Naked women have a long history in art. Whether as a sinful symbol of degradation or a liberating emblem of authenticity, they continue to evoke powerful meanings.
While Giorgione’s Venus looks away and Titian’s Danae reclining nude appears in a pastoral setting, Fragonard’s Shirt Removed depicts a daring subject.
Nude in art
The female body has been an integral part of art from the very beginnings of humanistic culture, whether refashioning classical ideals or embracing erotic impulses condemned by the Christian Church. Naked women have provided artists with a way to express ideas about fertility, morality, beauty standards, gender and sexual identities, and even national identity.
But the nude body is a cultural idea, not a universal one. Artists from different cultures depict nakedness in ways that are often quite distinct.
It might be tempting to argue that painters like to paint naked women because they look so good, but the truth is probably a bit more complicated. Artists who depict the female nude often have a very specific agenda to pursue, which could have as much to do with social, political, and aesthetic traditions as it does with the inherent beauty of the female body.
Botticelli’s Venus
The 15th-century Renaissance was alive with a sense that physical beauty could connect the human spirit to divine things. Botticelli’s Venus was a symbol of earthly love, a concept tied to Neoplatonic ideas.
The painting depicts a new-born goddess emerging from a shell, with a winged Zephyr (and perhaps another female figure who may represent a more gently flowing wind) blowing her hair. On her right, a woman holds out a lavish cloak or dress to cover the naked goddess when she reaches land. The floral decoration of her gown suggests she is one of the Horae or Hours, Greek minor goddesses of the seasons and other divisions of time.
Botticelli’s Venus seems pure and innocent—almost virginal in her modesty. Her long blond hair is idealized, remarkably free of blemishes. She poses in a contrapposto stance, a pose rooted in 15th-century concepts of modesty, and audiences would have read her body language as demure but not ashamed.
Manet’s Olympia
When Manet’s frank Olympia first appeared in the Salon in 1865, it caused a sensation. This was the first time a modern painting of a naked woman from everyday life was rendered realistically and on a large scale. Its depiction of a Black model, Laure, distanced her from association with past colonial slaves and signaled her entry into the new class relations of Paris.
She sits, not coquettishly but frankly, with her hands spread across her mons pubis—a symbol of sex. Her feet are bare and shapely rather than the docile sandals of previous depictions of women in nude. She is being presented with a bouquet of flowers, presumably from her adoring client.
Unlike Titian’s Venus and Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, which depict mythical goddesses of love, Olympia is a prostitute. She coldly stares back at her viewer, calculating their response. Manet was attempting to shake up the conventions of academic tradition and arouse his viewers.
The Teenage Trade in Naked Images of Girls
A mother in Rhinelander, Wisconsin,https://www.nahe-zeny.com discovered something alarming about her child's sexting behavior when she looked at his cell phone: nude photos of him with a girl. Her son was one of dozens of students who had been trading sexually explicit images via text messages and Kik, a mobile phone app that looks like a calculator and can store private pictures.
It’s called sexting, and it's an epidemic that's affecting teens all over the country. And it's not just about embarrassment – if those pictures end up in the hands of predators, they can threaten their lives, jeopardize their job searches and torpedo their college applications.
Bored girls often trade sexy naked selfies on social media to get guys' positive feedback and attention. Many of them post their horny selfies on Snapchat, Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook to gain more followers and likes. But what is the real hidden reason why they do it? Watch the video below to find out.
