"Cadmus and Harmonia,"
Evelyn De Morgan, 1877. Oil on canvas.
By A.L. Dunnington
BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- High art. Low art. The Luscious and the Lewd.
Truth. Temptation. The classical ideal and the raunchily real.
All this and more come to North America for one stop only in
"Exposed: The Victorian Nude" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The
150-piece exhibition traces the controversial history of the nude
in Victorian art.
The show, organized by the Tate Britain, traveled to Germany
before opening at the BMA in September, and concludes its
international run next year in Japan.
The elaborate exhibit showcases Victorian paintings, sculpture
and other media, including photography and cartoons, on a subject
condoned by the Queen but crushed by critics and moral crusaders.
As Nineteenth Century British artists took on the nude - that
most natural of human states - their work became a lightning rod
for social, political and cultural change, instigating not only
new attitudes toward art and the human body, but new laws and a
new word: pornography.
When the Tate approached BMA about exhibition, Barbara Gallati,
BMA's curator of American art, signed on. "You don't know what
you're missing unless you know what it is, and we rarely get the
chance to see this type of work," said Gallati, who had read
The Victorian Nude, by Alison Smith, the Tate Britain
curator and organizer of the show.
"Love Locked Out," Anna Lee Merritt, 1889. Oil on canvas.
Smith's book explored the presentation and reception of the nude
in Victorian society; the exhibit, Gallati said, brings that
scholarship, those insights and beautiful works of art to a wider
audience - in the process, forcing viewers to confront their own
attitudes toward the human body.
While Victorians have a prudish, buttoned-up reputation, in fact
there was a proliferation of nude imagery starting about the time
Victoria took the throne.
One reason was the growing internationalism of art in the
Nineteenth Century. The English were asking themselves, What's
English about our art? How can we maintain a national identity
and still sustain a competitive stance in international
aesthetics?
The French were viewed as the most aesthetically advanced at the
time. To adopt a French mode of painting or presentation,
however, was to admit French superiority, something the British
were loath to do.
"You had a contradiction in that you wanted to be a player in
this, so you had to develop a mode of sophisticated presentation
in your art, and the English had never been known as
sophisticates in the arts," Gallati said.
Enter the nude - and the fervor set off by its ultimate
assimilation into mainstream English art and society.
While the BMA exhibit essentially follows the thematic path set
by the Tate Britain, it diverges somewhat by using an entryway to
showcase dramatic works that establish some of the tensions and
levels of meaning explored throughout the show.
Grouped together are Frederic Leighton's "Athlete Wrestling with
a Python," bronze, 1877; Robert Penn Browning's "Dryope
Fascinated by Apollo in the Form of a Serpent," bronze, 1883; and
Evelyn De Morgan's "Cadmus and Harmonia," the signature image of
the BMA show, oil, 1877.
"What's fun about this is they're all what you'd call Victorian
high art from the late Nineteenth Century, and they introduce the
idea of the nude, but they also introduce how different the
content can be even when the image is similar," Gallati said.
Leighton's "Athlete" is heroic, and can be interpreted as man's
intellect fighting with his baser nature, or as Alison Smith
writes in the catalog, "...a 'moral' example in keeping
degenerate forces at bay."
The statue won a Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle
in 1878.
Browning's "Dryope" also involves a serpent and a nude, but this
time, the nude is female, and the theme, seduction. Dryope is
entranced by the serpent as it coils around her body, but her
stance is one of seducer as well as seduced.
In contrast to both is De Morgan's "Cadmus and Harmonia." One of
the first nudes by a British female painter to be publicly
exhibited, the scene refers to a story from Ovid: Cadmus is
transformed into a serpent, and wraps himself about his loving --
and nude -- wife, in an entreating, embracing fashion. This scene
tells a story of marital love.
"That's why we chose those three human-plus-snake works - to show
you can get all sorts of meaning from similar images. That same
theme works as you go through the exhibition," Gallati said.
The exhibition, as organized by Alison Smith, senior program
curator, Tate Britain, and co-curated by Smith, Martin Myrone and
Robert Upstone, is divided into thematic categories, beginning
with "The English Nude."
While nudes by artistic giants like Titian and Rubens were
represented in private collections of British aristocrats, such
works were rarely seen by the general public.
In fact, writes Smith, by the mid-Nineteenth Century, vocal
vigilante groups had developed to protect the public from "...the
harm the nude presented to inartistic minds..."
British artists wanted to explore the same themes as the
Renaissance masters, but they also wanted to earn a living and
show their paintings.
To make nudes more acceptable and uniquely English in character,
the nude was portrayed in the context of English themes, such as
Titania, from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, or
Musidora, from Thompson's poem, "The Seasons."
Then there was the most English, nationalistic nude of all, Lady
Godiva, portrayed in Edwin Landseer's "Lady Godiva's Prayer,"
circa 1865. Here, the presence of doves, a cathedral and a
Puritanically dressed matron reinforce the nude Godiva's
self-sacrificing act: the noblewoman, on her husband's dare,
rides naked through the streets to persuade him to abolish
unbearable taxes.
