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(intriguing music)
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- The nude is the most
enduring subject in art.
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For more than 20,000 years,
images of the naked human body
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have been at the very center
of a long and complex saga.
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It's hard to understand
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any of the major developments in art
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without an understanding of the key role
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played by changing depictions
of naked men and women.
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In this series,
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I'm going to explore the ongoing
significance of the nude,
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what it tells us about
various civilizations,
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and what it tells us about ourselves
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and the world in which we live.
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(intriguing music)
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At the beginning of the 17th century,
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art was still essentially
commissioned by the monarchy,
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the church, and the aristocracy,
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who used it as a way of enforcing,
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of embellishing their own power
and position in the world.
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The dominant style of art
was called The Baroque.
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It had emerged when the
Roman-Catholic Church
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needed a way of fighting
back visually and powerfully
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against the Reformation.
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But by the beginning of the 17th century,
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it had been started to
be utilized by monarchs
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who wanted to show the world
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that their power came directly from God.
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So here in London, at the
Banqueting Hall, we see Charles I
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getting the greatest
Baroque artist of the day,
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Peter Paul Rubens,
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to produce a series of
canvases for the ceiling
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that show monarchy ascending up to heaven.
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All of which is amplified
by otherworldly nudes,
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voluptuous nudes, that sense and hint
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at the paradise to come.
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(elegant orchestral music)
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But within 15 years
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of these canvases being
installed here on the ceiling,
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Charles I had been overthrown
in the Civil War and executed.
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More broadly speaking, though,
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there's a revolution
happening in Western Europe
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that we now call the Enlightenment,
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and which is stunningly
charted in the visual arts
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of the next 200 years,
where absolutism and God
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are slowly pushed out to the margins,
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and where the workings of
the rational human mind
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become much more central,
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and man himself becomes
the center of his world.
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(dramatic choral music)
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The Enlightenment was predominantly
an 18th century movement
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at a time when the population
was expanding rapidly,
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the West was becoming industrialized,
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and aspirations were changing radically.
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It placed human beings
at the center of things,
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and explored different ways of using art,
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which depicted and wrestled
with human society and reason
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as much as it did religion and belief.
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And the nude became a weapon
in this battle of ideas.
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- I think what's fundamental
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to understanding the Enlightenment
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is the rise of the private,
the rise of the individual,
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and the rise of the citizen
against the absolute monarch.
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In a sense, Enlightenment
nudes celebrate man,
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celebrate him or her as an individual,
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but above all, as a citizen,
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all citizens being equal before God.
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This is the nude of the citizen-state
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rather than the nude of the
absolute supremacist monarchy.
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(dramatic flute music)
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- The idea of absolute monarchy
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was most effectively undermined
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by the growth in scientific understanding
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of how the human body worked,
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which suggested that all
men were potential equals,
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and mere mortals too.
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In turn, artists began to benefit
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from the methods of science.
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(dramatic flute music)
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(upbeat music)
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Anatomy lessons flourished in
17th and 18th century Europe,
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and in the newly founded art academies
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that began first in Italy and
then France and then England,
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there would be professors of anatomy
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who would teach the
students to look beneath
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the skin of the nude human body,
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and explore the way that it worked.
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So in a place like this,
the operating theater
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at Old St. Thomas' Hospital,
there'd be over 150 people
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crammed in to watch the surgeon operating,
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amputating, and dissecting.
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Mainly, they'd be medical students,
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who'd be looking and learning
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but there'd be artists here too,
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sketching, recording, documenting,
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producing images that sometimes became
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the basis of medical textbooks,
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art in the service of science,
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but also artists learning
to fuel their own art.
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(saw rings hollowly)
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The lessons of the anatomy class
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were most dramatically put to use
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by a French artist
called Theodore Gericault
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who painted this work, "The
Raft of the Medusa," in 1819.
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What Gericault was doing was commemorating
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and exploring almost journalistically
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an event that had happened
three years before,
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in 1816, when a
government-sponsored frigate,
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called the Medusa, had gone to sea
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with an incompetent captain
appointed by the government,
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and it had sunk.
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150 passengers then were
cast adrift on a raft,
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and after two weeks at
sea, they were found,
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and 15 of them survived.
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Now, Gericault studies
the human form intensely
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by going to prison
hospitals, where he looks
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at the ill and the dying.
