Sky Views: Sexploitation, liberation, protestation - reactions to nudity are a sign of the times

by Adam Boulton, editor-at-large

We've all got a birthday suit and human nakedness is an undying and inevitable subject of fascination. What we expose and how we react to it tells us a lot about the moral temperature of the times.

For example, months before the opening of its new The Renaissance Nude exhibition, the Royal Academy took the pre-emptive step of announcing that there would be equal numbers of male and female bodies on view. No one's going to put the Academy in the #MeToo corner.

The Renaissance Nude is a good title because 1400-1530 witnessed the rebirth of depictions of the naked human form in western art, as artists rediscovered nude sculptures from the Greek and Roman classical period.

The Catholic Church became less repressive. Pictures of naked saints and martyrs, and even Christ, started to appear alongside images of nymphs, satyrs and goddesses.

Sexploitation was part of it from the beginning. The cardinals, popes and dukes who commissioned the nudes don't seem to have felt the need to strip off themselves for their portraits.

Looking at the life drawings of Leonardo, Raphael or Michelangelo it is impossible not to be thrilled by the skill and inquiring spirit of the Old Masters. But there's no point denying that there is an element of titillation in gazing at nudes.

The fig leaf which art historians reach for to justify this is The Nude, the groundbreaking 1956 study by the late Lord Clark, a former director of the National Gallery.

The patrician Kenneth Clark created the still unrivalled Civilisation TV series. This dry intellectual decreed "no nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling", so it must be permissible then to keep on gazing.

Today's mainstream visual artists aren't much interested in the naked human body. Two exceptions are Tracey Emin, who loves drawing herself, and the American photographer Spencer Tunick, who places a large number of naked volunteers in iconic locations.

Instead, questions of nudity are more often exposed on stage and screen. Attitudes are continuing to evolve.

The 1960s ushered in a spirit of liberation, summed up when Britain's leading theatre critic Kenneth Tynan put on a pornographic show called O Calcutta.

The columnist Dan Hodges says that no one really knows what it's like to be teased at school unless your mother happens to be Glenda Jackson and there was a re-run of Women In Love on the TV the other night. To be fair, Ken Russell's 1969 film also featured some of the first full-frontal male nudity in mainstream cinema.

British-based actors such as Helen Mirren and Greta Scacchi became renowned for getting their kits off in the service of their art. Emma Thompson posed boldly for a recreation of Velasquez's Rokeby Venus for Vanity Fair. Unlike US stars Demi Moore and Serena Williams, who also posed nude for the photographer Annie Leibovitz, Thompson was not celebrating the feminine miracle of pregnancy.

No longer.

"Arrrgh! Just let me get my breasts out, I don't care!" complained Florence Pugh, the British star of the recent Little Drummer Girl TV series, when she had to stay covered up during love scenes.

She blamed international pressure, adding: "America is quite scared of bums and nipples. My parents were very cool and made sure we watched lots of European films when we grew up, so nudity has never been a problem for me, as long as it's done beautifully."

Pugh has recently spoken out on Twitter about body shaming after a reviewer said she had "chunky thighs".

The US has always been more prudish than Europe because of its puritan and peasant origins. It sets the rules for show business.

The recent #MeToo and #TimesUp revelations have also empowered many actresses to avoid nudity, although this has resulted in some awkward compromises. Keira Knightley had a "no nudity" clause for her latest film Aftermath but handpicked another woman as a body-double in "her" sex scenes.

In two other recent productions - Fleabag on TV and the National Theatre's recent stunningly bad Cate Blanchett vehicle - the female star engages triumphantly with dildos and anal intercourse but all without exposing herself.

Female star power matters. The closer Daenerys, Mother of Dragons gets to the Iron Throne, the less Emilia Clarke shows of herself. Conversely Lena Heady, playing the anti-heroine Cersei, stripped bravely for the genuine humiliation of the Walk of Shame.

Female nudity seems now mainly reserved for protest. Celebrities undressed to save fish and furry animals. Demonstrators from Femen go topless for women's rights.

Female nudity seems now mainly reserved for protest. Celebrities undress to save fish and furry animals. Demonstrators from Femen go topless for women's rights. Cambridge University's Dr Victoria Bateman is campaigning against Brexit in the nude because, she says, it will leave the economy "exposed".

The least controversial piece of flesh to flash in a drama has become a man's bottom, as demonstrated by the excitement over the bare buttocks of the male stars in the BBC's Night Manager and Bodyguard series. Dominic West has commented that he upped his naked appearances in the later series of The Affair to balance out Ruth Wilson's earlier appearances.

A naked reckoning is under way between the sexes. Channel 4's Naked Attraction, where partners are selected on the basis of their bits, is perhaps the most extreme example - both lurid and PC.

It's just as well then that my favourite piece in the Royal Academy's exhibition is Durer's engraving of Adam and Eve: gender balanced, man and woman, frontal - no bums - with twigs strategically placed.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Paste BN editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Adam Parsons - Relaxed dress codes at work are not something to be celebrated