The Nude

Discussions and scholarship on "The Nude" are decidedly Western in form and focus. Ostensibly, this is not a result of Western imperialism but more likely than not the influence of the Western monotheistic traditions with their distinctive morality and defense of the integrity of the one God. For example, Islamic art is normatively interpreted as aniconic, or nonfigural, in its emphasis on geometric abstractions. Although there is no Koranic prohibition against figural art or art, there is clear prohibition of images of either of idols or of God. For some commentators, the absence of the figure, especially the nude figure, is interpreted as a visual sign distinguishing Islam and Islamic art from Christianity and Christian art, which is fundamentally obsessed with Eve's nakedness and her role in the Fall. By contrast, Eve when she is depicted in Islamic art is the joyous companion of Adam. Commensurately, when those exceptionally rare nude figures are painted, whether male or female, they appear only in commissioned works of what might be best termed "secular Islamic art."

However in the non-Western world, attitudes toward nudity and the nude figure are characterized by their naturalness and ease and not categorized as a special art category or motif, except when the arts of Africa, Oceania, or Meso-America are examined with Western criteria. The first reality of nudity as a state of undress, whether ritually required or common to daily life experience, is a universal condition. The second reality of nudity is that neither the art nor religion of these indigenous cultures is monolithic as Western art and monotheism is perceived to be. Rather, for example, African figural art is naturalistic among the Ife and Benin of Nigeria but other African peoples image themselves with simplified and/or exaggerated anatomical features. A third reality of nudity is that differing climates and their resident cultures require a variety of dress in both fabric and style to accommodate native meteorological conditions. So thinner materials and lighter colors are more appropriate to warmer climates while heavier fabrics and darker colors conform to the needs of cooler climates. From the Western perspective, especially that of the nineteenth-century missionaries, the exposed breasts and bare feet of Polynesian or African women were considered a social affront. Simultaneously for some nineteenth-century European colonialists, the shock of this tribal or societal nudity was the foundation for the myth of "The Noble Savage" as the concept of the le primitif was for their twentieth-century counterparts. This Western myth of idyllic innocence and primal energy coincided with a belief that primitive peoples were free of moral constraints and middle-class concerns. However defined, the arts of these varied primitive cultures were highly influential on twentieth-century art from Picasso and Henri Matisse (1869–1954) to the Abstract Expressionists.