From: Jeff Buck (jeffbuck@swcp.com)
Date: 08/25/02-09:03:31 AM Z
This is a history lesson. History has nothing to do with what I'm saying,
which is that the distinction between male and female nudes has no inherent
aesthetic significance and that sculpture, for example, is not inherently
better at the nude than photography is. Neither is better than stone age
cave paintings. -jb
At 12:25 AM 8/25/2002 -0400, Judy Seigel wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Jeff Buck wrote:
>
> > This posting provides no support for its basic assumption that, for
> > purposes of this discussion, there is an important distinction between
> > photography and other media. There isn't. If I and other people
> > commenting find it easier to think of classic nude sculptures, for example,
> > this is probably because artists have been producing sculpture for
> > thousands of years. Photographers have been producing photographs for 150
> > years. The distinction between males and females is irrelevant. -jb
>
>
>Oh really, Jeff... you mean the difference between males and females AS
>SUBJECTS in irrelevant? In photography? How many frontally nude men were
>seen in photographs in polite society before day before yesterday? In fact
>how many are seen today outside the dliberately provocative, and even then
>how many ?
>
>How many of the books of photography titled "Nudes" show equal numbers &
>equivalent poses of men and women? (Most recently I happened across Bill
>Jay's book by that name -- ugh -- lots & LOTS of closeups of naked ladies,
>about 3 fuzzy sideways glimpes of males in the middle distance or
>background, seen in side view or bare backside.)
>
>How many of the men who say they photograph nudes photograph male nudes?
>I once asked a photographer who said he was off to photograph some nudes
>in nature, was that male or female nudes? He replied in outrage -- male
>nudes? The very idea he said gave him "the heebie jeebies." Do you know
>of one man who photographs male nudes who isn't gay? But "the distinction
>is irrelevant"???
>
>Are you by chance young enough -- or movie-nik enough -- to remember the
>movie Blow Up? Which, it's generally claimed in the field, launched the
>rush among men to become photographers -- the vision of themselves
>straddling the gorgeous supine model. If the model was a scantily clad man
>would that movie have been made for other than the gay trade ? No
>difference????
>
>As for the difference between a photograph and a painting -- imagine a
>movie like Blow Up about a painter. No matter the dalliance of painters
>with their models, their paintings were rarely objects of naked teenage --
>or middle aged -- lust. Even tightly rendered "realistic" nudes, say the
>Maxfield Parrish variety, or the Goya Naked Maja variety, which may have
>excited lust at a time when a glimpse of stocking was deeply shocking --
>NEVER to the degree of nude photogaph. Never sold at newsstands in Times
>Square ....
>
>As for the male nude in painting-- almost all of them are major figures,
>TITANS -- known by name and for power: Adam, David, Rodin's Thinker -- and
>I suppose a half dozen others who escape my recollection at this moment.
>But the female nude in painting? Here's a hint: they are NOT The Thinker.
>
>In fact it was axiomatic among feminist scholars of the 20th century that
>in the history of western painting women are depicted as saints or
>sinners (the latter naked) and the men are the characters, usually wearing
>clothes, from armor to 3-piece suit.
>
>Meanwhile, try to imagine a male nude in the pose and attitude of Birth of
>Venus, or an Ingres Odaleque, or like the bevies of Naked Ladies
>Anonymous, from the Rape of Europa to Liberty Leading the People... (Why
>she leads the people with one boob out has never been made clear, unless
>it's that 15 minutes thing combined with jogging... though if it's only
>the one it might require 30 minutes.)
>
>So stereotyped was the female odalesque figure that in the 1970s & '80s
>Sylvia Sleigh made a career out of painting artworld men in these poses.
>(I should add that I refreshed my memory with a few names from Christina
>Anderson's "Tutti Nudi," a charming & knowedgeable paperback. That's
>Christina Anderson of this list.)
>
>So we might leave Abigail Solomon Godeau for a spell and read some
>Rosalind Krauss... She can be a pretentious bore, but she has also
>articulated -- and if I remember correctly was the first to do so -- the
>essence of what makes a photograph different from a painting: It's
>perceived as a trace, a literal trace, of reality. That puts the shiver
>in the timber. However, the difference between photography and painting
>has been and continues to be a major topic of interest in art crit, very
>often assayed, never denied, AFAIK. Ditto the difference between men and
>women as depicted in both media -- at least until now.
>
>J.
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