The human form has inspired some of the finest sculpture in art history. It also evokes in the viewer complex reactions. Looking at magnificent nude sculptures by Michelangelo, Rodin, Henry Moore, and other great artists, we are in awe of the beauty and power of the art, as well as of the nude figure. But we may also experience other emotions, perhaps uncomfortably close to those we feel when we see an unclothed human body. This astonishing work provides a visual survey of nude sculpture throughout the ages, enhanced by an illuminating essay by noted critic Vicki Goldberg probing our various responses to this most realistic art form.While photographs distance us from the art works they depict, they also offer close-up details that permit us to see nude sculptures in new and surprising ways. Photographer David Finn, who has expanded the way we look at art in Abrams' How-to-Look-at titles, enables us -- through his remarkable photographs -- to glimpse the sculptor's creative process as well as the qualities of presence, texture, and detail that give the finest sculpture its grace and majesty.

Smith reveals how images of the nude were used at all levels of Victorian culture, from prestigious high-art paintings through to photographs and popular entertainments; and discusses the many views as to whether these were legitimate forms of representation or, in fact, pornography and an incitement to unregulated sexual activity.

See Live Nude Models Transformed Into Statues A Sky-High Flight of Imagination! When a photographer¿s imagination really soars, a book like this one is created. Imagine posing live models like museum statues, and transforming their photographs back into statues! Then, place them in exotic digital backgrounds. The result is 240 genuinely stunning photographs in a coffee table book that will deliver many hours of enchanting viewing. Living Nude Statues: Live Models Transformed Into Statues began as a search for great poses for models. Naturally, the most admired poses are found in museums, so photos of nude female statues from museums around the world were used as posing guides. With this collection of statue poses to use with the models, wonderful images were created. Then, a question arose: what it would be like to turn these photographs of models in statue poses back into statues again, using photo manipulation techniques? By teaming up with a photographer who has exceptional Photoshop skills, wondering became wonderment at the results. The twelve professional models featured in this volume are from the greater Phoenix, Arizona area. Each model is featured on twenty pages in the book. Each set of photographs is shown on facing pages with the studio shot on the left and its transformation into a statue on the right.

This book investigates the wide-ranging connections between sculpture, sexuality, and history in Western culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Sculpture has offered a privileged site for the articulation of sexual experience and the formation of sexual knowledge. As historical objects, sculptures also draw attention to the different ways in which knowledge about sexuality is facilitated through an engagement with the past. Bringing together contributors from across disciplines, including art history, classics, film studies, gender studies, history, literary studies, museum studies, queer theory and reception studies, the volume presents original readings of sculptural art in relation to antiquarianism, aesthetics, collecting cultures, censorship and obscenity, psychoanalysis, sexology, and the experience and regulation of museum spaces. It examines how sculptural encounters were imagined and articulated in literature, painting, film and science. As a whole, the book opens up a new understanding of the ways in which sculptures, as real or imagined objects, have fundamentally shaped approaches to and receptions of the past in relation to sex, gender and sexuality. Chapters 8 and 10 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

From Athens and Arcadia on one side of the Aegean Sea and from Ionia, Lycia, and Karia on the other, this book brings together some of the great monuments of classical antiquity--among them two of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the later temple of Artemis at Ephesos and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos. With 250 photographs and specially commissioned line drawings, the book comprises a monumental narrative of the art and architecture that gave form, direction, and meaning to much of Western culture.

Charts the growth of sculpture from the era of British imports through the period of strong British influence to the more confident art of the twentieth century and beyond.

A survey of Greek sculpture. Illustrated.