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At the same time we learn that he himself
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has a debilitating spine disease
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that eventually leads
to his death in 1824.
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And at this time he's painting
severed limbs and heads
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and charting his own decay,
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and part of that lesson is
transferred onto this work.
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The whole picture is created
as some kind of giant pyramid,
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with the figure at the top,
who's just taken off his shirt,
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and therefore is the
nude as symbol of hope,
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as he waves defiantly at the ship
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that's just disappearing
off the end of the horizon.
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But, our eyes are dragged down the raft
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to this nude figure
here, which is a figure
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of absolute pathos.
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It's man, stripped down and
in his most vulnerable state,
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about to fall off the edge of the raft,
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and be sucked up by the icy sea.
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And so we have two images,
both conveyed by the nude.
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One, of man's strength and
monumentality and endurance.
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The other, of man's
absolute vulnerability.
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And what we have ultimately is an image
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of man as nothing when faced
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by the sublime forces of nature.
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(melancholy flute music)
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The nude now had a number of purposes.
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It could be forward-looking and radical,
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but more popularly, it
was backward-looking
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and conservative, best exemplified
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in the glorification
of kings and emperors.
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The preferred style here was
a reworked Classical one,
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Classical effectively
referring to anything
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based on the work of
ancient Greece or Rome.
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And an example of this Neoclassical work
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is this extraordinary
sculpture of Napoleon
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that now resides in the stairwell
of Apsley House in London,
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formerly the residence of
the Duke of Wellington.
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What we see is Napoleon in
the guise of a classical god.
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Napoleon was a small man, this
is a monumental sculpture.
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It's aggrandizing him,
it's making him look bigger
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and more powerful and
mighty than he actually was,
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and that was the point of the sculpture.
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And Napoleon had decided to commission
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one of the great Neoclassical
sculptors of the day,
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in 1802, to do this work,
the Italian, Antonio Canova.
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And so, Napoleon duly sat,
Canova made the sculpture,
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took him nine years, and
finally, the work was unveiled
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at the Louvre in 1811, and
the emperor himself appeared.
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Now when Napoleon saw this work,
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rumor has it he was angry and embarrassed,
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but what we do know is
that he said that the work
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was never to be shown publicly.
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It was not for public consumption,
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and I think we can see why.
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The point, I think, is that
to show the most powerful man
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in Europe clutching a symbol
of victory in his hand
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down there, but covered only
by a fig leaf, is ludicrous.
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It's absurd, it might've
worked in Roman times,
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but in 19th century Europe, it didn't.
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The great exponent of
Neoclassicism in painting
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was a Frenchman called
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,
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who at the beginning of the 19th century
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won the Prix de Rome, and he was only 21,
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so he was almost a prodigy,
and for the next two decades
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he spent his time in Italy,
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learning the Classical
idiom and the ideal.
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And when he came back to France,
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he soon became the darling
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of the French artistic
establishment and the Academy,
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and throughout his life, he
painted at regular intervals
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classical nudes, of
which this is the last,
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and some say, the culmination.
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Now, it's painted in
1862, when Ingres was 82,
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so this is very much the
workings of an old man
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at the end of his life, but
his spirit is very youthful,
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at least in its hedonistic feel.
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What we see here are a group
of women lounging around,
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eating, drinking, playing music.
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It's almost orgiastic, but not quite,
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and they're luxuriating
and washing themselves
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in a Turkish bath.
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All the senses are
invoked very consciously
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by Ingres in this painting.
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Women eat, the sensation of taste.
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The smell from perfume and incense.
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There's the idea of sound from
the woman in the foreground
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playing the guitar or the mandolin,
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and of course, the touch
is there in the way
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flesh is painted, and the visual
is provided by the viewer.
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The great French poet
Charles Baudelaire said that
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the best of Ingres art was deeply sensual,
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and you can see where he's coming from.
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This is a deeply sensual painting,
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and a celebratory one too, but
I'm slightly unnerved by it
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because of the sexual politics of the age.
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Women weren't allowed
to draw from the nude,
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and it was only after the
middle of the 19th century
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that they were allowed into life classes
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to start sketching, and
so half the population
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of the West were disempowered,
while the other half,
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the male half, were
celebrating feminine beauty
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in this kind of way.
