Nudes or Nakeds

Nude or Naked - An Essay

When appearing in a work of art (and perhaps in life), it is not better to be nude than to be naked, or vice-versa. It may not even be different. Nor, in my view, is it better -- as a subject of art -- to be clothed than to be nude or naked. But it surely is different. We recognize at the barest glance the difference between an artwork that features someone unclothed and that which features someone with their clothes still on. And when the clothes remain on, they tell us volumes about the person wearing them, and we can easily categorize people based on their choices of adornment. This is not so when one is confronted with bare skin. Instead of the normal response, one thinks first and foremost: This person is nude! Or, this person is naked! Or perhaps, but far less likely, one thinks of the person simply as unclothed, or undressed, or bare! Other distinctions about the uncovered person may be discovered from the context, but the nudity or nakedness trumps these, at least at first.

My premise is that when a viewer of art first thinks “this person is naked,” the viewer is making a judgment different from that when s/he first thinks “this person is nude.” It is a more subtle difference, I think however, than Sir Kenneth Clark suggests in his seminal volume on the subject of the nude in art:

The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word "nude," on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body re-formed. In fact, the word was forced into our vocabulary by critics of the early eighteenth century to persuade the artless islanders [of the UK] that, in countries where painting and sculpture were practiced and valued as they should be, the naked human body was the central subject of art.

Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form

The art in which clothed persons appear is viewed without the burden of bare skin, and, except for the truly obsessed, one thinks of sex and desire and shame and lust only if the work contains other elements that ignite these thoughts. But once the clothes are off, the bare skin dominates the work, in part because it is not what we see at most times when we live our lives in the real world (and is therefore attractive as pure novelty), in part because we are so drawn to the skin by our primal desires, and in part because there is always something political about bare skin. Once we see the skin, we are challenged to define, for ourselves first, what it is that we are seeing. Later we will speak of it to others, incorporating our initial subjective response.

Some will see all bared skin as bad -- as in evil or sinful or politically incorrect. For those viewers, the distinction between naked and nude does not exist, and we need not dwell on their views any further here. But for the rest of us -- for most of us, I trust -- there is a more complex assessment that begins, and that assessment, with the linguistic choices that come with it, is what I seek to explore. If it is viewed completely objectively, the image alone will trigger the nude/naked categorization, but in most cases the context will affect the linguistic choice. For example, bare skin seen in a museum will likely be called nude, and the same bare skin seen in a Playboy magazine will likely be seen as naked. But in addition to the context in which the art is viewed, the context within the art itself is critical as well.

Nude Women play harps. Naked Ladies dance on top of pianos.

Greg Mills

You will note that I have employed the word “naked” as a noun. This is not accepted practice, if you use the dictionary as your guide. There can be any number of nudes walking around a place, but never a single naked. Well, together we will change that. Perhaps one day the room will be crowded with as many nakeds as nudes, a goal worth striving to achieve.

I make art that features both nudes and nakeds, and I make this art conscious of all the implications of the fact that my subjects are not wearing clothing. As an artist, I do not strive for an objective mental vacuum, nor pretend I am looking only at pure line and form when I see the bared skin of my models, my co-conspirators in the creation of art. I’ll leave that for the life drawing classes. There is always some mental element in the choices I make, and inevitably with an unclothed model that element always relates to sex in some fashion. It is not personal, in the sense of sexual seduction, but it is conscious. To say otherwise would be disingenuous, and if it was truly otherwise, the art would be sterile. So, there is no doubt that I work with real persons, not just abstracted skin and limbs. But am I working with a a nude person or a naked person?

You are nude until confronted with someone who is fully dressed, then you're NAKED.

Photographer Jim McGee

Under this amusing formulation advanced by another artist, it would seem that I always work with naked models, as it has never occurred to me to conduct a session while naked myself. Actually, that’s not really true, but that’s another story entirely.

© 2008 James Putnam Abbott