Distinctions between the nude as art, the nude as erotica, and the nude as pornography can be imprecise, subjective, and culturally dependent.
The earliest manifestations of the photographic nude in the twentieth century are the infamous French postcards, which were for sale in the streets of Paris from about 1905.
If the nude figure was not considered art, then it would, by default, be construed as pornography or at best ‘eroticism’ and subject to social and legal sanction.
As stated by Kenneth Clarke in The Nude: A Study of Ideal Form, “the English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word “nude”, on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vogue image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body; the body re-formed. On the other side, art critic John Berger argues that the nude is a convention; that to be naked is to be oneself but to be nude is to become an object.”
In the greatest age of painting, the nude inspired the greatest works, and even when it ceased to be a compulsive subject it held its position as an academic exercise and demonstration of mastery.
The nude as a conceptual and artistic category always involved the nation of an ideal abstracted from the reality we confront in our everyday lives.
Some believe any nude depiction is pornographic. If you want to see an image as pornographic, then it is pornographic. What pornography “is” is largely a subjective matter.
It all depends on the intent of the artist and the mind of the viewer, how the artist portrays the subject and how the viewer responds to that sensual message.
Zelko Nedic has always respected the right of each person to have their own view. “People are not born with an irrational fear of the nude body; it is something that has been wrongfully ingrained into us by society.” In his show Naked or Nude, Nedic presents a small selection of his work from 2006 to 2011. It is up to the viewer to make their own decision about what they going to see in this show.
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