunity to study 91 illustrations of a wide variety of nudes.