The Naked Nude

John Currin, Bea Arthur Naked, 1991

By Frances Borzello, London: Thames & Hudson, 2013

The idealized nude is a staple of art history and it is my favorite type of genre painting.  Kenneth Clark famously stated that being naked is the condition of being without clothes, but the nude is art with a capital "A."  Clark wrote, "The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled or defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body reformed."  The nude, as Borzello so helpfully notes, "in art is a victory of fiction over fact."  

She asserts that the birth of modernism marks the end of the idealized nude.  Contemporary artists turn away from the depicting the perfect body and focus on our conflicted ideas about what it means to have a body.  We are obsessed with food, health, sexuality, weight, fashion, pornography--all topics that hinge on the problem of embodiment.  For example, John Currin once said that he like to paint images that embarrass him.  Indeed!  Looking at Bea Arthur Naked causes me to squirm.  I want to say, "Maude, please put your top on!"  Bea Arthur looks perfectly composed and dignified, but she has Mom breasts. In addition, that 80s hair style really hits too close to home.