Why Nude Art?
People sometimes ask me why I draw nude women.
In Alabama, the land of evangelicals and conservatives, it would be easier to not draw nudes at all. At art events and sci-fi conventions, I've seen parents cover their children's eyes or shoo them away from my table to prevent them from seeing a little drawing that reveals a woman’s breast. Inexplicably, nude artwork in museums or art history books is “grandfathered in” as acceptable to them because it is old, but mine is deemed scandalous.
The reasons I draw nudes are not easy to explain succinctly. First, I think a nude woman is among the most beautiful sights one can behold. As someone who feels compelled to make art, I want to hold on to a little bit of the beauty around me, to preserve it as I see it, and to share it with others. Drawing nudes is aesthetically pleasing to me, it makes me happy, and trying to competently capture a fleeting moment of a woman’s beauty -- a pose, a movement, the graceful shape of her figure -- gives me joy. That’s the easy part.
There is more to it, though. Most of my nude figure art is based on mythology or folklore. I like to draw characters with stories such as goddesses, witches and valkyries. These mythological characters represent feminine attributes. They have maternal virtues such as the power to give birth and bring life into the world, and to nurture that life in both body and spirit by nursing and loving a baby. She might be a fierce protector, and she also might be gentle and patient. She is the calm wisdom of yin, the fertile Earth in which the seed of life is planted. We associate many of her virtues with an Earth Mother archetype or the “Divine Feminine.” But in our culture, after centuries of dominance by misogynistic, patriarchal religions, reverence for goddesses has been all but stamped out and forgotten.
Lots of stories examine the balance between male and female principles. When those forces get out of balance, disaster follows. One example that comes to mind is in Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 film, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In it, Branagh’s Frankenstein embodies the male creative impulse, the trickster. As the story develops, he loses or drives away all the feminine influences in his life, including his partner, Elizabeth (played by Helena Bonham Carter), who begs to stay with him and help him with his project. But he sends her away, and brings forth his creation, which is imperfect. Rather than loving and nurturing the flawed creature, as Elizabeth doubtless would have demanded, Frankenstein deems it a failure and abandons him. Later, the embittered creature, alone with his rage, says that for the love of one person, he would make peace with all. A similar cautionary tale unfolds around Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars, beginning with Qui-Gon Jinn taking little Anakin away from his nurturing mother -- the first step on his path to becoming Darth Vader.
Philosopher Joseph Campbell said myth is kept alive through constant re-creation through the arts. I want to keep the myths alive, as Campbell said, while adding my own interpretation. The names of goddesses who were once revered and held in awe are now dismissed and reviled as evil demons, if they are remembered at all. Her images and the things she represents are often denigrated. The life-giving act of breastfeeding a baby is scorned. A sexually active woman is slut-shamed. A woman with a voluptuous, maternal figure -- a shape resembling those lovingly carved and painted by Paleolithic artists -- is fat-shamed.
This is my mission: I want my art to help reclaim the forgotten virtues of the goddess. I want to show appreciation and respect for her role in sexuality to renew life, her maternal role to nurture life, her physical beauty throughout all stages of her life as maiden, mother and matriarch, and her patient wisdom. Our culture needs a corrective, balancing measure of the goddess.
But why, one might ask, must a goddess be depicted as nude to celebrate her power? The way I envision a goddess and what she represents, her nudity itself is a statement. It conveys another dimension of feminine power.
Scorn for women and their bodies is driven by shame, which can be traced back to tribal religious zeal. People who worshipped patriarchal gods vilified the goddesses worshipped by their enemies. Centuries later, the goddesses still haven't recovered. A woman’s nude body is considered indecent. Social media censors nude photos in the name of keeping people “safe,” as if an image of a breast would put an eye out like a BB gun. Even in coy nudes in which a woman covers her breasts with her hands, it strikes me as a capitulation, a surrender to the notion that her body parts are dirty, scandalous and shameful.
I want my art to push back against the shame. I want to recall a time 4,000 years ago in Minoan culture when women’s breasts were unabashedly bared in the palace of Knossos. I want to reach back 35,000 years, to revive the Paleolithic artists’ reverence for the rounded female figure that evokes the love of a wife or a mother. I want to strike a blow against shame -- against slut-shaming women’s sexuality, against fat-shaming women into hating their bodies and developing eating disorders and depression -- against all of it.
A nude goddess stands in opposition to the power of shame. As a mighty, primal being, she is aloof, unconcerned with petty notions of embarrassment. She is intelligent, commanding and powerful, proud and resplendent in the clothing of her own body, aware of her beauty’s power to stir awe, and lust, and love. The goddess is the antithesis of shame, and all the misery it causes. She is the mother of all “body-positive” values. Likewise, skyclad witches stand in defiance of shame, naked and free in the moonlight, reveling in their unity with nature.
Women should be free to embody the very powers that mythical goddesses represent, with complete reality and authority. Goddesses and witches are merely metaphorical expressions of the qualities of women.
I have a friend who is an outspoken breastfeeding advocate. She reminds me of the Hebrew goddess Asherah. She is Asherah, and Asherah is her. That is the truth of it.
Art models also defy shame, and thus embody goddess powers. They are muses who have the courage to be vulnerable and share their beauty, all in hope of making the world a more beautiful, gentle place. That is why they should be respected and revered.
My nude art pieces are at once a celebration of what I cherish and value, and a protest against attitudes I find destructive and hurtful. I am trying to capture and preserve a fleeting moment of beauty, and the love it may reveal or inspire. Creating it is fun, but it also gives me profound joy. As Paleolithic art demonstrates, words might eventually vanish, but art endures. Even after I am long gone, I hope my art will continue to speak for me, to show people who I was, what I believed in, and who I thought was beautiful.
(First published on Art by Bryan Crowson on Facebook, November 7, 2018)