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But Ingres, of course, was not interested
219
00:11:32,900 --> 00:11:35,444
in sexual politics,
certainly not as an old man.
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He was interested in
sensualism, and celebration,
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and keeping the classical
flame alive in art.
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(sensual instrumental music)
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The great enemy of Neoclassicism
and of Ingres in particular
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was Eugene Delacroix, who used painting
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as a vehicle to express
radial political sentiments,
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like this painting from 1830
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called "Liberty Guiding the People,"
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which commemorates an event
that took place that year
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in which the proletariat of Paris rose up
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and overthrew King Charles the Tenth,
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and so provocative was
this painting deemed to be,
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that it was banned from public
gaze for at least 20 years.
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This was very much a product
of the Enlightenment,
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a questioning of the status
quo, a call for reform,
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even revolution.
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00:12:38,549 --> 00:12:40,844
The key to Delacroix
is speed and dynamism.
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This is a dynamic painting,
there's a sense of movement
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surging upwards like a revolution.
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But also in the speed of execution.
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Brush strokes are looser here,
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00:12:50,686 --> 00:12:52,771
and in these obsessive preparatory studies
242
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that Delacroix makes for
all his monumental works,
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brush strokes are like lightning,
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and he once said that if
you wanted to sketch a man
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falling off the fifth story of a building,
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00:13:01,780 --> 00:13:03,991
if you couldn't sketch him by
the time he'd hit the ground,
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you'd never be able to
make a monumental painting.
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What we see here is the nude
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used as a vehicle for
political propaganda.
250
00:13:12,624 --> 00:13:15,461
In the foreground, there's a
male without his trousers on,
251
00:13:15,461 --> 00:13:17,921
who's faintly absurd
and useless. He's dead.
252
00:13:18,964 --> 00:13:21,843
Contrast with this
powerful symbol of woman,
253
00:13:21,843 --> 00:13:24,637
holding the tricolor, a
symbol of "La France,"
254
00:13:24,637 --> 00:13:27,723
and of "La Liberte", but also, as a symbol
255
00:13:27,723 --> 00:13:29,559
of the growing role
that women were playing
256
00:13:29,559 --> 00:13:31,727
in the revolutionary movement.
257
00:13:31,727 --> 00:13:34,147
Their role was prominent
in the 1830s uprising,
258
00:13:34,147 --> 00:13:36,398
but more broadly in
society, women were deemed
259
00:13:36,398 --> 00:13:37,566
to be more confident.
260
00:13:38,650 --> 00:13:39,861
But it's also titillating.
261
00:13:39,861 --> 00:13:42,364
It's a male view, and slightly absurd.
262
00:13:42,364 --> 00:13:43,614
Why is she topless?
263
00:13:43,614 --> 00:13:46,201
Well, the answer is this,
that Delacroix will utilize
264
00:13:46,201 --> 00:13:49,329
whatever he can to further
his own political beliefs.
265
00:13:49,329 --> 00:13:53,207
So here is the nude as tool
of political propaganda.
266
00:14:00,047 --> 00:14:01,383
In the middle of the 19th century,
267
00:14:01,383 --> 00:14:03,760
another political radical
launched an attack
268
00:14:03,760 --> 00:14:06,136
on academic art and the
values of the Salon.
269
00:14:06,136 --> 00:14:08,055
Gustave Courbet, who we see here,
270
00:14:08,055 --> 00:14:09,681
in the center of his own painting,
271
00:14:09,681 --> 00:14:10,891
painting a landscape.
272
00:14:12,852 --> 00:14:16,980
Courbet submitted this work
to the Paris Salon of 1855.
273
00:14:16,980 --> 00:14:19,316
The Salon were the annual
exhibitions where the public
274
00:14:19,316 --> 00:14:22,696
came to view and increasingly, to buy art.
275
00:14:22,696 --> 00:14:24,823
The public loved big classical nudes
276
00:14:24,823 --> 00:14:28,033
painted in a formulaic
way, and placed in a safe
277
00:14:28,033 --> 00:14:30,411
mythological or historical setting.
278
00:14:30,411 --> 00:14:32,455
In a sense, they were very traditional.
279
00:14:33,373 --> 00:14:35,165
Courbet was one of a group of artists
280
00:14:35,165 --> 00:14:37,502
who felt that art was too sanitized,
281
00:14:37,502 --> 00:14:40,295
too mythological, and too allegorical.
