Male nude  

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"Very few active, strong, psychologically engaging, heroic female nudes and I know of no female counterparts to The Thinker, the Pollaiuolo engraving, or David. To make this point vivid, try the thought experiment of imagining a work like Ingres’s Turkish Bath with men rather than women, or Pollaiuolo’s Battle with women rather than men. The results, I think you’ll find, will seem so foreign as to border on the absurd."--"What's Wrong with the Female Nude?" (2012) Anne W. Eaton


""Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" (1989) was an awareness campaign by the American feminist group the Guerrilla Girls; who, after counting all male artists, female artists, male nudes and female nudes at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, condemned the limited number of female artists found in that institute."--Sholem Stein

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This page concerns representations of male nudity.

Contents

Antiquity

heroic nudity, Barberini Faun

In Ancient Greek art, male nakedness, including the genitals, was common, although the female vulval area was generally covered in art for public display. This tradition continued in Ancient Roman art until the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, when heroic nudity vanished. The male nude was depicted in the over-muscled torsos and backs of the men in sculptures such as Laocoön and his Sons, the Belvedere Torso, and Farnese Hercules.

Middle Ages and Renaissance

During the Middle Ages, the nude was replaced by the naked (The Nude, A Study in Ideal Form) and only the unfortunate (most often the damned) were usually shown naked, although the depictions were then often rather explicit. Adam and Eve were often shown wearing fig or other leaves, following the Biblical description. This was especially a feature of Northern Renaissance art.

19th century

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Male nude" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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