Nudity in art - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Depictions of nudity refers to nudity

Nudity

Nudity is the state of wearing no clothing. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic. The amount of clothing worn depends on functional considerations and social considerations...

in all the artistic disciplines including vernacular

Vernacular

A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

and historical depictions. Nudity in art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

has generally reflected — with some exceptions — social standards of aesthetics and modesty

Modesty

Standards of modesty are aspects of the culture of a country or people, at a given point in time, and is a measure against which an individual in society may be judged....

/morality

Morality

Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...

of their time in painting, sculpture and more recently in photography.

At all times in human history, the human body has been one of the principal subjects for artists. It has been represented on prehistoric paintings and statutes and in all eras since. The male nude was more common in antiquity, especially in ancient Greece, but today the tendency is for the female nude body to be more highly regarded and represented.

Since the first days of photography, the nude was a source of inspiration for those that adopted the new medium. Most of the early images have been closely guarded or surreptitiously circulated, on account of social norms of the time. At that time, prostitutes tended to model for these photographs. Today, the images of the human body are often, especially in advertising for the wide variety of products and services, those of the female body.

Many cultures accept nudity in art even when they shun actual nudity. For example, even an art gallery which exhibits nude paintings will typically not accept nudity of a visitor.

General depictions

As social attitudes about artistic nudity have changed, this has sometimes led to conflict over art that no longer conforms to prevailing standards of what is acceptable. For example, some members of the Roman Catholic Church

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

once organized the so-called "fig-leaf

Fig leaf

A fig leaf is the covering up of an act or an object that is embarrassing or disagreeable. The term is a metaphorical reference to the Biblical Book of Genesis, in which Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover "their nakedness" after eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and...

campaign" to cover nudity in art, starting from the works of Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

artist Michelangelo, but the Church has since removed such fig leaves and restored the works. In contrast, it was conventional in ancient Greek art, from the time of the Archaic period onwards, to represent deities and divinized humans (or "heroes") in a state of heroic nudity

Heroic nudity

Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the use of nudity in classical sculpture to indicate that a sculpture's apparently mortal human subject is in fact a hero or semi-divine being. This convention began in archaic and classical Greece and was later adopted...

in paintings and sculpture, and it remained so throughout the classical and Roman periods.

Even though tastes changed significantly, semi-nude themes kept their attraction, even leading to copying of scenes from many centuries before.

Genres

The nude

Art nude

An art nude is a work of art that takes the naked human form as its dominant subject. The term is used for painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed media.-Western tradition:...

has become an enduring genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

and theme of representational art

Representation (arts)

Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements...

, especially painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

and photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

. It depicts people without clothes, usually with stylistic and staging conventions that distinguish the artistic elements (such as innocence, or similar theatrical/artistic elements) of being nude with the more provocative state of being naked. A nude figure is one, such as a goddess or a man in ancient Greece, for whom the lack of clothing is its usual condition, so that there is no sexual suggestiveness presumed. A naked figure is one, such as a contemporary prostitute or a businessman, who usually wears clothing, such that their lack of it in this scene implies sexual activity or suggestiveness (See also: nudity and sexuality

Nudity and sexuality

In most societies and cultures, human nudity is often associated with sexuality. Many people are sexually attracted to nudity, which they find to be erotic and sexually arousing...

). The latter were rare in European art from the Medieval period until the latter half of the 1800s; in the interim, a work featuring an unclothed woman would routinely identify her as "Venus

Venus (mythology)

Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

" or another Greco-Roman goddess, to justify her nudity. There can be debate with regard to whether a figure in art is either nude or naked for example in some works of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (painter)

Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...

Representations

Nudity in art, also publicly displayed, is rather common and more accepted than public nudity of real people. For example, a statue

Statue

A statue is a sculpture in the round representing a person or persons, an animal, an idea or an event, normally full-length, as opposed to a bust, and at least close to life-size, or larger...

or painting

Painting

representing a nude person may be displayed in public places where actual nudity is not allowed. However, there is also much art depicting a nude person with a piece of cloth or other object seemingly by chance covering the genitals.
Some feel the selected focus of "Nude studies" lends itself to an impersonal, objectifying depiction of the human body; others say it can be as selectively depicted as a landscape

Landscape

Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of...

In satire and media

A 1960s comedy sketch featuring English comedians Peter Cook

Peter Cook

Peter Edward Cook was an English satirist, writer and comedian. An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. He has been described by Stephen Fry as "the funniest man who ever drew breath," although Cook's...

and Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore

Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television...

admiring Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

's Les Grandes Baigneuses in the National Gallery

National Gallery, London

The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...

humorously suggested that there must be hundreds of paintings that are not publicly displayed because the pieces of cloth did not fall in just the right places while the artist was painting them.