282
00:14:40,295 --> 00:14:42,923
In fact, too divorced from the real world.
283
00:14:44,009 --> 00:14:46,928
Courbet was emphatic that art had to be
284
00:14:46,928 --> 00:14:48,262
about what the eye saw.
285
00:14:48,262 --> 00:14:50,973
"Painting is an art of
what is seen" he once said,
286
00:14:50,973 --> 00:14:52,391
and when he was asked by someone to paint
287
00:14:52,391 --> 00:14:54,768
an angel in a church, he
said, "Well, show me an angel,
288
00:14:54,768 --> 00:14:55,895
and I'll paint it."
289
00:14:58,772 --> 00:15:01,192
Courbet's ideas about realism in painting
290
00:15:01,192 --> 00:15:03,611
are most graphically
expressed when he takes on
291
00:15:03,611 --> 00:15:06,489
the subject of the human
body, and the nude human body,
292
00:15:06,489 --> 00:15:10,076
stripped down in all its bare glory.
293
00:15:10,076 --> 00:15:12,828
Now, these images here
are still very striking.
294
00:15:12,828 --> 00:15:14,538
In fact, the painting behind me is deemed
295
00:15:14,538 --> 00:15:17,375
to be too explicit for us to show you now.
296
00:15:18,293 --> 00:15:20,169
When Courbet took on
the subject of the nude
297
00:15:20,169 --> 00:15:22,339
and showed it publicly, there was outrage.
298
00:15:22,339 --> 00:15:24,173
The emperor, Napoleon the third,
299
00:15:24,173 --> 00:15:26,842
was so incensed by one particular
300
00:15:26,842 --> 00:15:29,386
voluptuous nude beauty who was bathing
301
00:15:29,386 --> 00:15:30,388
in one of Courbet's pictures
302
00:15:30,388 --> 00:15:33,891
that he took out his riding
crop and whipped her backside.
303
00:15:33,891 --> 00:15:37,478
And in some ways,
Courbet is taking realism
304
00:15:37,478 --> 00:15:40,022
and his graphic idea to an extreme,
305
00:15:40,022 --> 00:15:42,066
and some of his art treads a fine line
306
00:15:42,066 --> 00:15:44,235
between art and pornography.
307
00:15:44,235 --> 00:15:46,321
Particularly these works
that were commissioned
308
00:15:46,321 --> 00:15:49,574
for a private patron, a
man called Khalil Bey,
309
00:15:49,574 --> 00:15:52,242
who was the Turkish
ambassador to St. Petersburg,
310
00:15:52,242 --> 00:15:54,536
who saw Courbet's work
in the public Salons,
311
00:15:54,536 --> 00:15:57,247
and decided he wanted
something for his own boudoir.
312
00:15:58,415 --> 00:16:00,793
The painting on the
left is called "Sleep."
313
00:16:03,254 --> 00:16:05,381
It shows two women, entwined.
314
00:16:05,381 --> 00:16:07,466
They're non-idealized, in a way,
315
00:16:07,466 --> 00:16:10,260
at least in a classical
way, but in another way,
316
00:16:10,260 --> 00:16:13,223
they're very fantasized,
because this is a male view,
317
00:16:13,223 --> 00:16:15,599
I think, of female sexuality.
318
00:16:16,601 --> 00:16:19,770
And lesbianism was
never, or had never been,
319
00:16:19,770 --> 00:16:21,773
a major subject in Western art.
320
00:16:21,773 --> 00:16:23,900
It had rarely been pushed
into the mainstream,
321
00:16:23,900 --> 00:16:26,069
and that in itself was a bold gesture.
322
00:16:28,488 --> 00:16:32,157
The painting behind me is
still a painting that unnerves.
323
00:16:32,157 --> 00:16:34,661
It's one of the reasons why
I find it one of the most
324
00:16:34,661 --> 00:16:37,704
staggering paintings to be
produced in the 19th century.
325
00:16:37,704 --> 00:16:40,207
You watch people walking
around the gallery here,
326
00:16:40,207 --> 00:16:42,960
and their facial expressions
always express shock,
327
00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:45,003
sometimes horror, sometimes they smile,
328
00:16:45,003 --> 00:16:47,173
sometimes they relax,
sometimes they move in,
329
00:16:47,173 --> 00:16:51,760
but it always gets a reaction,
and often an extreme one.
