ABSTRACT
Anyone who examines the history of Western art must be struck by the prevalence of images of the female body. More than any other subject, the female nude connotes `art'. The framed image of a female body, hung on the walls of an art gallery, is an icon of Western culture, a symbol of civilization and accomplishment. But how and why did the female nude acquire this status?
The Female Nude brings together, in an entirely new way, analysis of the historical tradition of the female nude and discussion of recent feminist art, and by exploring the ways in which acceptable and unacceptable images of the female body are produced and maintained, renews recent debates on high culture and pornography.
The Female Nude represents the first feminist survey of the most significant subject in Western art. It reveals how the female nude is now both at the centre and at the margins of high culture. At the centre, and within art historical discourse, the female nude is seen as the visual culmination of enlightenment aesthetics; at the edge, it risks losing its repectability and spilling over into the obscene.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |4 pages
Introduction
part I|29 pages
Theorizing The Female Nude
chapter 1|8 pages
Framing The Female Body
chapter 2|5 pages
A Discourse on the Naked and the Nude
chapter 3|6 pages
A Study of Ideal Art
chapter 4|4 pages
Aesthetics and the Female Nude
chapter 5|9 pages
Obscenity and the Sublime
part II|49 pages
Redrawing the Lines
chapter 1|10 pages
‘The Damaged Venus’
chapter 2|4 pages
The Framework of Tradition
chapter 3|10 pages
THe Lessons of the Life Class
chapter 4|6 pages
Art Criticism and Sexual Metaphor
chapter 5|11 pages
Breaking Open the Boundaries
chapter 6|13 pages
Redrawing the Lines
part III|26 pages
Cultural Distinctions