The representation of the nude in art remained for many centuries a victory of fiction over fact. Beautiful, handsome, flawless its great success was to distance the unclothed body from any uncomfortably explicit taint of sexuality, eroticism or imperfection. In this newly updated study, Frances Borzello contrasts the civilized, sanitized, perfected nude of Kenneth Clarks classic, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1956), with todays depictions: raw, uncomfortable, both disturbing and intriguing. Grittier and more subtle, depicting variously gendered bodies, the new nude asks awkward questions and behaves provocatively. It is a very naked nude, created to deal with the issues and contradictions that surround the body in our time. Borzello explores the role of the nude in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, looking at the work of a wide range of international artists creating contemporary nudes. Her fascinating text is complemented by a profusion of well-chosen, unusual and beautifully reproduced illustrations. The story begins with a tale of life, death and resurrection an investigation into how and why the nude has survived and flourished in an art world that prematurely announced its demise. Subsequent chapters take a thematic approach, focusing in turn on Body art and Performance art, the new perspectives of women artists, the nude in painting, portraiture and sculpture and in its most extreme and graphic expressions that intentionally push the boundaries of both art and our comfort zone. The final chapter illustrates radical developments in art and culture over the last decade, focusing in particular on artworks by women, trans artists and artists of colour. Borzello links these works to their art-historical and political predecessors, demonstrating the continually unending capacity of the nude to disrupt traditional hierarchies and gender categories in life and art.

Nudes that deliberately behave provocatively and pose awkward questions: how artists portray the body in contemporary art

A fresh, fascinating appraisal that is the first study of the nude in photography as seen through the social customs, manners and taboos that shaped the art. 20 full-color and 200 black-and-white photographs.

The Naked & The Nude is a nonfiction illustrated novel narrated by a 76-year-old painter and writer regarding the interface of his sex life and his life as an artist.

Surveys the history of the nude in American art, photography, and popular culture.

Across the Arab world, protesters voiced dissent through slogans, graffiti, puppetry, videos, and satire that called for the overthrow of dictatorial regimes. Investigating what drives people to risk everything to express themselves in rebellious art, Marwan M. Kraidy uncovers the creative insurgency at the heart of the Arab uprisings of 2010–2012.

Üryan, Çıplak, Nü: Türk Resminde Bir Modernleşme Öyküsü sanatta portre, manzara, natürmort gibi belli başlı türlerden biri olan nü resmin modern Türk sanatındaki gelişim sürecine odaklanıyor. Sergide bir araya gelen resimlerin sunduğu zengin üslup çeşitliliği, çıplak insan bedeninin Türk ressamları için bir konu olmaktan öte, biçimsel bir arayışın temeli olduğunu, başlı başına sanatsal bir ifade aracı olarak gündeme geldiğini gözler önüne seriyor. Öğrencilik döneminde sanatçıların önündeki en çetin sınav olan insan bedeni, üretim sürecinde bir yandan Batı sanatının modernist eğilimlerini izlerken öte yandan özgün bir dil geliştirmeye çalışan pek çok sanatçı için yeni arayışların ana esin kaynağı olarak karşımıza çıkıyor. Sergi kataloğu, küratör Ahu Antmen’in makalesi üzerinden Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e uzanan süreçte sanatçı kimliğinin oluşumunu, mahremle özdeşleştirilmiş kadın bedenine yönelik cinsellikten arınmış bir algı geliştirmenin güçlüklerini, modern kimlik algısında sanat ve nü arasında kurulan bağlantıları düşündüren bu resimler aracılığıyla, Türkiye’nin modernleşme öyküsünün ardındaki görsel serüveni hayal etmemize olanak tanıyor. ---- Bare, Naked, Nude: A Story of Modernization in Turkish Painting focuses on the evolution of nude painting as one of the foremost genres alongside portraiture, landscape, and still life in Turkish modern art. The rich diversity of styles represented in the paintings that come together in this exhibition reveal that the nude, far from being a subject for Turkish artists constitutes a means of expression fundamental in the search for form. The most challenging trial for artists in their student years, the human body emerges as a central source of inspiration in both the pursuit for modernist tendencies in Western art and in the efforts to articulate an individual artistic language. The exhibition catalogue, through the essay of the curator, Ahu Antmen and the selected paintings offer us the possibility to envisage the visual adventure behind Turkey’s story of modernization, providing an insight into the formation of artistic identity in the period extending from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic, the challenges of transforming the perception of the female body from a framework of privacy to that of a desexualized object and the connections between the art and the nude in the perception of a modern identity.