330
00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:55,140
In some ways it shows a
gynecological view of a woman,
331
00:16:55,140 --> 00:16:57,558
and what makes it so striking
is that her head is taken off,
332
00:16:57,558 --> 00:17:01,563
so her body is cropped, and
fetishized, and objectified.
333
00:17:01,563 --> 00:17:03,021
It's like a slab of meat,
334
00:17:03,021 --> 00:17:06,735
and we're drawn right
the way in to her vagina.
335
00:17:06,735 --> 00:17:09,070
Courbet calls this "The
Origins of the World."
336
00:17:09,070 --> 00:17:11,363
Now, what he's alluding
to, and in some ways
337
00:17:11,363 --> 00:17:12,781
he's wriggling out of the debate
338
00:17:12,781 --> 00:17:14,616
about exploitation and pornography,
339
00:17:14,616 --> 00:17:15,451
he's alluded to the fact
340
00:17:15,451 --> 00:17:17,119
that this is where we all come from,
341
00:17:17,119 --> 00:17:19,747
and that procreation and
the origins of the species
342
00:17:19,747 --> 00:17:21,374
can some ways, physically, it can be said,
343
00:17:21,374 --> 00:17:23,792
visually as well, to start here.
344
00:17:23,792 --> 00:17:26,378
But at the same time,
he is producing an image
345
00:17:26,378 --> 00:17:29,757
which is for titillation,
for private consumption,
346
00:17:29,757 --> 00:17:33,511
which exploits, in many
ways, the female body,
347
00:17:33,511 --> 00:17:37,223
and it's that line, that
boundary, that I think
348
00:17:37,223 --> 00:17:39,392
makes this work so important.
349
00:17:39,392 --> 00:17:41,061
Is it art? Absolutely.
350
00:17:41,061 --> 00:17:42,853
Is it graphic? Yes.
351
00:17:42,853 --> 00:17:44,272
Is it pornography?
352
00:17:44,272 --> 00:17:46,565
Well, that's probably in
the eye of the beholder.
353
00:17:46,565 --> 00:17:49,943
- Still people find that
image objectionable,
354
00:17:49,943 --> 00:17:53,030
even though it's a very honest, very open,
355
00:17:53,030 --> 00:17:56,867
very real image of the
beauty of the female form
356
00:17:56,867 --> 00:17:59,078
and I think it's interesting
that the head is not included.
357
00:17:59,078 --> 00:18:02,081
He wasn't merely trying to excite people,
358
00:18:02,081 --> 00:18:05,377
he was trying to, as he
said, create an image
359
00:18:05,377 --> 00:18:06,585
of the origin of the world.
360
00:18:06,585 --> 00:18:08,754
It had strong symbolic value
361
00:18:08,754 --> 00:18:10,965
through the sexual
excitement of the image.
362
00:18:10,965 --> 00:18:13,176
- Why do you think there has been
363
00:18:13,176 --> 00:18:15,636
and there still is an obsession with
364
00:18:15,636 --> 00:18:17,930
what we can see of a nude human body,
365
00:18:17,930 --> 00:18:19,139
and what we can't see?
366
00:18:20,391 --> 00:18:25,063
- I think it's part of,
it's part of human desire.
367
00:18:26,355 --> 00:18:28,482
The body is part of human desire,
368
00:18:28,482 --> 00:18:30,651
and people are afraid of desire.
369
00:18:30,651 --> 00:18:33,279
People are afraid of sex.
370
00:18:33,279 --> 00:18:35,990
(upbeat music)
371
00:19:05,561 --> 00:19:07,521
- The debates that had
raised around realism
372
00:19:07,521 --> 00:19:10,274
when Courbet was painting
also were mirrored
373
00:19:10,274 --> 00:19:11,483
in the development of sculpture,
374
00:19:11,483 --> 00:19:13,777
when a young artist called Auguste Rodin
375
00:19:13,777 --> 00:19:15,195
started to produce his sculpture
376
00:19:15,195 --> 00:19:17,489
and show it in public for the first time.
377
00:19:17,489 --> 00:19:21,286
And in this work, shown
in 1877 at the Salon,
378
00:19:21,286 --> 00:19:24,788
we see realism in all its graphic glory.
