Cultural art about nudity in the ancient world

The nude figure is a universal visual motif, y rooted in art history, and seemingly ubiquitous in the art of ancient civilizations of the Near East and Mediterranean. The Antikenmuseum in Basel, Switzerland, recently opened a new exhibition, Nude! The Art of the Nude- takes a closer look at all aspects of nude art in the ancient world, exploring its significance and legacy in Western notions of beauty and morality. In an exclusive interview with the Encyclopedia of Ancient History, James Blake Wiener talks to Dr. Tomas Lochman, curator of exhibitions at the Antikenmuseum, about how nudity was viewed by ancient peoples of the Mediterranean and Near East.

JBW: With the ongoing debates around feminism, gender studies, and more recently the #MeToo movement, many have questioned the artistic representation of nudity in our museums. It's the nudity! Nude Art organized as a response to these controversies and socio-cultural trends? If so, what issues does the exhibition attempt to address? And why?

The issues surrounding the condemnation of nudity in art lead us to pursue a very simple question: 'Why is there so much nudity in ancient art'?

TL: At the outset, we curated this exhibition to focus on a central phenomenon in ancient culture and art: the ubiquity of the nude, with its multiple connotations and meanings. In addition, this broad theme gave us the opportunity to reconfigure our permanent collection thematically and ephemerally. The choice of possible exhibition programs is virtually unlimited, and therefore highly conducive to special exhibitions without encountering the high costs usually incurred in assembling specific loans from international museums.

In addition to this artistic angle, there is a complementary reason for the Naked exhibition, and that is the recent discussion of sexism in art, which gives our exhibition a touch of luster and relevance. All these questions about the condemnation of nudity in art prompted us to ask a very simple question: "Why are there so many nudes in ancient art?

JBW: In the Ancient Near East, where thousands of stones and terracotta warriors have been unearthed, depictions of female nudity predominate. Dr. Lockman, would you say that there is a ****similarity between these statues of nude women? If so, what is the connection other than nudity?

TL : It is clear that all of these prehistoric statues from the Near East (and not just from the Near East, but from elsewhere as well) show the female body not only *** naked, but in a form that clearly accentuates its ***. The ***, pelvis, and genitals are clearly emphasized, while the head, arms, and feet are reduced. The *** same point, it seems to me, is that the purpose of these figures is to celebrate women's *** or fertility.

JBW: How did the ancient Egyptians associate nudity with social status and eroticism in art? It should be mentioned that the ancient Egyptians also often depicted gods and children as naked.

TL: In Ancient Egyptian portraiture, a person's social status was defined by their dress; therefore, nudity meant "lack of status" first and foremost. Yes, it is true that the ancient Egyptians also depicted children as naked because they did not yet have status. In contrast to the specific aspects of nudity in ancient Egyptian art, nudity certainly played an important role in pornography and in the assessment of the beauty and attractiveness of young women. We also find nude girls on the handles of toiletries, as well as so-called consorts, which were added to tombs as burial objects for the tombs of the dead.

JBW: In visiting the exhibition, I was fascinated by the subsequent normalization of the nude in Greek art; can you comment further on this, Dr. Lochman? Perhaps more than any other Western civilization or culture, we associate the ancient Greeks with the nude.

TL: Nudity dominates ancient Greek art, indeed more than in any other culture. But more than the nude, the human body in general was a quasi-exclusive subject in Greek art. Nonetheless, most figures in ancient Greek art do not represent mortals, but rather gods and heroes. Some - typical of Greek anthropocentrism - even represent allegorical figures that anthropomorphize topographical features as well as abstract objects and terms.

Ancient Greek depictions of the ideal man saw nudity as a kind of "uniform".

The human body was thus an important medium of secondary value or significance, and it provided enough reasoning to make the depicted body look better or even "perfect" than nature. Mortals, only through physical exercise, can approach the heroic status of the gods. (Of course, they also had to exercise and train their minds and spirits!) Representations of idealized athletes participating in sports under *** are common in Greek art. Ancient Greek depictions of the ideal man saw nudity as a "uniform". This is why nudity was a major form of characterization in ancient Greek art.

JBW: Dr. Lockman, the Etruscans seem to have been very different from the Romans, who, while disdaining public ****ing nudity, still aspired to fill their private homes with nude statues of heroes, gods, and even ***. How did the Etruscans view nudity and express it in their own artistic traditions?

