1st Edition

On the Nude Looking Anew at the Naked Body in Art

Edited By Nicholas Chare, Ersy Contogouris Copyright 2022
    280 Pages 42 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    280 Pages 42 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book provides a timely reappraisal of one of the most enduring subjects in the history of art – the naked body.

    Beginning with reflections on what denuding entails and means, the volume then shifts to a consideration of body politics in the context of Black political empowerment, disability, and queer and Indigenous politics of representation. Themes including the animal nude, the male nude, and nudity in childhood are also considered. The final section examines the nude from the perspective of the artist and the artist’s model.

    The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, comparative literature, cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, screen studies, and trans studies.

    1. On the Nude: Addressing Old and New Perspectives
    2. Nicholas Chare and Ersy Contogouris

      Part 1: On Denuding

    3. The Dagenham Idol: A Neolithic Wooden Figurine Denuded
    4. Nicholas Chare and Nathanael Price

    5. Poking Out 'the Soft Part': The Raw and the Cooked Body in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
    6. Maria Margaroni

    7. Discursive Blurring in Representations of Classical Rapes and Abductions
    8. Ersy Contogouris

    9. Writing and Nudity: Nelly Arcan and Vanessa Beecroft’s Girls
    10. Martine Delvaux

      Part 2: Body Politics and the Nude

    11. Images of Solace: Looking beyond Violence in Cassils’s Art
    12. I. Milan Cail

    13. S[H]E: Black Body Politics and Gender
    14. Lisa E. Farrington

    15. Un-shaming the Greenlandic Female Body: The Indigenous Nude in Performance Art
    16. Kirsten Thisted

    17. Watching One’s Back: Self-Portraits of Disabled Women’s Backs as Provocative and Protective
    18. Ann Millet-Gallant

      Part 3: Photography and the Nude

    19. Nan Goldin’s Sag Harbor Pictures
    20. Emma Wilson

    21. Creating a Space and a (Visual) Language in the Work of Laura Aguilar
    22. Ann Marie Leimer

      1. The Animal Nude: Pony Play and Deborah Bright’s Being & Riding Valérie Bienvenue and Nicholas Chare
      2. Part 4: The Male Nude

      3. Queeriosity: Does Hair Have a Gender? Around Del LaGrace Volcano, Daniela Comani, Katarzyna Kozyra, Ana Mendieta, and Cindy Sherman
      4. Frédérique Villemur

      5. Art, Aesthetics, and Male Genitalia
      6. Richard Leppert

      7. Imperfect Beauty: Nudity, Classicism, Race, and Homoerotic Desire in the Male Nudes of George Dureau
      8. James Smalls

        Part 5: On Being Nude

      9. A Short Story About a Big Healing (Extracts)
      10. Joanna Frueh

      11. Looking beyond the Image: Cassils in Conversation with Nicholas Chare and Ersy Contogouris
      12. Cassils

      13. Ways of Connecting with the Secret World behind the Life Model: Sarah R. Phillips in Conversation with Nicholas Chare and Ersy Contogouris
      14. Sarah R. Phillips

      15. Notes Introducing ‘(Unfinished) Soliloquy of a Nude’
      16. Kathleen G. Williamson

      17. (Unfinished) Soliloquy of a Nude

      Joanna Frueh

      Biography

      Nicholas Chare is Professor of Art History at the Université de Montréal, Canada.

      Ersy Contogouris is Assistant Professor of Art History at the Université de Montréal, Canada.