#000646
The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Clark's classic meditation on why the unclothed human body became one of Western art's central subjects. Drawn from his 1953 Mellon Lectures, *The Nude* proposes a famous distinction — between being merely "naked," stripped and vulnerable, and the "nude," the body remade by art into balanced, idealized form. Moving from Greek sculpture through the Renaissance to modern painting, and grouping his material by theme (the nude as energy, pathos, ecstasy, grace), Clark traces how artists translated flesh into ideal shape. Learned but graceful, it is written for the cultivated general reader rather than the specialist, in the confident humanist voice that later made Clark a television star. First published in 1956 in the Bollingen Series, it remains a touchstone — and a favorite target — in debates about how art idealizes, and objectifies, the body.
more…less ▴
The author
Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) was a British art historian, director of the National Gallery in London by his thirties, and later the presenter of the landmark BBC series Civilisation (1969), which made him one of the most influential popularizers of art history in the twentieth century.
The book
The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form grew out of Clark's A. W. Mellon Lectures and appeared in 1956 in the Bollingen Series (Pantheon). Its enduring contribution is the naked/nude distinction and its thematic tour of how Western artists idealized the human figure.
How it has aged
Clark's erudition and prose still delight, but his framework drew sustained pushback. John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972) turned Clark's distinction on its head, arguing the "nude" encodes a male gaze that objectifies women, and feminist art historians such as Lynda Nead extended the critique. The book is now read as much for what it reveals about mid-century humanist assumptions as for its argument.
For more context
Read directly against John Berger's Ways of Seeing and Lynda Nead's The Female Nude.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Kenneth Clark
- Publisher
- Pantheon Books
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1956
- Edition
- Bollingen Series XXXV.2
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Art
- Location
- Colorado