Essay on Nudity in Greek Art, 500 BC
Much has been written about the “nude”, “nudity” and “nakedness”. In fact enough to fill a whole library. Therefore, let me say from the start that I don’t intend to bring all that has been written and debated into some scholarly essay. That would simply be adding to the library! My task here is to, well, rather consolidate the various strands of thought on the above and put it into a language that I hope you will understand and provide you with an overall view of nudity in the Western world over the centuries. The first real problem when one mentions the word “nudity” is that one conjures up an image of the naked body, and very quickly sexualises it. Part of the reason for this is how nudity has been misappropriated, exploited and comodified over the past 200 years – reason why we can fill a library.
Left: "Swimmers, North Wales", one of my own paintings
Right: "Bronze Warrior," A larger than life-sized Greek statue
dating back to 500 BC
As I said earlier in my personal statement… Manufactures use the seductive imagery of nudity to sell a variety of products, from cars, magazines, toothpaste, furniture – yes, you get the idea, probably everything. But curiously enough, nudity in this regard, linked to the notion that “….buy this product and it will enhance your sex life…” is in religion, at least in most Western religions, regarded as sinful! Therefore, the way we often view the nude figure is shaped by in large part to history and religion (certainly in the middle-ages).
Left: "GNOSIS" A mosaic showing a stag hunt. From Northern Greece c. 300BC. As we can see from this depiction, these two naked hunters carry no embarrassment. Their nudity is displayed in full glory.
It’s amazing how people associate sex with the nude figure, that it triggers feelings of lust, sex, eroticism etc. It can of course do these things because of “vested interests” (religious, commercial etc). Perhaps the following quote made by the late Kenneth Clark (art historian) in his book: The Nude, 1956, will clarify this further. "…All good nude painting and sculpture is sexually stimulating… No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even although it be only the faintest shadow – and if it does not do so, it is bad art or false morals.” There, that sums it up quite nicely. I’ll only add that I want to explore it from the “artist’s perspective” because often the public make this false leap, that because an artist is working away in his studio, working from the nude – when it’s a female – that provokes sniggers, and other reactions. So let’s step back in history to a time when society began to depict the naked human form. A good place would be with the Greeks, about 440 years BC. The naked human form was created in statue form. Some of these have survived, found mostly in shipwrecks. A good find was made in 1972 in the Mediterranean between Italy and Sicily. These were a pair of bronze figures. (See above photo for an example) These bronzes were meant to express the ideal of Greek athleticism, and tells us that the Greek male was unconcerned about baring his body. What should be remembered about Greek nude sculpture is that it was functional. Often to thank a god, to instil into the piece magical powers, or to tell a story. Look at the example above and would you consider this bronze statue out of place in a modern museum, and could well represent 21st century man?
It’s worth noting that as early as 500 BC the nude figure was governed by the principles of composition and execution – And it’s also worth noting that these principles pre-date 500 BC. There is an important lesson here: it is that the human form is one of the few things that has not changed over the past 3.000 years.Right: A Greek bowl, now in the British Museum. This shows a scene of Dionysus (the Greek god of fertility and sexual pleasure). It shows Dinoysus holding vine branches, a symbol of fertility and renewal, with mythical followers gathered around him. So, while Greek artists were producing naked art, such as the bronze shown above, that weren't intended to sexualize, they did produce erotic art. even before the Greeks, erotic art existed – and still does. It’s not the purpose of this essay to delve into the history of erotic art, other than to say that it ran it’s own course in a kind of paralel way, but very much in secret. The rich, while perhaps commissioning some great art to grace a cathedral, also commissioned artists to produce erotic art for their private use. (Read the Erotic Arts, by Peter Webb, Secker & Warburg 1975)
Roman artists worked within a continuous artistic tradition handed down from the Greeks, but gave art new insights and forms, responding to the new opportunities of patronage offered by the expanding Roman Empire. And so Roman art continued the creative impulses of the Graeco-Roman artistic tradition, at the same time preparing the way for the development of the first European Art.
Right: a Roman statue of a spear bearer. This is a marble copy of a Greek original bronze, c.440 BC) National museum, Naples). Roman artists would later take their inspiration from Greek sculpture
THE BEGINNINGS OF DRAWING AND PAINTING
As with most things in life, art evolved – but not always in a seamless upward curve. Even today art evolves in a myriad of ways. It may be through film, writing, dance, painting, etc. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that one can see how these various elements have carried “art” forward by each new generation of practitioners. Drawing and painting in Greek art was a natural progression from sculpture, but with changes that would be taken up and carried forward into what we now call Western Art. Most of this early painting was carried out on walls of temples, wooden panels and vases. In the middle of the fifth century BC many of these paintings depicted mythological themes, such as the sacking of Troy. These paintings were much treasured by the Romans, who would later take over the Greek empire. The main purpose of these Greek paintings, found in temples, were a visual narrative, or a story, about Greek myth history and linking the present to their past, either through the family, place and, of course, religion. The idea behind these story paintings was to convey messages that were often centred around political and moral dramas. By the end of the fifth century Greek drawing had matured. The figures had become fuller, more realistic, trying to replicate sculptural effects. Also at this time saw the introduction of colour and shading to further the effect of realism. We even know who painted some of these paintings: artists such as Zeuxis around 400 BC and Apelles. Most scholars agree that it was from around this date that ‘Western Painting’ was born. We can also get an important insight as to what paintings were being produced by the Greeks, and even more importantly, the style and maturity of their art, by looking at the wall art from Roman villas.
Mostly these wall paintings (see illustration) were copies of Greek paintings. Many of these copies can be seen in Pompeii. They offer further evidence of the high reputation of Greek painting. With the fall of the Greek empire, Greek artists switched their allegence to their new Roman masters, and so evolution of painting would again move forward. A good example is the one illustrated below (Laocoon and his two sons), early first century AD and can be seen in the Vatican Museums, Rome. This is a clear reflection that the Roman artists copied Greek art and tells us that tradition and continuity of the human figure played a crucial role in the evolution of Western Art.
Right: The Ixion Room in the house of the Vettii, Pompeii, 1st century AD. Illustration showing replicas of Greek paintings.