The naked portrait
From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki
- Portraits have tended to depict their sitters public selves. They reflect the ways people project themselves, in work, or family and social rituals. They exploit the ways that dress or costume can characeterise, flatter, and signify social identity. Yet nakedness seems intrinsically private. Nakedness may have cultural connotations of a more natural mode of being, but in virtually all societies it is thought taboo. The truly natural state of the adult human is dresses or decorated... So naked portraiture becomes almost exclusively a category of artistic imagery. (S.12)
- We tend to think that a portrait is about the particular identity of the sitter, whereas with nudes that is not the case. The difference is expressed in the distinction between sitters and models. It is not a question of how well the artist knew the person. We place in the portrait category pictures that prompt us to imagine being or interacting with the individual depicted. When we look at a nude as a portrait, we tend to as knot what the figure means, in relation to some system or artistic vision, but rather what the image reveals about the inner person portrayed as well as what they look like. We apply to art skills acquired in life for reading peoples characters from their behavior and body language, recognizing in the sitter an equivalent to how we see ourselves. (S.14)
- What is the significance as a cultural phenomenon? Striptease culture, in which public nakedness, voyeurism and sexualized looking are permitted, indeed encouraged as never before? (S.22)
- To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. Nudity is a form of dress. ... Nude goes with beauty as Nakedness goes with shame. The nude has nothing, the naked everything to hide. The naked body cries out for cover not so much against cold and rain as against the eyes of the cold. ... Nude is about the photographer whereas naked is more about the people. (S.24)