In modern media, images of partial and full nudity are used in advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

to draw additional attention. In the case of attractive models

Model (person)

A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....

this attention is due to the visual pleasure the images provide; in other cases it is due to the relative rarity of images of nudity. The use of nudity in advertising tends to be carefully controlled to avoid the impression that the company whose product is being advertised is indecent or unrefined. There are also (self-imposed) limits on what advertising media such as magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

s allow. The success of sexually provocative advertising is claimed in the truism "sex sells". However, responses to nudity in American advertisements have been more mixed; nudity in the advertisements of Calvin Klein

Calvin Klein

Calvin Richard Klein is an American fashion designer who launched the company that would later become Calvin Klein Inc. in 1968. In addition to clothing, Klein has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewelry....

, Benetton

Benetton Group

Benetton Group S.p.A. is a global luxury fashion brand, based in Treviso, Italy. The name comes from the Benetton family who founded the company in 1965. Benetton Group is listed in Milan....

, and Abercrombie & Fitch

Abercrombie & Fitch

Abercrombie & Fitch is an American retailer that focuses on casual wear for consumers aged 18 to 22. It has over 300 locations in the United States, and is expanding internationally....

, to name three companies, have provoked much negative as well as positive response. (See also: Sex in advertising

Sex in advertising

Sex in advertising or sex sells is the use of sexual or erotic imagery in advertising to draw interest to a particular product, for purpose of sale. A feature of sex in advertising is that the imagery used, such as that of a pretty woman, typically has no connection to the product being advertised...

).

Of images of nudity (not necessarily pornographic

Pornography

Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

), the most extreme form is full frontal nudity, referring to the fact that the actor or model is presented from the front and with the genitals exposed. Frequently images of nude people do not go that far and photos

Photograph

A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

are deliberately composed, and films edited, such that in particular no genitalia are seen, as if the camera failed to see them by chance. This is sometimes called "implied nudity" as opposed to "explicit nudity."


Goya's La maja desnuda La Maja Desnuda La maja desnuda is an oil on canvas painting by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya , portraying a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows. It was executed some time between 1797 and 1800, and is sometimes said to be the first clear depiction of female pubic hair in a large Western painting... and La maja vestida La Maja Vestida La maja vestida is a painting by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya between 1798 and 1805. It is a clothed version of La maja desnuda and is exhibited next to it in the same room at the Prado Museum in Madrid... . Goya Francisco Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era... painted La maja vestida after outrage in Spanish society over the previous Desnuda. Without a pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning, the painting was "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art". He refused to paint clothes on her, and instead created a new painting.

Film and television

The portrayal of nudity in motion pictures

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

has long been controversial. Full nudity has gained much wider acceptance in European cinema and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

where, in contrast to their US counterparts, the audience perceive nudity and sexuality in general as less objectionable than the depiction of violence. Nudity in a sexual but non-pornographic context, however, has in many European countries remained on the fringe of what is socially acceptable for public shows, although this situation was liberalized during the later 20th century; in the 1970s Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

s Number 96

Number 96 (TV series)

Number 96 was a popular Australian soap opera set in a Sydney apartment block. Don Cash and Bill Harmon produced the series for Network Ten, which requested a Coronation Street-type serial, and specifically one that explored adult subjects...

and The Box

The Box (TV series)

The Box was an Australian soap opera than ran on Network Ten from February 1974 until 1977.The Box was produced by Crawford Productions who at the time was having great success producing police procedural television series in Australia...

regularly included nudity, and in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

nudity has been featured on talk shows such as Jensen!

Jensen!

Jensen! is a Dutch late night talk show on the television station RTL 5. It airs weekdays from 22:30 to 23:30 CET ....

and Giel, starring Giel Beelen
Giel Beelen
Michiel Antonius Adrianus Beelen, better known as Giel Beelen is a Dutch radio-dj and presentator. Currently he presents the VARA morning show GIEL at 3FM from Monday till Friday between 6:00 and 10:00 am...

.

Broadcast television and most "basic cable" outlets in the United States have been more reluctant to display nudity in most cases, the exception being PBS. A few series in the 1990s, including NYPD Blue

NYPD Blue

NYPD Blue is an American television police drama set in New York City, exploring the internal and external struggles of the fictional 15th precinct of Manhattan...

, have occasionally used partial nudity, both male and female. When broadcast on television, theatrically released films featuring nudity are usually presented with the nude scenes edited out, or the nudity is obscured in some fashion (for example digital imagery may be used to clothe nude actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

s). Several premium cable services such as HBO

Home Box Office

HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...

, Showtime, and more recently FX

FX Networks

FX is the name of a number of related pay television channels owned by News Corporation's Fox Entertainment Group...

