Censorship of The Female Nude

Censorship of the female nude has always been present in western society for centuries, the censorship of artwork has supressed the production and exhibiting of countless visual works removing pieces considered objectionable. Artists associated with censorship of the female nude are often passed over in comparison to other artists as censorship breaks the integrity and beauty of the initial artwork. There have always been issues surrounding the female nude, especially when it comes to exhibiting in public display, the general public are split on their views on censorship and the covering of nudity. Censorship argues there is a more significant variety of problems surrounding the nude female body and the representation of women in present cultural values.

The female nude has been an expressive visual art form of capturing the genuine, while formally beautiful, explicit nature of the female body presented to the world. Often the female nude has been known to reduce women to a physical object of their sexuality by exploiting the body. The first physical representation of the female nude recorded was The Aphrodite of Knidos, an Ancient Greek Sculpture produced by the artist Praxiteles around 330 BCE.  took a risk to produce a shocking piece of art resembling the nude female form in its full state, never before seen flaunted in public display and was deemed unacceptable. The sculpture of Aphrodite held a bath towel in her hand draped over water jug, to imply she had just been caught stepping out of her bath in a moment of astonishment . The depiction of Aphrodite suggests the viewer sees the sculpture as a forbidden pleasure, due to the compromising positioning of Aphrodite in the nude. As she was the Goddess of love her image was well respected within the realm of religion, this female nude was accepted by the public due to the surrounding respect of the religious figure. The female genitalia had to be censored due the vast rejection of female sexuality in ancient Greece at the time of 330 BCE, female nudity was widely rejected unless seen in a degrading context or of a sexual nature.

Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus created 1485- 1486, changed the status of the female nude within traditional art. Botticelli decided to celebrate the nude female body, almost sexualising the female form. Traditionally Nude paintings, mainly consisting of male nude figures were depicted by the avant-garde of the early renaissance period to symbolise shame and sin, Botticelli entirely juxtaposed these traditional ideas of the naked body. This painting was the first full-scale painting to portray the female nude as the main subject of the piece, a classic theme runs throughout the painting in the foreground. The scene shows Venus standing relaxed within an open shell, her strawberry blonde hair cascading down her body, wrapping around the curvature of her body covering her genitalia. Botticelli rehabilitated the traditional image of the nude body within art, turning the naked body into a celebration instead of a sense of shame. Each of these artistic representations of the female nude were essential in the gradual acceptance of the female nude within art in the early period of French society which in turn led to the dramatic incline of the female nude in the 19^th Century.

 The female nude was once extremely controversial, still to this day remains a discrete area of the art world often not spoken about. The nude female form has been censored and removed from a multitude of venues including exhibitions, work offices or general public display. The boundaries surrounding the controversial nature of the female nude are defined through the medium and subject focus of the work. In 19^th Century France the only place artists could exhibition their artwork was the official salon in Paris, France where artworks had to be approved by a jury of the members of the academy.

 

Being accepted to exhibiting your artwork here would have been an acceptance into society where artists would be introduced to the leading clients of high society. In rebellion of this major censorship of artists and their work, an event called Le Salon des Refusés which was French for “The Exhibition of Rejects” was fashioned by Emperor Napoleon III in 1863 held in Paris. Here unconventional works of art that had been previously rejected by the jury from the Official Salon were exhibited to the public including the first showing of Eduardo Manet’s controversial female nude, Olympia (1865). This was completed through artistic censorship that removed and filtered the genuine raw artwork that was being created by the true artists of the 19^th Century. This was portrayed to the public through the dominance and control the academic officials held over the exhibition of the Official Salon. 

Censorship is the leading cause of the removal of the female nude from public display, majorly within exhibitions since the second half of the 19^th century where in the Salon in Paris, France. In 1863 Alexandre Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus exhibited within the salon featuring a femme fatale lay nude on a bed of waves, an idyllic depiction of the female body. Paintings of the female nude were widely dormant from public display around the world before this gradual introduction of the nude body into cultural institutions and overall public view.

 

To Censor is to examine in order to suppress or delete any topic or item considered objectionable, censorship occurs when a group of people impose their political, social or moral values in order to suppress words, images or any other medium and deem them offensive. The use of censorship within art is remarkably consistent, as a meaning of an artwork could undoubtedly be interpreted negatively.

The 19^th Century had a large impact on the female nude as male artists began to exploit the practise for the benefit of the male gaze. The male gaze shaped the societal artistic obsession with the female naked body, sexualising women by turning their forms into objects to view rather than a physical being. 

The female nude has developed into a normalised subject of art over the course of the late 20^th century although is still actively being censored from public display to this day. Major speculation has always surrounded the integrity of the female nude, regarding the nude female body is sometimes considered to be either Fine Art or Pornographic. Throughout the 20^th Century you see the female nude become more accepting within the art world and the wider general public, although controversy regarding the subject nature was still largely prominent in society. This was due to the different changes the artistic depictions of the female nude and how they developed into outrage as styles of modesty changed and artists became more daring. The 21^st Century saw the female nude become open to more ideas and considerations, with a rise in contemporary nude paintings by distortion and paintwork to enhance the feel of the classic female nude.  

 

The female nude is largely controlled by censorship of artwork due to the amount of nude female paintings and artworks that have been removed or censored from public display to supress and prohibit paintings, sculptures and artworks. Censorship is evident in art history, to remove artwork that had caused slight controversy. Art is subjective to the viewer, people respond different to a work of art, the meaning can often get interpretated in completely different ways which is the leading reason of overall artistic censorship.