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Book Review
Human body in art
ASHRAFI S. BHAGAT
CENSORING THE BODY: Edward Lucie-Smith; Seagull Books, 26, Circus Avenue, Kolkata-700017.
Art historical scholarship has indexed the intentions and desires of the patrons and artists in expressing the dictates of their particular culture and time in which they are contextualised through variety of themes and subject matter. The thematic content in art has popularly foregrounded the human body, with the artists articulating their expressions by mediating through it. Yet, it is a space that has been contentious and politicised in its representation.
This book by an art historian and critic, offers insight into the thematic content of the representation of the human body both male and female in art. In his book, he traces this development of body representation from the prehistoric to the contemporary.
From art history
The author perceptively offers examples from art history to clarify his fundamental thesis premised on the human body, nude or partially clothed, male or female, to stress fundamentally the limitations imposed upon the artist through cultural grids as the patron, connoisseur and indirectly the religion and institution of the church. The Industrial Revolution brought about cataclysmic changes, the tremors of which were felt in every field and discipline. The conceptual avant-garde approach in the visual and performing arts opened up space, which allowed the human body to become the playfield for artists, manipulated formally, aesthetically and psychologically to meet the artistic expressions and requirements for creative statements.
The author logically traces the human body in art, from early civilisations, in which the nude body focused almost entirely on fertility. Christianity wrought dynamic changes by setting forth a philosophy in art by connecting it to the Fall of Man and original sin. These developments proscribed nudity in art until the emergence of Renaissance. By citing well-known and not too well-known religious and secular examples, Lucie-Smith creates a narrative implicating a politics of representation, within which is also inhered the male gaze as evident from the late 18th to mid-19th century.
Modernity
Within the context of modernity in art beginning from the 19th century, the female nude was objectified disguised as formal artistic experiments or “insisting on an element of ‘otherness’ in images of the nudes by making reference to classicism,” and the author cites the example of Manet’s Olympia or the naked body in some exotic setting. Today, representation of the nude has emerged as a battleground, contested by feminists.
The author concludes with the provocative observation that political correctness “is after all, just a euphemism for censorship,” revealing the complex historical and cultural legacies which frame and obscure our vision.
Though the narrative flow is very lucid and comprehensive, Lucie-Smith with his art historical expertise could have worked on its thematic content to make it more incisive and academically stimulating. The hardbound pocket size of the book robs it of its seriousness. The visuals are in black and white.
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