Human Bodies: the Female Nude
Use and abuse.
It is often observed that women have been the subject of paintings far more than the subject of art history. Go into almost any art gallery and you will find portraits of both men and women, but the number of female nudes will far outweigh the male nudes.
Why should this be?
I think it is far too simple to suggest that since male artists have traditionally had easier access to galleries you are going to find the human form which most straight male artists find attractive. Many female artists work from the female nude and prefer to do so (see my anecdote on The Male Nude). It seems far more likely to me that the (generally) more curved contours of the female body appeal more readily to an aesthetic sense.
This, of course, is not without consequences.
Idealism
The female form in art has often symbolised Beauty. Now the philosophers' jury is still out on whether there is such a thing as Absolute Beauty. In the meantime, the best we can do is find examples of it, and my example will be different to yours. Of course, if I am an artist - and I don't find my example of Ideal Beauty in the exterior world - I can always modify what I put on the canvas. I can create a fantasy and persuade others that it is ideal beauty.
And so, open the floodgates. What's your idea of perfect beauty in female form? Blond hair? Wide hips? A smooth and hairless body? One which suggests availability whilst remaining 'classy'?
Of course, the artist can get carried away in these acts of the imagination. A female friend remarked that they seemed to be working in studios where gravity had no effect. And whilst Durer's Eve might simply be very tall and slender, Botticelli's Venus is impossibly proportioned, with a neck which would have caused her endless problems. Botticelli wasn't alone in his hunt for the perfectly tall woman. It has been estimated that Ingres' Odalisque has an extra 5 vertebrae in her spine. *
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Large Bathers
Renoir
1865
Eve (detail)
Durer
1507
Venus (detail)
Botticelli
1485
Odalisque
Ingres
1814
Pseudo-Classicism and Sexualisation
Consider though.
If I live in a society where public nakedness is frowned on, how can I create paintings of nude women? How can I exhibit them?
Give the painting a classical title. It's not a naked woman; it's Venus.
Three of the paintings above have classical titles or names. The painting by Renoir employs poses which can be traced to classical statuary.
Now, this is may be no more than a device which enabled artists to paint the human form.
And yet. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that many female nudes painted by male artists have been sexualised. Many appear to be presented simply as an object to be gazed at. Appreciation of the human form is one thing, but it can easily drift into something else.
Consider these:
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* And this is by no means over:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14304802
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/airbrushed-adverts-of-thin-ideal-models-pose-429917
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7920962.stm
... and on, and on.
An essential difference is that many of the retouched photographs and Barbie-style toys are aimed at women and girls. Much of the work which has been committed to canvas or marble has been aimed at male consumption.