The artists' exploration of the nude figure also found
justification in Queen Victoria herself, who bought nudes for her
husband, Prince Albert. At times, the Queen's purchases were
announced in magazines, which may have helped support the
emergence of the nude on the walls of public galleries like the
Royal Academy, Gallati said.
Despite this royal stamp of approval and an effort to portray the
nude in uniquely English themes, artists were still bedeviled by
critics who claimed the nude form was not appropriate for gallery
walls. John Everett Millais's "The Knight Errant," oil, 1870, was
criticized, for instance, because its nude female subject was
painted looking directly at her fully clothed male rescuer - an
attitude considered vulgar. In response, Millais cut out that
portion of the painting, and reinserted another canvas, where a
woman modestly looks away.
The reaction of the next generation of artists to what they
considered the provincialism of English art leads into the "The
Classical Nude" portion of the exhibit.
These artists used classical myths to circumvent critics, as
evidenced by Frederic Leighton's "Bath of Psyche," circa 1889-90,
whose Psyche is sculpturally classical, yet undeniably sensual.
Possibly the most famous piece in this section is sculptor Hiram
Power's statue, "The Greek Slave."
The full-scale statue, which Smith calls "the most famous nude
composition of the mid-Victorian period," was based on an
"antique Venus." The chain around the wrists of the female nude,
however, made the statue a cause celebre, since it
referred not only to the Ottoman practice of parading nude slaves
for sale, but also to the American abolitionist cause.
In addition to the topical theme of slavery, Gallati said, "We've
got the high art image as it was shown in 1851, in London, of
this beautiful marble sculpture of a female, the Greek slave, who
is nude not through her choosing, but because she's forced to be
nude: therefore, she is virtuous. She's not only got the
whiteness of the absolutely wonderful white luminous marble that
signifies purity, she's also got the weight of classical
tradition behind her."
The "Greek Slave" became so popular that fine white porcelain
reproductions, called Parian ware, were manufactured by companies
such as Minton and sold to the public.
"You could buy the little reduced version of this for your living
room, for very little money, comparatively," Gallati said.
"Whereas high art was in these grand palaces of art, in the great
galleries, now you could have one on your mantel. So all of a
sudden, the nude figure is invading the home."
This statue was particularly popular because she was not only
virtuous, but Christian. A cross was prominently carved into the
pedestal upon which she leaned: Hiram Powers did not want any
mistakes made, Gallati said.
After "The Greek Slave" was shown in London in 1851, however
Punch published a cartoon of "The Greek Slave" as a black
Virginian, writing: "We have the Greek captive in dead
stone...why not the Virginian slave in living ebony?"
Meanwhile, the image was photographically mass-produced,
filtering further into both the English and American mainstream.
From the "Classical Nude," viewers stroll into a hallway, which
displays a video of Alison Smith narrating the original Tate
exhibit, and a small library of art books about the Victorian
period.
Viewers then enter a gallery with a private and intimate feel.
The sensuously red-walled "Artist's Studio" portion of the
exhibit examines the subject of artist and model, the mystique of
the creative process, and popular fantasies about the imagined
improprieties between (mostly male) artists and (mostly female)
nude models, during a time in which women were not to work.
Especially in the nude. Nude models were, however, routinely used
to help artists understand the human body, as they sought to
better portray and perfect it.
This desire to create perfection is captured by the story of
Pygmalion, an artist who rejects the real in pursuit of the
ideal, and falls in love with his own sculpture of the "perfect"
woman.
The story is told in a series of oil paintings by Edward Coley
Burne-Jones: in the final painting, the artist's statue comes to
life. As she gazes past Pygmalion, however, her face devoid of
love or warmth, the scene conveys the ultimate unattainability of
perfection in real life.
A black mesh drape signifies entry into "The Private Nude"
section of the exhibit.
Here we see William Etty's "Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his
Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to
Bed," oil, 1830.
The painting refers to Greek historian Herodotus' story of a king
who allows his general to watch his wife disrobe. The angered
queen commands the general to either kill her husband or be
killed. The king is killed, and the general marries the wronged
wife. The dark tones of the two male characters flank the
luminous, marble-like sheen of the nude queen.
Etty was one of the first major English artists to address the
nude. This particular work makes the viewer a voyeur - like the
general, sneaking a peak - and critics deemed this painting
unacceptable for any but private viewing, if that.
Other images produced for private view include pornographic
illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley and photographs of nude
children by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll - taken
for the children's families, with their consent.
This segment also captures the turmoil of the time, as nude
imagery becomes more prolific, less artistic and more
commercially available, prompting the "Obscene Publications Act"
of 1857 and the creation of the Society for the Suppression of
Vice.
Step off into a smaller, side gallery - offset again by black
mesh drapes - and the light flickers black and white with
Victorian "erotica" films - more comic than arousing to modern
sensibilities, but a dramatic example of how far the nude had
come.
Back to the bright lights of the main gallery, "The Nude in High
Art" follows the nude's evolution into ever more spectacular and
daring presentations.