, have gained popularity for, among other things, presenting unedited films. In addition, they have produced series that do not shy away from nude scenes, including Oz

Oz (TV series)

Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes . It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz premiered on July 12, 1997 and ran for six seasons...

, Sex and the City

Sex and the City

Sex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...

, The Sopranos

The Sopranos

The Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...

, True Blood

True Blood

True Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...

, and Queer as Folk (the British original was pioneering even in the more tolerant U.K.). Big Brother (TV series)
Big Brother (TV series)
Big Brother is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash...

, which has shot in multiple countries, sometimes has nudity in the show, however, the scenes with nudity do not always air on TV.

Ethnographic nudity
This tentatively called "ethnographic" nudity has appeared both in serious research works on ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

and anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, as well as in commercial documentaries and in the National Geographic magazine in the United States. In some cases, media outlets may show nudity which occurs in a "natural" or spontaneous setting in news programs or documentaries, while blurring out or censoring the nudity in a dramatic work.

The ethnographic focus provided an exceptional framework for painters and photographers to depict peoples whose nudity was, or still is, acceptable within the mores, or within certain specific settings, of their traditional culture.

Detractors of ethnographic nudity often dismiss it as mere colonial

Colonialism

Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...

gaze preserved as "ethnographic" imagery. However, the works of some ethnographic painters and photographers, like Irving Penn

Irving Penn

Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.-Early career:Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art from which he was graduated in 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he...

, Casimir Zagourski

Casimir Zagourski

Casimir Zagourski was a pioneering photographer of Central African peoples and customs.Zagourski was born in Zhytomyr in 1883. He was of Polish ethnicity, from the noble Clan of Ostoja...

, Hugo Bernatzik

Hugo Bernatzik

Hugo Adolf Bernatzik , was an Austrian anthropologist and photographer.Bernatzik was the founder of the concept of alternative anthropology.-Biography:...

and Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...

, have received worldwide acclaim for preserving what is perceived as a documentation of the dying mores of "paradises" subjecty to the onslaught of average modernity.

American Art media continues to report on depictions of nudity in the US culture as artists flock to work from live nude models and the internet has increased both interest and awareness. For example, ARTnews: "Nothing Like the Real Thing" and The New York Observer: "As the Flesh Fades, NY Painters Band Together"

Other depictions in vernacular culture

Nudity is occasionally presented in other media as well (often with attending controversy) such as on album covers featuring music by performers such as Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

, John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

and Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono

is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

, Nirvana

Nirvana (band)

Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...

, Blind Faith

Blind Faith

Blind Faith were an English blues-rock band that consisted of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and Ric Grech. The band, which was one of the first "super-groups", released their only album, Blind Faith, in August 1969...

, Scorpions

Scorpions (band)

Scorpions are a heavy metal/hard rock band from Hannover, Germany, formed in 1965 by guitarist Rudolf Schenker, who is the band's only constant member. They are known for their 1980s rock anthem "Rock You Like a Hurricane" and many singles, such as "No One Like You", "Send Me an Angel", "Still...

and Jane's Addiction

Jane's Addiction

Jane's Addiction is an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985. The band's original line-up featured Perry Farrell , Dave Navarro , Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins . After breaking up in 1991, Jane's Addiction briefly reunited in 1997 and again in 2001, both times...

. Several rock musicians have performed nude on stage, including members of Jane's Addiction

Jane's Addiction

, Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, the group's line-up consists of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello and drummer Brad Wilk...

, Green Day

Green Day

Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1987. The band consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool...

, Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...

, Stone Temple Pilots

Stone Temple Pilots

Stone Temple Pilots is an American rock band from San Diego, California that consists of Scott Weiland , brothers Robert DeLeo and Dean DeLeo , and Eric Kretz ....

, The Jesus Lizard

The Jesus Lizard

The Jesus Lizard was an American alternative rock and noise rock band formed in 1987 in Austin, Texas. They were "a leading noise rock band in the American independent underground…[who] turned out a series of independent records filled with scathing, disembowelling, guitar-driven pseudo-industrial...

, Blind Melon

Blind Melon

Blind Melon is an American rock band active from 1989 to 1999, and from 2006 onward.Best remembered for their 1993 single "No Rain", the group enjoyed critical and commercial success in the early 1990s with their neo-psychedelic take on alternative rock...

, Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers is an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The group's musical style primarily consists of rock with an emphasis on funk, as well as elements from other genres such as punk, hip hop and psychedelic rock...

, blink-182

Blink-182

Blink-182 is an American rock band consisting of vocalist and bass guitarist Mark Hoppus, vocalist and guitarist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker. They have sold over 27 million albums worldwide since forming in Poway, California in 1992...