379
00:19:24,788 --> 00:19:26,290
The gesture of this sculpture,
380
00:19:26,290 --> 00:19:27,916
which is called "The Age of Bronze,"
381
00:19:27,916 --> 00:19:31,211
but also at the time, Rodin
called it "The Vanquished."
382
00:19:31,211 --> 00:19:32,671
In some ways, he's a figure in agony,
383
00:19:32,671 --> 00:19:35,133
but also in this way,
it's a man stretching.
384
00:19:35,133 --> 00:19:36,717
It's like a man waking up,
385
00:19:36,717 --> 00:19:40,013
and every sinew of his body is realistic.
386
00:19:40,013 --> 00:19:43,058
The musculature is absolutely
right, and he's life size.
387
00:19:43,058 --> 00:19:45,059
I'm standing next to
him, he doesn't dwarf me,
388
00:19:45,059 --> 00:19:47,187
he's not this monumental figure.
389
00:19:47,187 --> 00:19:49,813
He's as a man, he's real.
390
00:19:49,813 --> 00:19:51,899
And in fact, he was so realistic
391
00:19:51,899 --> 00:19:54,944
that when the Salon jury
of 1877 saw the work,
392
00:19:54,944 --> 00:19:56,696
they accused Rodin of cheating,
393
00:19:56,696 --> 00:19:59,573
of casting directly from a live human body
394
00:19:59,573 --> 00:20:01,742
rather than carving the work in plaster
395
00:20:01,742 --> 00:20:03,243
and then casting it in bronze,
396
00:20:03,243 --> 00:20:05,412
which in fact, is what Rodin had done.
397
00:20:05,412 --> 00:20:07,248
He'd not cheated at all.
398
00:20:07,248 --> 00:20:10,417
And that furor about realism and cheating
399
00:20:10,417 --> 00:20:13,212
launched Rodin's career,
and made in some ways,
400
00:20:13,212 --> 00:20:16,298
him a scandalous artist, but
it also launched his career
401
00:20:16,298 --> 00:20:18,550
as the most successful
sculptor in many ways
402
00:20:18,550 --> 00:20:20,969
of the last 150 years.
403
00:20:20,969 --> 00:20:23,848
At the same time, it
mirrored yet another debate
404
00:20:23,848 --> 00:20:26,892
that was going on about
art being drawn from life
405
00:20:26,892 --> 00:20:29,228
and mechanical ways of reproduction
406
00:20:29,228 --> 00:20:33,357
that in fact were centering
round a brand new invention,
407
00:20:33,357 --> 00:20:36,402
a brand new visual medium
that changed everything.
408
00:20:37,569 --> 00:20:40,824
The debate about artistic
purpose was revolutionized
409
00:20:40,824 --> 00:20:43,826
by the development of a new
medium of representation,
410
00:20:43,826 --> 00:20:45,035
photography.
411
00:20:45,035 --> 00:20:49,498
(energetic orchestral instrumental music)
412
00:20:49,498 --> 00:20:50,999
It was without doubt one of the most
413
00:20:50,999 --> 00:20:53,545
significant developments
in the history of art.
414
00:20:53,545 --> 00:20:55,295
Pioneered in the late 1830s
415
00:20:55,295 --> 00:20:58,590
by a French painter-turned-inventor
called Louis Daguerre
416
00:20:58,590 --> 00:21:01,301
who discovered that
using a camera obscura,
417
00:21:01,301 --> 00:21:04,012
he could fix an image cast by light.
418
00:21:04,012 --> 00:21:06,014
And from this time on,
once the myth grew up,
419
00:21:06,014 --> 00:21:09,059
in certain circles,
that painting was dead.
420
00:21:09,059 --> 00:21:12,022
Of course it wasn't, but
photography burgeoned,
421
00:21:12,022 --> 00:21:14,190
and the nude loomed large.
422
00:21:14,190 --> 00:21:16,233
But nude images that were photographed,
423
00:21:16,233 --> 00:21:18,778
and photography in
general, took a long time
424
00:21:18,778 --> 00:21:20,864
before they were considered to be art.
425
00:21:20,864 --> 00:21:24,074
(sensual jazz music)
426
00:21:29,748 --> 00:21:31,916
A leading figure was Eadweard Muybridge.