TL: One of the significant differences between the Etruscans and the Greeks and Romans was that Etruscan women enjoyed more freedom in social life than Greek and Roman women. Greek sports were restricted to men, while Etruscan girls could practice sports with boys and complete *** bodies! Therefore, there was nothing unusual about men and women being openly nude in the open air, nor was it likely to cause any scandal. This explains why the Etruscans also had low reservations about *** in art.

JBW: The exhibition contains objects made by ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. Which of the objects on display are considered "highlights"? Also, do you have a personal favorite among the objects on display?

TL: Even though the exhibition is dominated by Greek art, and even though I am an expert in Greek and Roman sculpture, my two favorite highlights are not from Greece or Rome, but from Syria and Egypt. The first is the Syrian icon - the oldest object in the exhibition, dating back to around 5000 BC. It depicts a celebration of female fertility by emphasizing *** the gorgeous beauty of the throne. The second is an Egyptian bust of a lady from the court of the New Kingdom around 1300 BC (1550 BC - 1077 BC). She is well dressed, but her clothes are like light drapery; the elegant curves and shapes of her body appear underneath, as if she were naked.

This interplay of revealing and concealing was not only a Greek specialty at the end of the 5th century BC, but had been mastered by Egyptian artists nine centuries earlier! A highlight of the Greek section should also be mentioned here: a marble torso of the Polykleitian Diadumenos type. Even if this is a later Roman copy, the work is so exquisite that it can be considered the best of all Roman copies after the lost masterpiece of Polykleitos (5th century BC).

JBW: For ancient artists, the depiction of the nude had a variety of associations across time and space; for example, it was associated with immortality, religious sanctity, the primitive state of nature, and notions of civilization. When it comes to the nude in the artistic nude, have we strayed so far from our ancient ancestors? What are your thoughts, Dr. Lockman?

TL: Nudity is not only ubiquitous in ancient art, but also in universally accepted modern art. The only problem we may encounter with nudity in art is when the nudity represented is not understood or perceived as gratuitous. In ancient times, nudity was always justified. We can distinguish between ritual nudity, heroic nudity, civilized nudity, uncivilized nudity, legalized nudity, and pornographic nudity.

Curiously, for many viewers, explicit erotic representations, such as those on specific seminar vases, are more provocative than the nude woman in modern art nudes, where the reason for nudity is not concretely discernible (or is no longer understood).

JBW: Dr. Lockman, on behalf of the Encyclopedia of Ancient History, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us and introducing our readers to this fascinating exhibition. I wish you many happy adventures in your research until we next meet.

TL: Thank you so much to you and AHE for your interest in our exhibition!

Nude! Nude Art is on display until April 28, 2019 at the Antikenmuseum in Basel, Switzerland.

Dr. Tomas Lochman was born in 1959 in Prague, Czech*** and has lived in Basel, Switzerland since 1969. He studied classical archaeology at the University of Basel from 1980-1986 and received his PhD in 1993 with a thesis on Roman Phyrgia . Since 1986, Dr. Lockman has worked at the Antiken Museum in Basel, where he became Curator of Greco-Roman Sculpture in 2013. 2000-2016, Dr. Lockman served as President of the International Association for the Conservation and Promotion of Cultural Heritage (IACPC). 2006, he was a guest lecturer in Turkey and the United States, and in 2006, he was a guest lecturer in the Turkish Museum of Art. In 2006, he received a research grant from the French CNRS as a guest at the Institut Fran?ais des Etudes Anatoliennes in Istanbul, Turkey.Lochman's areas of research include ancient sculpture (from the Hellenistic, Roman, and Eastern Roman empires) as well as the recent reception of antiquity. In his museum exhibitions and events, Lochman makes a point of tracing the afterlife of historical legacies in contemporary popular media; Lochman's most important exhibitions are "Antico-mix" (Antiquity in Comics), "Antike im Kino" (Antiquity in Cinema), "Antica" (Antiquity in the Movies) and "Antica" (Antiquity in the Movies). (Antiquity in Cinema), "The Art of Swiss Neoclassical Sculptor Ferdinand Schlott", "Roman Eternity" (from the Santarelli and Zeri series) and "Nude! "Nude! The Art of the Nude".