Art is designed to serve several purposes at once: to enlighten, to narrate, to delight. With the help of paintings by great masters, today you can learn a lot about the life and lifestyle of people from the past. But the direction of nude can tell about sexual preferences and forms of the human body.
Hedonistic art
Translated from French, the word "nude" means "naked, naked." In art, this term is used to describe images of nudity. Mostly, in the paintings made in the nude genre, there are girls and women.
Nu was not originally an academic studio (i.e., work serving as preparatory material or educational purposes). This genre is exclusively hedonistic in nature, "telling" the viewer about the ideals of beauty of any era. Nu reflects, as a rule, the value of a sensual, earthly life.
The emergence of nude took place at the junction of several genres during the Renaissance. Italian sculptors combined allegory, mythology, history and everyday life to sculpt the ideal, in their opinion, "creation" of the female sex. When contemplating beautiful bodies, exclusively poetic and philosophical associations were born. However, at this time, this direction did not yet have its own name.
Nude as a vehicle for sexualism
The formation of the nude genre in art began only in the 17th century. At this time, the beauty of the female body, sexuality, sensuality were at the peak of popularity. Candid images, made in the nude genre, openly demonstrated feminine charm.
The founders of the nude genre in art can be called Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez. The artists did not hesitate to promote blooming beauty, female youth and the charm of the figure. However, each creator reproduced nude in his own way. Rubens is characterized by a baroque, opulent style; Velazquez preferred to focus on mythological characters; Rembrandt focused on a naked woman in life, everyday life.
The popularity of nude in art lasted until the second half of the 19th century. In the 18th century, the genre became more sophisticated, playful, flirtatious. In the 19th century. artists made an attempt to return to the Renaissance, promoting the canons of classical, ideal beauty.
However, the Age of Enlightenment gradually "abandoned" the nude genre. But the frivolous pictures have not gone anywhere. Moreover, the nude genre began to conquer not only fine art, but also literature. During this period, the famous Marquis de Sade appears. The illustrations created for his novel "120 Days of Sodom" impress with their frank eroticism.
Today, nude is most common in the art of photography. The beautiful curves of the female body and the play of shadows on the nude appeal to the sensuality of a person, delighting him and taking him into the world of sexual fantasies. It should be noted that today equality reigns in the nude genre: you can find images of both female and male figures.
