Preface
The Art of the Nude
"Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed" | William Blake "The body always expresses the spirit whose envelope it is. And for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning" | Auguste Rodin "I was trained as a painter. I'm very familiar with the nude body, masculine and feminine. I do, I suppose have a soapbox position, and I want to be certain that the human body is in the center of the frame." | Peter Greenaway, Film- maker.
THE ART OF THE NUDE exhibition explores the artistic genre of the nude in the permanent collections of the Newport Museum and Art Gallery, and was on public display July - September 2008.
The exhibition made for sensationalist headlines in the UK daily press when it opened in July 2007 as a result of the "Newport Nude" controversy that continues to surround Royal Academy President Sir Gerald Festus Kelly's 1924 study of a nude model in the artist's studio: - for the extensive press coverage see news archive
- listen to BBC Radio Wales The Newport Nude, which probes the story behind the sensationalist headlines.
Selections and reflections
A review of the Newport Museum and Art Gallery collections highlights the nude as a lively artistic genre and in our final selection we ended up with a large-scale exhibition of 85 works comprising 28 drawings, 12 prints, 39 paintings and 6 works of sculpture.
Our selection brings together a diverse body of works with a lively conception of the subject of the nude, and includes the following prominent artists:
Auguste Rodin, Henry Gaudier-Brzeska, William Blake, Sir Edward J. Poynter, Sir Gerald Kelly, Sir William Russell Flint R.A, Peter Blake, Allen Jones, Sir William Goscombe John R.A. , Ceri Richards, Merlyn Evans, Thomas Rathmell, Harry Holland, Angelica Kauffman R.A, Dame Laura Knight R.A. , Elinor Bellingham-Smith and Gerda Roper.
The genre of the nude provides a fascinating thread through the history of art, and we may reflect upon: - art education: the study of the nude formed the basis of
the post-Renaissance academic tradition of "Western Art";
- the modern artist: whilst the
departures of modernism and the avant garde likewise saw a persistence
of the nude as a vital genre for the artist's exploration.
- the nude on the screen: Whither the
nude in today's world of CGI and the Internet?
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Representations of the nude The following three works in the Newport Museum and Art Gallery collections stood out for us as exemplary representations of the nude, providing a point of departure for our enquiry into the genre of the nude and the history of art and art education:
- Thomas Rathmell, The Picture Wall (1977) | Through the 1960's & '70's Newport College of Art enjoyed an enviable British reputation, wth Thomas Rathmell at the helm as Head of the School of Painting and an academic rigour centred in the life-room that fed a stream of students to the Royal College of Art.
- Harry Holland, Diane and Actæon (1984) | "This extraordinary classical artist (...) is widely regarded as one of Britain's best craftsmen, producing technically brilliant and very beautiful paintings" (x): internationally renowned for his imaginative exploration of the human figure, Harry Holland is represented by several works in the Newport Museum and Art Gallery collections (- with the following works also included in this exhibition: x, x, x, x - ) and we are espescially pleased that this Cardiff-based based artist was able to accept our invite to open THE ART OF THE NUDE exhibition at Newport Museum and Art Gallery on 18 July 2008.
Further
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