One of the ways in which the modern artist defends his independence from academic norms is through realism, understood as an unidealised description of the world. The nude being the culmination of academic apprenticeship, it is hardly surprising that it is also where this move against idealisation shows most. The human body displayed in its most material reality, therefore, went against the abstract canons of beauty represented in the classic nude. The ineluctable objectivity of photography, a new competitor of art in its own terrain, was to have an enormous influence in this realistic vision of the body.
I. The Rise of the Modern Artist
- I.4. Realisms: model and nude
I.1. Studio, character and work [1]
I.2. Portraits and self-portraits [2]
I.3. The artist’s apprenticeship. The academy [3]
I.4. Realisms: model and nude
I.5. The artist in his studio [4]
I.7. The bourgeois portrait [6]
I.8. The enthusiast in the studio [7]
I.9. Orientalism [8]
I.10. Japonism and other exoticisms [9]
I.11. Historical painting versus current affairs [10]
