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Monday, July 9, 2012

Il nudo maschile

Speranza

The modernist revolution temorarily demoted representation and simultaneously, and perhaps in the long run more importantly, brought with it the break up of the established system for training artists.

To depict the nude, of either sex, now involved a CONSCIOUS CHOICE: the artist's decision to address himself to a particular kind of subject-matter, rather than taking it as something 'given', an inevitable part of any artist's activity.

One reason why the modernists -- though with numerous exceptions such as Modigliani -- began to have DOUBTS ABOUT THE NUDE was the impact made by PHOTOGRAPHY.

From the very moment of his invention, the relationship between painting and photography was complicated.

Artists saw it both as a valuable aid to their own study of nature, and as a rival.

Delacroix was one of the earliest painters to make use of NUDE PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIES, and like other artists, then and subsequently, he tended NOT to publicise his occasional dependence on them.

Photographers of the NUDE, by contrast, were anxious to stress their own connection with traditional 'fine' art, and this for two reasons.

One was that such a connection tended to suggest that making photographs was itself a form of art, on a part iwth the more traditional media of expression.

Or else -- and this was the second reason -- if photography could not be accepted as being an art-form in its own right, one could at least excuse some of the images the camera made on the grounds that they were primarily intended as source material for 'fine' artists.

Early photographic nudes, both  male and female, were usually marketed under this heading, though it is by no means certain that the majority of purchasers were practising painters and sculptors.

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