ISBN-10: 0-7092-0871-5
Writer: Margaret Walters
Title: The Nude Male
Subtitle: A New Perspective
Language: English
Place of Publication: New York & London
Publisher: Paddington Press Ltd
Year of Publication: 1978
Format: 174x250mm
Pages: 352
Illustrations: 205 black and white plates and pictures
Jacket Design: Patricia Pillay
Binding: Brown cloth in colour dust jacket
Original Price: GBP 6.95
Weight: 1,047gr.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
The naked body sums up everything we desire and everything we most fear.
In this fascinating work, Margaret Walters explores new territory and gives us fresh insight into our sexual attitudes. By examining the art of the Western world – from Apollo to male pinups – we discover that we know a great deal about the male vision of the female and very little about women’s views of the human body, either male or female. Western art, like the whole of our culture, has been created from a male viewpoint. There has been no language, verbal or visual, through which women could articulate their feelings about the male body.
Even today women are not encouraged to express their sexuality by looking. Their excitement and satisfaction is meant to be secondary; it involves being looked at and fulfilling masculine fantasies.
The nude in art, however, is not the same as a mere naked body. The word “nude” conjures up an image of an undressed woman, whether an idealized Venus or a pinup in a girlie magazine. For the past two hundred years artists interested in the human body have been obsessed with the female form. But for the female nude has never held a revered position in art. Her body has frequently been manipulated and distorted to fit the ideals of different ages while the male shape has been fairly constant throughout. The female nude is a vehicle of male fantasy; her feminity is regarded as a status symbol – a commodity.
Throughout history the artistic depiction of the male nude provides real clues to underlying social attitudes and perhaps even to the reality of the relationship between man and woman.
With sharpness and humor, Margaret Walters helps us to understand the male nude from a new perspective. She challenges the assumptions on which Western art has been based. She shows us that women are capable of viewing men as men have traditionally viewed women – that they can learn to see the male in art as a sex object.
The Nude Male, with more than 150 reproductions, will provoke women and men to look at the human form in a different light.
