Looking more deeply ~ Three.One

In two recent blog posts I've commented at length on my reactions to two photographs made by Jacques-Henri Lartigue.  I did this as an exercise in deepening my looking at and appreciation of photographs.  I've been catching myself skimming through images on the internet and not really taking any time to look at them.

Living where I do I get to see a lot of art.  Paris (!), Nice, Lyon, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Florence (!!), and perhaps the greatest of them all, Rome (!!!).  After awhile I feel I can begin to make sense of art, history, and my field of particular interest, photography.

One artistic theme in particular is seen everywhere.  It's the nude, or more specifically the reclining nude.  Often a subject of controversy in the US I was at first taken a little aback by the ubiquity of this artistic expression.  

 

 

While painting are more or less accepted, photographs of the reclining nude have generated more than a fair amount of controversy in America.  I'm thinking of Sally Mann's 1992 "Venus after school", Jock Sturges and his many images taken in France, David Hamilton and his work from the south of France, to the three or four decades worth of centerfold photography in Playboy magazine.

I remember in my lifetime when photo-processing folks could and would turn a photographer into the police if they found images of nudes on the film brought to a lab to be processed.  It is a potential subject I still steer clear of in my own work due to that early imprinting of fear, police, and moral judgment.

If feels to me that instead of thinking of works as art, the thought of a reclining nude in painting, sculpture, or photography is considered at best boarder line pornography.  Yet, if the Catholic Church herself in Europe can condone such imagery, what's wrong with the US that the nude has been for so long a taboo subject of artistic expression?  

 

 

To see the point I'm trying to make, walk into any church or museum in Rome where Gian Lorenzo Bernini's works are on display, particularly the three works found in the Galleria Borghese, and tell me what you think of the intersection of art, culture, and religion.

It made me smile to learn that recently the mayor of Florence had invited a former school principal to see David.  The principal had gotten into trouble with parents over the teaching of art history.  The subject was David by Michelangelo and from the press it seems the famous statue was unfit for certain human eyes without first passing it by their conservative snowflake parents.

 

 

Such is the contrast between (some) American moral judgments and the artistic values of Europe.

To illustrate the vastness of the European treasure trove of art that I contend set the foundation for the reclining nude in photography, here is a terribly short list of works. 

Mesopotamia 1800bc works depicting the human body

Ancient Greece 750-300BC works depicting the human body

Giorgione 1510 "Dresden Venus", Titian's teacher

Titian 1538 "Venus of Urbino" (aka Reclining Venus)

Bouchet 1743 "Pan et Syrinx"

Canova 1805 "Venus Cictrix"

Manet 1865 "Olympia"

Cabanel 1863 "Birth of Venus"

Modigliani 1917 "Reclining Nude" 

 

With the exception of Girgione's painting, I've seen much of the art on this list.  It's been quite an education.  I feel like my US-side education was seriously lacking.  The histories behind these works can be as fascinating as the art itself.  

In the next post I'll have a look at just one of the works, it's history, context, and current place in culture.  This I hope could be a decent lead-in to considering the reclining nude in photography.  There's a point I'd like to make and it will require me slogging through a bit more background before I get there.