"NAKED"–is the title of a resplendent
modern presentation of the nude in American art, photography, and popular
culture, from the 18th century to the present. With more than 400 hundred color
illustrations, this is the most thorough and wide-reaching survey of the
representation of the male and female nude in American visual culture yet
published.
San
Diego-area resident, Bram Dijkstra explores the history of the subject from its
earliest manifestations in the paintings of John Singleton Copley and Benjamin
West to the taboo-shredding imagery of late-20-century artists such as Alice
Neel, Robert Mapplethorpe, Eric Fischl, and John Currin. Dijkstra is a cultural
historian who refuses to separate "high" and "low" art,
charting instead such momentous historical events as the discovery of pubic
hair, the invasion of the pin-up queens, "the inexorable rise of the
breast," and the puzzling fluctuations of American prudery.
“Naked”
also examines the effects of the early 20 century’s infatuation with Freudian
psychoanalysis and the more recent fascination of comic book art with the
legacy of Bettie Page and her seemingly ever more muscular daughters. In
chronological and thematic order, the book demonstrates the links between the
work of some of the most famous names in the history of American painting
(Chase, Cassatt, Hopper), sculpture (French, Powers), and photography
(Cunningham, Weston), and that of the outlaw hordes of cartoonists, book-cover
illustrators, and visual extremists who, particularly during the last
half-century, were able to turn the United States into the world’s principal
purveyor of erotic fantasies.
Publisher: Rizzoli
International Publications.
Publish date: 2010
Price ranges: $40-$50 new;
$25 used via Amazon Books as of Feb-2014.
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