A naked triumph: why the male nude is – thankfully – back in the limelight

For decades, the male nude was sidelined by patriarchal possessors of the female form - from Picasso to Magritte. Now, the RA’s spring exhibition will celebrate it once again

I can’t help smiling at the Royal Academy’s avowedly radical announcement that its exhibition The Renaissance Nude next spring will aim for “parity” of naked men and women in response to #MeToo. It is nice PR, but all the curators are doing is reflecting the history of the nude in art. From the classical era to the Renaissance and beyond, the male body was disrobed as enthusiastically as the female – if not more so. It is a fact that has never escaped souvenir sellers in Florence, who plaster the cock and balls of Michelangelo’s David on everything from calendars to kitchen aprons.

This makes The Renaissance Nude a timely exhibition, but not because it will “correct” the Renaissance view of the human body to today’s standards. On the contrary, the Renaissance can correct us. Imagine if the RA had made a similar announcement about an exhibition called The Modern Nude. For the period from 1900 to the 1960s, it would have had to falsify the extremely unequal facts. Picasso and Matisse were among the most patriarchal possessors of the female form in the history of art and Klimt, Schiele, Dalí and Magritte all shared that focus. Only in more recent times have the male nudes of Bacon, Hockney, Mapplethorpe and Freud moved us towards parity.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2oGEWBp