The more adventurous approach to the nude was due in part to
French influences, which beguiled many young British painters in
the latter Nineteenth Century. Opposition by religious and moral
groups increased, inspiring laws such as the Criminal Law
Amendment Bill, raising the age of consent to 16.
"The politicization of the nude provoked by the demand for
regulation and censorship did little to halt its visibility in
public," writes Smith. "Rather the scandal and publicity ...
helped generate audience curiosity and with it a general
tolerance for the nude in the face of what was dismissed as
'philistine' opinion."
At the same time, there was growing concern about the
victimization of children and female prostitutes in London -
anxieties that were translated into the thematic contents of
paintings, Gallati said.
Included in this section is John William Waterhouse's "Saint
Eulalia," oil, 1885.
"The way [St Eulalia] is presented is utterly dramatic because
she's prostrate on the pavement, her hair is blowing out towards
you and you're literally pulled up her body into the painting,"
Gallati said. "She's not entirely nude, but this is surely a
seductive painting."
Waterhouse had modified the subject matter: St Eulalia was
tortured and martyred at age 12 for not sacrificing to the Roman
gods. Here, Waterhouse has made her older, and the scene less
gruesome, to help the viewer feel more at ease viewing her body.
In contrast, Anna Lea Merritt's "Love Locked Out," oil, 1889,
presents a different kind of drama: the subject is love lost,
daring in its use of a naked child model.
Philadelphia-born Merritt, who married an Englishman, pursued her
painting primarily in England, and became one of the few women to
establish a professional career as an artist in the late
Nineteenth Century.
The death of Merritt's husband preceded this work, and the nude
child represents love poignantly waiting to be reunited with its
beloved.
"Love Locked Out" became one of the most popular paintings for
the English nation at the turn of the Twentieth Century, Gallati
said. "We think of late Victorian culture as being overly
sentimental, but this has the right measure of it, and it's a
beautifully painted work."
"The Modern Nude" concludes the exhibit, and shows just how far
the nude has journeyed: from idealized figures set in classical,
English and High Art themes, the nude is now presented in more
naturalistic settings that at times are jarringly real.
Theodore Roussel, a Frenchman who married an English woman,
contributed his large painting of a nude woman reading to the New
English Art Club's 1887 exhibition.
"The Reading Girl," oil, 1886-87, as it was aptly named, was
panned by the Spectator, a reactionary publication:
"...Our imagination fails to conceive any adequate reason for a
picture of this sort. It is realism of the worst kind, the
artist's eye seeing only the vulgar outside of his model ... No
human being ... could take any pleasure in such a picture as
this; it is a degradation of Art."
English artists who had studied in France and were returning home
to establish their careers often found themselves unwelcome by
academicians and shut out of exhibitions. In response, they
formed organizations like the New English Art Club.
"The NEAC featured the work of young artists, some of whom had
trained in France, others of whom were picking up stylistic
influences from French Impressionism, anything that made them
look somewhat modern and interesting compared to what they
considered to be a moribund academic style," Gallati said.
Railing against Impressionistic influences, those from the old
school considered such works alien, immoral, and "worst of all,
French," writes Smith.
By the end of this exhibit, it becomes apparent just how drastic
the change in Victorian nudes has become, stylistically, by the
turn of the century.
"The Greek Slave," Hiram Powers, white marble.
"While there are still artists focusing on the nude figure,
there's no longer that perceived national unity of style,"
Gallati said.
Implicit in the show is the question of how the viewer,
personally, responds to the nude body. "The show invites us all
to explore our own attitudes, through the history of the
Nineteenth Century nude," Gallati said. "It leads us to make
comparisons or contrasts with our own experience in our own
culture ... If we want to look in the pages of Vogue
magazine, say, we see some very similar images." The human body
provokes people, she said. "The history of the idea of beauty is
so wrapped up in the human body ... and if we establish the human
body as the height of beauty, then how can we get upset by it?"
But the nude has been a particularly "fraught" image, she said,
imbued with social, religious, political, philosophical
interventions.
What "Exposed: Victorian Nudes" offers, in addition to some
beautiful and provocative works of art, is a slice from the
history of morals and taste, Gallati said, adding, "I hope people
enjoy themselves, and that they learn something in an enjoyable
way. My own feeling is that art is supposed to make you think -
and if you're challenged in a positive way, that's a good thing."
"Exposed: The Victorian Nude" runs through January 5, at the
Brooklyn Museum of Art, in the Morris A. And Meyer Schapiro Wing,
fifth floor. The fully illustrated catalog is $34, softcover, and
$45, hardcover.
The Brooklyn Museum of Art is at 200 Eastern Parkway,
Brooklyn, N.Y. Museum hours are Wednesday-Friday, 10 am to 5 pm.
First Saturdays, 11 am to 11 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11 am to 6
pm. Closed Monday, Tuesday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New
Year's Day. Call 718-638-5000 to hear a recording with updated
program and exhibition information and detailed directions by car
and public transportation, or www.brooklynmuseum.org.