427
00:21:31,916 --> 00:21:33,751
He was a British-born photographer,
428
00:21:33,751 --> 00:21:36,628
and a pioneer of motion photography.
429
00:21:36,628 --> 00:21:39,089
Using many cameras with
high-speed shutters
430
00:21:39,089 --> 00:21:40,675
triggered by trip wires,
431
00:21:40,675 --> 00:21:43,719
Muybridge studied animals
and humans in movement,
432
00:21:43,719 --> 00:21:45,554
eventually projecting the pictures
433
00:21:45,554 --> 00:21:47,598
and showing the figures in motion.
434
00:21:47,598 --> 00:21:50,309
And this was the precursor
of modern cinematography.
435
00:21:53,228 --> 00:21:56,191
Photography had a huge
impact on many artists
436
00:21:56,191 --> 00:21:59,736
by letting them study the way
the human body actually moves.
437
00:21:59,736 --> 00:22:02,946
(sensual jazz music)
438
00:22:03,907 --> 00:22:05,909
There was a big debate
as to whether photography
439
00:22:05,909 --> 00:22:07,493
could be considered an artistic
440
00:22:07,493 --> 00:22:10,205
as opposed to a scientific process.
441
00:22:10,205 --> 00:22:13,040
After 1850 in France, photographs
442
00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:14,833
were excluded from the Salons,
443
00:22:14,833 --> 00:22:17,128
and barred from other
official exhibitions.
444
00:22:19,673 --> 00:22:21,048
The real point about photography
445
00:22:21,048 --> 00:22:22,676
is that one could represent reality
446
00:22:22,676 --> 00:22:25,845
far more effectively than
painting or sculpture,
447
00:22:25,845 --> 00:22:28,889
and in the decades to come,
artists would ask themselves
448
00:22:28,889 --> 00:22:30,641
in the presence of photography,
449
00:22:30,641 --> 00:22:32,811
what is painting and sculpture for?
450
00:22:32,811 --> 00:22:36,647
(cheerful orchestral music)
451
00:22:45,657 --> 00:22:48,743
And a second debate was also provoked.
452
00:22:48,743 --> 00:22:51,620
Up until this point, nude
images were mainly available
453
00:22:51,620 --> 00:22:54,916
only to the elite in the
homes, or in art galleries.
454
00:22:54,916 --> 00:22:57,251
But now they were available to the masses,
455
00:22:57,251 --> 00:22:59,670
and there was suddenly a moral outcry.
456
00:22:59,670 --> 00:23:03,549
(sensual instrumental music)
457
00:23:10,389 --> 00:23:12,349
Many believed that
photography was to blame
458
00:23:12,349 --> 00:23:14,143
for a general spread of vice.
459
00:23:15,936 --> 00:23:19,107
In Britain, between 1868 and 1880,
460
00:23:19,107 --> 00:23:21,525
the Society for the Suppression of Vice
461
00:23:21,525 --> 00:23:24,862
seized a quarter of a million
photographs and prints.
462
00:23:24,862 --> 00:23:28,782
(sensual instrumental music)
463
00:23:31,326 --> 00:23:33,621
The debate about what
constituted pornography
464
00:23:33,621 --> 00:23:36,790
and what constituted art was
now well and truly raging,
465
00:23:36,790 --> 00:23:39,044
and it ran through the next century.
466
00:23:39,044 --> 00:23:40,587
More broadly speaking though,
467
00:23:40,587 --> 00:23:42,796
photography threw down a huge challenge
468
00:23:42,796 --> 00:23:46,801
to those who painted or
sculpted the nude human body.
469
00:23:46,801 --> 00:23:49,595
Because what had previously
taken weeks or months
470
00:23:49,595 --> 00:23:53,348
to produce, could now be realized
in the blinking of an eye,
471
00:23:53,348 --> 00:23:55,434
or the clicking of a mechanical shutter.
472
00:23:56,394 --> 00:23:58,605
And it was this challenge that shaped
473
00:23:58,605 --> 00:24:00,522
the image of the nude human body
474
00:24:00,522 --> 00:24:03,026
and the experimental art that blossomed
475
00:24:03,026 --> 00:24:04,651
in the 20th century.
476
00:24:04,651 --> 00:24:09,865
(upbeat music)
(machine humming)
38539
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