Art is called upon to serve several purposes at once: to enlighten, narrate, and delight. With the help of paintings by great masters today you can learn a lot about the life and lifestyle of people from the past. But about the sexual preferences and forms of the human body is able to "without cuts" tell the direction of the nude.
Hedonistic art
Translated from French, the word "nude" means "naked, naked." In art, this term is used to describe nudity. Mostly, the paintings performed in the nude genre are attended by girls and women.
Nu was not originally an academic studio (i.e., work serving as preparatory material or training purposes). This genre is exclusively hedonistic in nature, "telling" the viewer about the ideals of beauty of any era. Nudes reflect, as a rule, the value of sensual, earthly life.
The appearance of nudes occurred at the junction of several genres in the Renaissance. Italian sculptors combined allegory, mythology, history and ordinary life to sculpt the ideal, according to their ideas, female “creations”. When contemplating beautiful bodies, exclusively poetic and philosophical associations were born. However, at this time this direction did not yet have its own name.
Nude as a conductor of the ideas of sexualism
The formation of the nude genre in art began only in the 17th century. At this time, the beauty of the female body, sexuality, sensuality were at the peak of popularity. Candid nude images openly showed feminine charm.
The founders of the nude genre in art can be called Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez. Artists did not hesitate to promote the blooming beauty, female youth and the charms of the figure. However, each creator reproduced nudes in his own way. Rubens is characterized by a baroque, magnificent style; Velazquez preferred to focus on mythological characters; Rembrandt focused on the naked woman in a vital, everyday way.
The popularity of nudes in art lasted until the second half of the 19th century. In the 18th century, the genre became more sophisticated, playful, flirty. In the 19th century the artists made an attempt to return to the Renaissance, propagating the canons of classical, ideal beauty.
However, the Enlightenment gradually "abandoned" the nude genre. But the frivolous pictures did not go anywhere. Moreover, the nude genre began to conquer not only fine art, but also literature. During this period, the famous Marquis de Sade appears. The illustrations created for his novel 120 Days of Sodom impress with frank eroticism.
Today, nudes are most common in the art of photography. The beautiful curves of the female body and the play of shadows on nudity appeal to the sensuality of a person, delighting him and carrying him into the world of sexual fantasies. It should be noted that today equality prevails in the nude genre: you can find images of both female and male figures.
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