Throughout the course of history, nudity has remained a complex and severely scrutinised issue within artistic discourse. Artists use nudity to convey senses of beauty, frailty, innocence, commonality and power. Nudity in classical art has often carried some form of religious or spiritual symbolism, rather than eroticism and sexuality which are the most frequent interpretations of the bare human anatomy. Only now, in the context of contemporary society, has nudity retained a certain perplexing quality. With sexualisation an almost customary cultural function, how does one segregate and define what is pornographic and what is art? With the phenomenon of the internet allowing unrestricted access to an infinite array of explicit images, the boundaries of obscenity are constantly being questioned and redefined.
There is no doubt that the subject of sex has permeated the mainstream of Western society. Everyday, each of us is bombarded and confronted by subtle connotations of sex within television, movies, advertisements, magazines, music videos and other conventional media. With this influx of excessively obscene material, the question remains—are pornography and art fundamentally discordant?
Recently, an exhibition of Brisbane artist Anastasia Booth’s work (aptly titled ‘It’s not Arousal just a Parody’ 2011), portraying alluringly tactile sculptures, created much outraged discussion and controversy amongst the owners of businesses near the gallery. Shortly after its opening, the exhibition was forced to close. Although the act of sex itself was not depicted, the contextual framework of fetishism, which Booth had depicted, was deemed to be offensive.1
The subject of sex and nudity in art becomes even more complex with the inclusion of children. Australian artist Bill Henson has been the subject of much publicised scrutiny over the course of the... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline