Feminist nude painting - what is your favourite portrayal of a woman's body?

[Imperfectionist]

The breast implant issue and re-ignition of the debate about modern ideals of a woman's body, especially a much-quoted survey in which school children shown photos of nude women picked the ones with implants as looking most natural, has made me want to make sure we have plenty of representations of normal (and beautiful) female forms in my house, for my daughter.

I do not read and certainly do not have in the house any magazines or media with images of women looking like they've had extensive surgery. My daughter (only three years old) often sees me (a normal shaped size 12 with post-breastfeeding boobs) naked and has good healthy female role models around her. We have lots of pictures on the wall, framed prints from galleries I've visited over the years, and I would like to choose a beautiful nude painting to join them, showing breasts in all of their natural glory.

I've racked my brains, and googled, and wondered if one of you might recommend your favourite portrayal of a non-surgically-enhanced naked woman in paint. The classical artists are sometimes too idealised; and often had barbie boobs even back in Michaelangelo's day. Some nudes are too sexually suggestive for what I'm looking for. I want a painting of a naked woman who radiates strength and beauty, who is comfortable in her skin, with no hint of voyeurism or titillation by the artist.

So... any recommendations for a feminist-inspiring nude painting? Hopefully one I can buy online from the National Gallery or online!

[BelleCurve]

I like this one by Matisse

www.chinaoilpaintinggallery.com/h-henri-matisse-c-58_74_1424/blue-nude-p-31540

and this by Dali arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/dali_retrospective/dali_pma_05_11.htm

but I don't think either of them qualify as feminist

[JosephineB]

Not a painting but a sculpture: Dreaming in the bath (although if you actually did this in the bath you might drown!)

I love the curves and that she isn't presneted in a sexeee way.

[womanonedgeoftime]

I have just stumbled on this very interesting discussion. I am an art student doing my major project and I wanted to paint myself nude for the final exhibition. I used to do life modelling when I was young and I'd like to use myself as the model esp as I am an older woman. I very much admire and respect Jenny Saville's work but I am not into ugliness. I am in my sixties/ I intend a warts and all approach, not at all idealised, but I am still worried my work might be appropriated for titillation purposes in this smart-phone internet age and I would worry about where my image would end up. I thought I could paint my body as I see it from my own eyes and then there would be interesting non-erotic angles and no identifiable head. But that poses the problem of objectification as in porn with the head left off. I seem to have entered a minefield. Does anyone have any advice.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Isn't that exactly what we're doing?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I see where you're coming from, but I think if we always waited for there to be an up-and-running alternative to men telling us what they think, we'd have been waiting a very long time for feminism, right?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I'd like that too please! Or indeed any women art critics you think would be good?

[TeiTetua]

From whom did John Berger steal his ideas? I'd be interested to learn something from the original source, if it's available.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I think maybe it's about what Gail Dines said - that we live in a world of images, but we aren't literate in them, we aren't taught to decode them the way we're taught to decode letters and words.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I didn't know that, sakura, but it doesn't terribly surprise me. I was talking to someone about him and she rolled her eyes, says he is one of those people who are very inclined to do the whole 'look at me, ladies, aren't I great' thing. Despite his later attack on postmodernism, the novel he wrote that won the Booker is post-modern - I guess it worked fine while it was making his name and his money! I know this is an argument ad hominem and maybe an unfair one, but I do think we're not thinking outside the box enough.

There is a huge difference between male and female nudes in Renaissance art, IMO. The men look strong and muscled - even hyper-muscly sometimes - and a lot of the women are arching their hips, pointing their breasts at people - there is a big difference in the way they look.

[WidowWadman]

Hear, hear, verylittlegravitas. Incidentally went to see a William Etty exhibition today - plenty of nudes -male and female, no apparent difference in value judgement between the two.

[sakura]

actually, that's another topic altogether: men stealing women's ideas (usually their wives') all the time and passing them off as their own

[sakura]

male= patriarchy

not sexist, just true

[sakura]

JOhn Berger, a bit annoying really, because he makes out as if he pulled all those ideas out of his arse. When in fact nothing there is originally his and all of his ideas, without exception, were first thought of by feminist women.

[charitygirl]

LRD has been spot on on this thread I think. I also 'get' what the OP is saying but in the end it still seems to come down to 'you can still be considered worth looking at even if you don't look like a model'. Big fucking woo. That's not the point of feminism.

[jasperJohns]

We have this above our bed because we love it.

[VeryLittleGravitas]

And lazy, reductionist and supremely sexist to say 'male = patriarchy'.

[VeryLittleGravitas]

In Classical and Renaissance Art, the nude male form was at least equally prevalent, and probably predominant. Why (and I know I'm sounding like one of the 'what about the menz' brigade) is it patriarchal objectification to depict a nude woman, but not a nude man?

Plenty of wealthy, powerful women chose to be depicted nude.

Cezanne, Durer, Gauguin, Rodin, Schiele, Klimt (and that's just off the top of my head)depicted men and women, old and young, clothed, nude. They were interested in the human form, not in some passive patriarchal ideal. David and Caravaggio idealised and sensualised the male nude. Nudity has been used as a metaphor for power, sensuality, humanity, vulnerability. It's been used to challenge our preconceptions on morality, puritanism and art. It's both lazy and reductionist to say Art = Establishment/Partiarchy IMO.

[TeiTetua]

It shouldn't be patriarchal to "celebrate sexuality, or explore the sensuality or vulnerability of the human form". But the trouble is, in the art we're most familiar with, it's done according to a thoroughly patriarchal view. Some of the suggestions people have made upthread have pointed out artists who've individually shown (some of them, anyway) an alternative vision, and it's worth looking at them and thinking about what they're saying and whether we enjoy it. But as far as the established patterns of art are concerned, it's passive naked women first and last.

[PosieParker]

The artist is almost always male, therefore a woman is painted for the male gaze.

[VeryLittleGravitas]

Posie at the risk of kicking off another bunfight, why is celebrating sexuality patriarchal? What is wrong with exploring the sensuality or vulnerability of the human form?

OP, my favourite nudes are Rodin's Crouching Woman and Iris, Messenger of the Gods. They're very powerful, sexually charged sculptures, so probably not what you're looking for.

[PosieParker]

When the artist/photographer asks for a woman to be without clothes, there is a reason. Usually to expose vulnerability, sexuality or something. It is never without reason, and therefore always exposes a woman in a patriarchal light.

[Hullygully]

[JugglingWithSnowballs]

WowOoo - those Japanese hot springs are awesome aren't they ? We lived in the northern island of Hokkaido for a year, and became connoseurs of all the natural hot springs scattered over the island. Mmmm, bliss !