THE LANGUAGE OF THE NUDE

'The Language of the Nude' at the Cooley Gallery at Reed College is a unique exhibition of master drawings spanning five centuries on loan from the Crocker Art Museum. I think it's interesting that all of these drawings were done prior to widespread use of printmaking and photography, which made multiples possible, thereby changing the nature of images, and the nude, altogether. I've seen examples of work from these eras, but seeing only the nude drawings as a collection gave me a different view historically and aesthetically. The discussion with Stephanie Snyder about the Crocker's acquistion of the drawings, and some important features in the body of work helped with that understanding.

Reviewing how the nude has changed, and analyzing its use today are deep waters to dip a toe into, here are a few notes.
Looking at the nude was, and still is, a rich way to view a culture and understand its codes:

The act of looking at a naked body has certainly changed. The power to view the naked body was a selective one, and has changed into a ubiquitous feature of modern life. For hundreds of years, it was men looking at and drawing only naked men, and now we have the audience viewing images like this in common places like the back of a local newspaper :





















...These are some interesting examples of how the nude encodes something about the time in which it's captured:

this is an erotic daguerreotype from 1850
















edouard manet's 'Olympia' from 1863










egon shiele from early 20th century














diane arbus from 1963 and 1968















poster art from the warhol/morrissey 1966 movie 'Chelsea Girls'













poster art for andy warhol's 'Flesh' from 1968













robert maplethorpe from the 1980s













justine kurland from early 2000s