Call it coincidence or ‘divine’ intervention, but currently the Art Gallery of New South Wales is exhibiting Nude: Art from the Tate Collection. When it comes to exhibiting in the modern era, only a few places match up to the Tate Modern in London. At least a 100 pieces from the Tate’s collection are being showcased as part of this curatorial effort to study and experience nudity in art over the last 200 years. Now, citing a foreign, and most alarmingly a ‘western idea’ here is risking hurting the native; the narrative for which is being regularly written and re-written.
In the latest incident, on the afternoon of 8 December, at the venue of the Jaipur Art Summit, alleged members of the groups Lal Shakti and Rashtriya Hindu Ekta Manch attacked artist Radha Binod Sharma and threatened to destroy and abscond with his paintings. The accusation levelled was that Sharma’s paintings were vulgar and showed women in bad light.
It would be naive not to acknowledge the tender, and at times tenuous, relationship between nudity and art. By extension, that relationship is far more strained and debatable in the case of female nudity. Ever since the birth of feminism and gender-just lines of questioning, the debate has only further been muddled or fed to the wood-chipper for noise, rather than reason. To be honest, it is a fairly complicated debate. The history of mankind is in large parts the history of man. Of that, there is little to debate. Women have simply not been given their place except for when a man has decided to do so, tinctured with just the right the amounts of intoxication of body and mind, of ideas and a future that promises them their place.
For all the senas of the world, sharpening their tongues and ideological machetes, a trip to the Khajuraho temples is sufficient — also for them who think this is a ‘western thing’. Let history be their reckoning. For the debate on nudity, however, that especially of the female form in art, we have plenty to think and discuss, neither of which can be exhaustive. From Picasso to Auguste Rodin’s famous The Kiss, to our very own, and recently in the news, Bhupen Khakhar, all have, in some way or form dealt with the human body and nudity.
Firstly, we need to separate nudity of the body to that depicted in art. For the simple reason that while one is reality, the other is a cosmetic re-imagination (however close to reality). Art imitates life, or life imitates art; whatever side of that argument you are on, the two aren’t the same thing. The vulgarity of an exposition has to be, therefore, considered in the context of that exposition and not in the context of the reality we know, and in most cases, despise being a part of.
Secondly, the human body, male or female, is a beautiful thing. Any number of superlatives can be listed to accentuate the statement. Think of it as an acoustic version of our clothed, protected realities. Our bodies are the cause of so much concern, care and even admiration in life, that it is pointless to escape its influence even if to you it is powdered and for someone else it is the solid rock on their chest.
Thirdly, let us come to the female body, often considered an art-form unto itself. The aesthete of the female form is self-driven, perhaps, even helped by narratives supplied by men. Curves, shapes and sensitivity are things you associate with the female form. For the male form, it is more mechanical, even mathematical – like a six-pack or a v-shape etc. There is, therefore, so much that can be elicited in imagination, from the female form that does not require quantification. Something that instantly clicks in aesthetics and has a natural flow to it.
All that said, art has over the years been created by men. There is then a case of one mirror ‘looking down’ upon the other. The woman has found herself a subject, long enough for her to feel like an object.