This is a great article from the Huffington Post that explains how artists use their body in a specific way to express their visions. It is a quick read but very enlightening, and it explains a lot about how our bodies are the very thing that keeps us from being able to see things that most of us have trouble seeing in the first place.
The art world is often thought of as a place where everyone is nude, or at least nude-free, because that’s the norm. Nudity is very common in art criticism, and the concept of nudity as a whole is just another way to say that nudity is common. This article from Huffington Post explains why this is the case, and it is really fascinating stuff.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with my body. I just don’t want to be naked when I’m in front of people. To me, if you say, “I’m naked,” I automatically assume you are lying.
This is why you see many nude artworks in galleries and museums, since the public is willing to accept it. But what happens in the real world is that artists are often criticized for not presenting their bodies in the best light, and for not being willing to compromise their own bodies for the sake of their art.
I think the problem is that many artists are so used to presenting their bodies in the best light that they no longer feel the need to do so. That is why I think nude art is rarely as offensive as sex art, for example.
If nude art is indeed as offensive as sex art then I think the problem is more that people have not been exposed to nude art in a long time. They have just heard about it on the news or seen a photo of it on TV. We just see more pornography now, and less nudity in art.
In fact the first nude art I ever saw was the Eros/Killer Cammy art from the 1990s, shown at the art museum in Seoul. I was quite young at the time and had never seen a real naked woman before, so I was shocked and offended by the sight of this naked woman in her underwear. The first time I saw it I thought that I was seeing a scene from a movie.
In the US we’re not so shocked, although a lot of our art is still quite shocking. A survey we did in the US found that over half of the public believed that pornography had been an important part of modern culture, and over 80% of them believed that we should no longer make art about nudity. It’s also the case that a great deal of art, especially in the US, is made with explicit sexual content.
The art of the world is full of nudity. The history of art stretches back to the very beginning of civilization. From the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Indians to the Middle East and China, even ancient China featured some of the most beautiful figures drawn with body paint. This is why art has always been a part of culture.
So what’s the problem? Well, in the US, those who hold the view that art be explicit are not exactly the most popular artists in the world. Most of them don’t even seem to know much about it, which is the one thing you can do to improve the situation. It might also be worth pointing out that the US is the largest consumers of art.
