The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality

by Lynda Nead

Overview

The history of Western art is saturated with images of the female body. Lynda Nead's The Female Nude was the first book to critically examine this phenomenon from a feminist perspective and ask: how and why did the female nude acquire this status?

In a deft and engaging manner, Lynda Nead explores the ways in which acceptable and unacceptable images of the female body are produced, issues which have been reignited by current controversies around the patriarchy, objectification and pornography. Nead brilliantly illustrates the two opposing poles occupied by the female nude in the history of art; at one extreme the visual culmination of enlightenment aesthetics; at the other, spilling over into the degraded and the obscene. What both have in common, however, is the aim of containing the female body.

Drawing on examples of art and artists from the classical period to the 1980s, The Female Nude paints a devastating picture of the depiction of the female body and remains as fresh and invigorating today as it was at the time of its first publication.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032641751
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/01/2024
Series:	Routledge Classics
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Lynda Nead joined the Department of History of Art at Birkbeck in 1986 and was appointed to the Pevsner Chair of History of Art in 2004. Before coming to Birkbeck, she taught History of Art at the University of Leicester and the University of Kent. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Gresham College, London and Moore Distinguished Professor, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology. She was elected a Member of the Academia Europaea in 2013 (MAE); a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2017 (FRHistS); and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2018 (FBA).

Table of Contents

Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition  List of Images  Introduction  Part 1: Theorizing the Female Nude  1. Framing the Female Body  2. A Discourse on the Naked and the Nude  3. A Study of Ideal Art  4. Aesthetics and the Female Nude  5. Obscenity and the Sublime  Part 2: Redrawing the Lines  6. ‘The Damaged Venus’  7. The Framework of Tradition  8. The Lessons of the Life Class  9. Art Criticism and Sexual Metaphor  10. Breaking Open the Boundaries  11. Redrawing the Lines  Part 3: Cultural Distinctions  12. Sacred Frontiers  13. Pure and Motivated Pleasure  14. Policing the Boundaries  15. Displaying the Female Body  16. Erotic Art: A Frame for Desire.  Bibliography  Index

Editorial Reviews

“... this is a book which will be universally welcomed ... clearly written and beautifully paced.” – Marcia Pointon, Times Higher Educational Supplement

“... this is a book which will be universally welcomed ... clearly written and beautifully paced.” – Marcia Pointon, Times Higher Educational Supplement

From the Publisher