Mary Beard, The Shock of the Nude

Mary Beard in her inimitable unconcerned style tackled the representation of the naked human body in art in a two-part programme, The Shock of the Nude. It was always watchable, but could not hope to resolve the many questions it raised over the two hours.  

She started with the ancient Greek nude, and mentioned, of course, the distinction so loved by traditional art historians such as Kenneth Clark between the naked and the nude. Greek sculpture dealt with both male and female nudes. But the problems started here. There was an element of box ticking about the programmes, a wish to ensure that all areas of current concern have been covered. So she began with the female nude, which was the exception, rather than the rule, in Greek art, and fundamentally different to the male nude in Greek sculpture: “unlike the women, the men don’t appear to be controversial at all”. Women were kept out of the way in ancient Greece, so a nude female sculpture had in some way to be explained (but she didn’t explain). She described the Greek nude as highly idealised, and that corresponds with Clark’s description of the Greek nude as “art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish” – in other words, the Greek nude is inherently idealising. That idealisation has continued to the present day, and Mark Quinn’s marble sculpture of Alison Lapper, pregnant, simply continues the tradition of the focus on the stylized nude torso.

In the first programme, Beard skipped over any move away from the idealised body, with only passing mention of any art of the last 150 years, apart from Picasso. But, to her credit, she did point out that the idealised Greek male has a smaller penis than in real life – but didn’t hazard any explanation. She didn’t point out that pubic hair is present in ancient Greek sculpture, but then disappears from Western art until the late 19th century and Courbet.

Her tone through all this was rather down to earth, perhaps desexualising. She pointed out that Greek males did not spend their time working out. Instead, the representation of the nude was actually the depiction of Greek citizenship, and represented a moral stance. I’ve often read that Greek nudes represented a moral attitude, and it has always intrigued me. If Greek nudes meant something moral, then what do nudes mean today? Do they mean (simply) something sexual? Or something more? Beard approached this idea at the end of the second part, on the relevance of modern nudes. One of her interviewees stated how Art is a conversation with the world around us, and Beard pointed out the nude is still unsettling people, although I wouldn’t describe most ancient Greek nudes as unsettling, at least to the Greeks themselves; they are only unsettling to us, because we struggle to explain why they are naked.

Fundamental to Beard’s argument is the male gaze, and she wonderfully exemplified the male gaze with reference to two pictures: the Venus of Urbino by Titian in the Uffizi, and a very strange painting by Zoffany in the Royal Collection. I see the Titian as one of the most erotic paintings in pre-1900 art; but, following her desexualising tone, she trivialised the sexual reference by imagining herself standing behind the model and laughing at the males observing the model – not at all Titian’s intention.

The other painting mentioned by Beard is The Tribuna of the Uffizi by Zoffany. Although the painting shows nudes, it does not appear to be contributing to the debate about the nude at all - except that all the viewers are male, and there appear to be some sexual references in it. I couldn’t quite see the relevance. Another question Beard did not, I think, fully answer, is what the modern female equivalent to the male gaze might be. There were some rather uncomfortable images of art critics facing the camera, and at the same time facing a woman undressing in front of them – a rather contrived situation that did not advance our knowledge of either male or female gaze.

Nor did I see the relevance of a special trip to Paris to see Courbet’s Origin of the World, a close-up of a woman’s very hairy genitalia. I wouldn’t call this a nude either; there is no face or even upper body visible.

To her credit, Beard mentioned the tradition of depicting Christ naked, in fact stated that Christianity would be unthinkable without the naked body of Jesus (I’m not sure if this applies to all Christian churches). But these sections of the programme were so brief as to be almost not worth including. Similarly brief was a mention of the coverage of the black body in art; how the Raft of the Medusa by Gericault has for the most important figure on the raft a black man; but immediately the focus on the nude was lost as we drifted into the story behind the painting.

Among the works she unearthed was one magnificent nude by Chasseriau, pupil of Ingres, and claimed as the first black nude by an artist of colour. But we continued at our breakneck pace to mention another theme, the absence of older women in art history. Without drawing breath, she then quizzed a model of Lucian Freud to see if he had tried to have sex with her, showed a few very tormented drawings and paintings by Egon Schiele, and then modelled naked for some studies of her body.  And by the way, she had a moment to mention Sally Mann, the American photographer who published books of photos of her naked children, considered whether to remove all Eric Gill art from public display, before finally returning (breathlessly) home.

A fascinating topic, and worthy of a book. Not something to be squeezed into two hours.