ABSTRACT
Constructed as the nude or the naked within art historical discourse,1 the represented female body has been the historical manifestation of patriarchal and Eurocentric ideals of woman, womanhood, beauty, femininity and female sexuality within western society. The nude has been the more conservative and palatable of the two categories and the naked, the more historically offensive. Although the nude and the naked have coexisted within a dichotomous relationship, it is only within the modern era that the naked has emerged from the arbitrary confi nes of pornography. Its historical association with pornography has situated the naked within the realm of the sublime within which obscenity and violence could be aesthetically enjoyed within the confi nes of “high” art. Defi ned by a socio-historical specifi city and “uncontained” sexuality, the naked disturbs socially sanctioned norms of sexual propriety.
