When we walk into museums, walk into galleries, and see all those stunning nudes, you’d never guess that they’re “tricking” your eyes.
Although we call these works nude art, they are actually The Nude, not nudes.
What the nude picture depicts is not a real person. It has no human wrinkles, bags under the eyes, sagging muscles and sagging breasts due to age, only strong muscles and plump flesh.
â–² The imitation of Miron’s “The Discus Thrower”, in the eyes of the sports school students who are familiar with the sport, the state of the discus thrower seems difficult to explain, so that people are still debating whether this action can be completed.
The beauty of nude images may be the result of patchwork. The ancient Roman Pliny mentioned a legend: in order to obtain the perfect image of Hera, the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis had the local girls lined up naked, and then selected five of them, taking their greatest physical advantages. to complete the image.
Nudity is ideal beauty, it can even conform to the laws of mathematics without having to conform to reality. Later generations sighed when they studied the “Vitruvian Man”: “From a strict geometric form, gorillas may be more in line with such aesthetic standards than humans.”
â–² Of all the “Vitruvian Man”, this one in Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscript is the most famous.
That’s right, what the ancients did is no different from what we do now.
People like perfect things, but they also ignore the imperfection of reality. In a society that pursues perfection, it is difficult for people with physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities to be respected. In the movie “Three Hundred Spartans” Whistleblowers and traitorous prophets are extremely ugly, which seems to falsely imply that those who are physically ugly are also unsound in mind.
It was not until modern times that nude art began to highlight the “ugly”, for example, the nudes described by Matisse and Picasso were ugly. These painters probably discovered the original imperfection of the human body and accepted this fact, and they demonstrated this truth through artistic means.
â–² Matisse, “Dance”.
Subsequently, people also began to slowly accept the “ugliness” of their own bodies. In the West, there are nudist (nude) beaches, nude biking, and even people streaking on the street after a sauna. In China, too, people have made a rapid transition from embracing nude art to accepting imperfect bodies over the decades.
â–² On a beach in France, the celestial (nudist) beach is written in three languages.
At the end of 1988, the oil painting body art exhibition was held in the National Art Museum of China, which was the first time in the history of New China to hold an exhibition related to nude art. On the day of the exhibition, the ticket-buying audience outside the door lined up in a long queue despite the cold wind. In order to satisfy the urgency of the audience to see the exhibition, the art museum also specially opened a night show. It is conservatively estimated that 220,000 people visited the exhibition during the 18-day exhibition period. . China, which is gradually opening up, has embraced the art of nudes.
In the Renaissance, people rediscovered the beauty of the body, and then completely liberated the mind from the confinement of religion. Today, people recognize the imperfection of the body again, and in a society that accepts imperfection, different people and different personalities will be more respected.
To be naked or not to be naked is an important question!