Exposed: The Victorian Nude [Hardcover]

Alison Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

The epitome of high culture or an assault on public morality? The nude figure was one of the most controversial issues in Victorian art. It was also one of the most conspicuous categories for the visual image at every level, from elite paintings for the Royal Academy to mass-produced photographs and magazine illustrations.



Exposed: The Victorian Nude provides a fascinating overview of the nude figure—both male and female—and the intriguing role it played in Victorian art. While it concentrates on painting, sculpture, and drawing, this beautifully illustrated reference also explores the depiction of the body in other media—including photography, popular illustration, advertising, and caricature—and discusses the issues of morality, uality, and desire that are relevant even today. Since nudes were an important subject for most Victorian artists, Exposed: The Victorian Nude showcases dazzling artwork from such legendary masters as Millais, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Whistler, and Sargent, as well as pivotal figures of early English modernism. Cutting across the conventional categories of style and period, this guide offers a fresh, engrossing vision of Victorian art and culture unmatched anywhere else.





• Beautifully produced and full of breathtaking artwork

• Nudes are perennially popular with art lovers

• Book serves as a catalog for a traveling exhibition from the prestigious Tate Gallery that will visit several US museums, beginning with the Brooklyn Museum in September 2002

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The art form that caused such a headache among other discomforts for the Victorians is the subject of Exposed: The Victorian Nude, which explores depictions of the body in 19th-century British art. Tate curator Alison Smith (The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art) looks at the unprecedented proliferation of nudes (previously rare in British art) under Victoria's reign, and at the passionate debates they provoked about decency and art. Though Smith touches on photography and illustration, she focuses mainly on painting, with full-color reproductions of works by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and others. The book accompanies a Tate exhibition that will travel to the U.S. this fall, including a stop at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York City, where the new mayor seems less of a cultural watchdog than his predecessor.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Serving as the catalog for the first major exhibition in the Linbury Galleries at the Tate Museum in London, this sumptuous and sensual volume focuses primarily on painting, though it does include drawings, sculpture, and early forms of photography and silent film stills. Smith, whose Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art provided a broad cultural context of the topic, showcases work by John Singer Sargent, Frederic Leighton, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and others. The works are organized into six categories: "The English Nude," "The Classical Nude," "The Private Nude," "The Artist's Studio," "Sensation!: The Nude in High Art," and "The Modern Nude." The unlikely juxtaposition of Victorian mores with nude imagery provides an alternate sensibility to Victorian England, both enlightening the mind and pleasing the eye. Three richly illustrated essays by Smith, Martin Myrone, and Michael Hyatt frame the work. All academic and larger public libraries should own this title. Rebecca Tolley-Stokes, East Tennessee State Univ. Libs., Johnson City
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill; First Edition edition (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823016331
• ISBN-13: 978-0823016334
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 9.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #689,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and informative, September 25, 2004

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Exposed: The Victorian Nude (Hardcover)

This is almost two books in one. The first book is just in the pictures, reproductions of paintings, photos, and even a few cartoons that celebrate the figure. The pictorial reading is hugely informative by itself. The authors place each picture in the historical or visual context that led up to it - showing related pictures that might have informed the one being discussed, or displaying cartoons that editorialize on the figure in then-contemporary art.

One thing that's hard for a modern viewer is to see the pictures through Victorian eyes, with Victorian sensibilities. Nudity often represented innocence, invoking Edenic times before modesty (and immodesty, by implication) arose. This seems true, most often, when depicting youths and children. A modern viewer is free to wonder, though - weren't a few artists, Charles Dodgson included, just a bit shrill in protesting their innocent motives?

The second reading of this book is in its explanatory text, an even partner with the imagery itself. This is what a picture book's text should be, but too rarely is. It really does add insight to the images. Sometimes the writing explains mythical references that are now obscure, sometimes it describes the artist and that artist's place in society, sometimes it explains how competing schools of thought created pictures with specific features of style. In every case, though, the reading is worthwhile, if only because it invites the reader to linger just a little longer over each of the pictures shown.

The artists represented here all honor classical human beauty in its many forms, male, female, and child. That explains one of two lacks I found in this book. First was the absence of mature figures, especially among the women. It was and often still is implicit that only the young can be beautiful. This error deprives fully adult women of their due, and deprives the viewer of a wider vision of human wonder. Second, this book emphasizes the classical, formal style of painting. I miss the other kinds of images that were also being made at the time, especially the Impressionist. The first lack I attribute to the artists of the time, but the second was introduced by the modern editors. It's a minor point, though, and does not interfere with the enjoyment of what is present.

This is a book worth having and keeping, for its inherent beauty, for its intelligent commentary, and for its presentation of painters I might not have known otherwise.

//wiredweird

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exposed: A Beautiful Book Reveals a Controvesial Subject, November 4, 2002

By 

Sherry L. Ross "sherryross" (NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Exposed: The Victorian Nude (Hardcover)

Exposed: A beautiful and Informative Book about a Controversial Topic

What surprised and delighted me most, by both the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, and by this wonderful text that accompanied the show and is now available to purchase, is the unbiased historical approach to the theme of Victorian Nudes and Sexuality. Most museums and texts that dare to present 19th century Victorian and academically rendered art (art in the realist tradition taught by the academic art schools of the period) have accompanying text that is tongue-in-cheek or satirically critical of this artwork. But this book, as the exhibition (which was organized and sponsored by the Tate Britain museum in England) gives serious insight into the Victorian controversy of nudity and sexuality. "Exposed: The Victorian Nude" explains with respect, what the artists of that era were trying to do. It analyses the social climate of the time, the innovative and daring works of the period's masters, as well as lesser artists, and shows the influence this art had on popular trends and views. The book is also rich in color plates and is a visual delight as well as a wealth of historical knowledge. There are fine examples of paintings by Frederic Leighton, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Evelyn De Morgan, Herbert Draper, Anna Lea Merritt, Annie Swynnnerton, John William Waterhouse, Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Edward John Poynter, Albert Moore, George Frederic Watts and Earnest Normand. There are also fabulous drawings by William Mulready, William Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, and John Everett Millais as well as photos of great sculpture of the period. This impressive book would make a wonderful holiday gift for anyone interested in the Victorian Era. If you are interested in my complete review of this book and show, with many examples of the colored plates from the book and descriptions of the paintings, you make find the review at www.artrenewal.org This site, The Art Renewal Center, is the largest on-line museum on the Internet and is a non-profit art educational organization. The review may be found in the top menu under Articles/latest articles/ "Exposed: The Victorian Nude" by Sherry Lazarus Ross.

3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concentrates on painting, sculpture and drawing, August 8, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Exposed: The Victorian Nude (Hardcover)

Alison Smith deftly edits Exposed: The Victorian Nude, a photographic exploration of the range of Victorian representations of both male and female figures. This concentrates on painting, sculpture and drawing, but also explores photos, popular illustration and film. An excellent history.