The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form - Softcover

Kenneth Clark

4.07

576 ratings by Goodreads

9780385093880: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385093888 ISBN 13: 9780385093880

Publisher: Doubleday, 1959

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The author traces the history of the depiction of the human body from the earliest civilized times to the present day. Starting with the Greeks who used the nude to express certain fundamental human needs, such as the need for harmony and order (Apollo), and the need to sublimate desire (Venus), he shows how these types of bodily expression were revived in 15th-century Italy and given new urgency by Michelangelo, whose genius almost exhausted the possibilities of the male nude. The female body, however, through Titian, Rubens, Ingres and Renoir has continued to be a source of pictorial inspiration, and the author examines the uneasy relationship with the nude of such moderns as Matisse and Picasso.

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Review:

The simple and often quite beautiful statement of a man of letters . . . [in] a book which is as much a pleasure to read as it is informative and provocative. -- The New York Times

A feminist critique of a male (and Western) view of the Tantric tradition [and also] a balanced reassessment of a tradition too long misunderstood. -- Parabola

Probably no one else alive today writes about art with Sir Kenneth's precise combination of intelligence, urbanity, and erudition. . . . This is an important book and a fascinating one, and the illustrations do much to illuminate it. -- The New Yorker

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