Depictions of nudity

Depictions of nudity refers to nudity in all the artistic disciplines including vernacular and historical depictions. Nudity in art has generally conformed — with some variation — to social standards for public nudity; in cultures where nudity was accepted, nude figures in painting and sculpture were as well.

However, some cultures have tolerated artistic nudity more than actual nudity, with a different set of standards of what is acceptable. Sometimes live nudity is more acceptable if the model does not move.

General depictions

As social attitudes about artistic nudity have changed, this has sometimes led to conflict over art that no longer conforms to prevailing standards. For example, some members of the Roman Catholic Church once organized the so-called "fig-leaf campaign" to cover nudity in art, starting from the works of Renaissance artist Michelangelo, but the Church has since removed such fig leaves and restored the works

In contrast, it was conventional in ancient Greek art, from the time of the Archaic period onwards, to represent deities and divinized humans (or "heroes") in a state of heroic nudity in paintings and sculpture, and it remained so throughout the classical and Roman periods.

The nude has become an enduring genre of representational art, especially painting, sculpture and photography. It depicts people without clothes, usually with stylistic and staging conventions that distinguish the artistic elements (such as innocence, or similar theatrical/artistic elements) of being nude with the more provocative state of being naked. A nude figure is one, such as a goddess or a man in ancient Greece, for whom the lack of clothing is its usual condition, so that there is no sexual suggestiveness presumed. A naked figure is one, such as a contemporary prostitute or a businessman, who usually wears clothing, such that their lack of it in this scene implies sexual activity or suggestiveness. The latter were rare in European art from the Medieval period until the latter half of the 1800s; in the interim, a work featuring an unclothed woman would routinely identify her as "Venus" or another Greco-Roman goddess, to justify her nudity. There can be debate with regard to whether a figure in art is either nude or naked for example in some works of Francis Bacon.

Nude photography
Nude photography is a style of art photography which depicts the nude human body as a study. Nude photography should be distinguished from erotic photography, which has a sexually suggestive component. Many photographers consider nude photography to be a style which studies the human body, rather than the person. A photograph of a person that is meant to be recognized is called a portrait, and nude photographs often do not show a face at all. Nude photography is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. As an art form, nude photography is a stylized depiction of the nude body with the line and form of the human figure as the primary objective. Photographers sometimes use extremes of light and shadow, oiled skin, and shadows falling across the body to show texture and structure of the body. Nude photography should be distinguished from nudity in photography, which is much broader, and does not necessarily claim any artistic merit.

My Selected Display of Artistic Nude Photographs