, Queens of the Stone Age

Queens of the Stone Age

Queens of the Stone Age is an American rock band from Palm Desert, California, United States, formed in 1997. The band's line-up has always included founding member Josh Homme , with the current line-up including longtime members Troy Van Leeuwen and Joey Castillo , alongside Michael Shuman and...

, Of Montreal

Of Montreal

Of Montreal is an American rock band from Athens, Georgia. It was founded by frontman Kevin Barnes in 1996, named after a failed romance with a woman "of Montreal." The band is one of the bands of the Elephant 6 collective...

, and The Bravery

The Bravery

The Bravery is an American rock band from New York City that consists of Sam Endicott , Michael Zakarin , John Conway , Mike Hindert , and Anthony Burulcich...

.

Television soap operas have rarely shown any risqué nudity, the exception being the Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....

soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

s As the World Turns

As the World Turns

As the World Turns is an American television soap opera that aired on CBS from April 2, 1956 to September 17, 2010. Irna Phillips created As the World Turns as a sister show to her other soap opera Guiding Light...

and Guiding Light

Guiding Light

Guiding Light is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running drama in television and radio history, running from 1937 until 2009...

which in 2005 went as far as featuring rear male nudity during lovemaking scenes. After the Janet Jackson

Janet Jackson

Janet Damita Jo Jackson is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture for over 25 years...

Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy

Super Bowl XXXVIII, which was broadcast live on February 1, 2004 from Houston, Texas on the CBS television network in the United States, was noted for a controversial halftime show in which Janet Jackson's breast, adorned with a nipple shield, was exposed by Justin Timberlake for about half a...

in February 2004, U.S. Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

commissioner Michael J. Copps stated that it was time for a crackdown on daytime television and indicated that he was reviewing whether soap operas were violating the agency's indecency prohibitions. Following this news, Guiding Light edited out nudity from an episode that had already been taped. A week later, the show's executive producer John Conboy

John Conboy

-Career:Conboy is best known for bringing glamorous production values to a show soon after he is hired, such as adding elaborate sets, dimming the lighting, hiring beautiful young actors, and using unique camera angles...

was fired and replaced by Ellen Wheeler

Ellen Wheeler

Ellen Wheeler is an American actress, director and producer. She has appeared in several soap operas, including Another World and All My Children. In 1986, she won the Daytime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Ingenue in a Drama Series" for her work as twins Marley and Vicky Love Hudson on Another World...

. All nine American network soaps began to impose an unwritten rule of avoiding any sort of risqué adult scenes.

An example of an advertisement featuring male full frontal nudity is one for M7 fragrance

M7 fragrance

M7 is a men's fragrance by Yves Saint Laurent launched in 2002. It was created by the perfumers Alberto Morillas and Jacques Cavalier. It is the first male scent from YSL since Tom Ford took creative control.Top Notes: Bergamot, Mandarin, Rosemary....

. Many magazines refused to place the ad, so there was also a version with a more modest photograph of the same model.

On the Internet, especially on websites featuring images of well known people, the terms nude and nudity have often been used (some would say misused) to signify indecent exposure
Indecent exposure
Indecent exposure is the deliberate exposure in public or in view of the general public by a person of a portion or portions of his or her body, in circumstances where the exposure is contrary to local moral or other standards of appropriate behavior. Indecent exposure laws vary in different...

; for example, a photo of an otherwise fully clothed woman with a nipple exposed. See also: Nude celebrities on the Internet
Nude celebrities on the Internet
Imagery of nude celebrities is in widespread demand and is a lucrative business. Depictions of celebrities have been exploited by vendors of pornography and others in many different forms of media...

.

In the early 1990s, Demi Moore

Demi Moore

Demi Guynes Kutcher , known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress. After minor roles in film and a role in the soap opera General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...

became a pop culture icon in part because of two nude photos that she posed for in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...

: More Demi Moore
More Demi Moore
More Demi Moore or the August 1991 Vanity Fair cover was a controversial handbra nude photograph of the then seven-months pregnant Demi Moore taken by Annie Leibovitz for the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair to accompany a cover story about Moore....

and Demi's Birthday Suit
Demi's Birthday Suit
Demi‘s Birthday Suit, or The Suit, was a trompe-l'œil body painting by Joanne Gair photographed by Annie Leibovitz that was featured on the cover of the Vanity Fair August 1992 issue to commemorate and exploit the success of Leibovitz's More Demi Moore cover photo of Demi Moore one year earlier...

.

Children as subjects

During the Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

, nude young boys were featured in many paintings, especially those with a Christian

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

theme. Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

, for example, made paintings of nude putti, sometimes incorrectly identified as cherub

Cherub

A cherub is a type of spiritual being mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and cited later on in the Christian biblical canons, usually associated with the presence of God...

im. Other famous examples are Amor Vincit Omnia by Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

and various portraits of Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

as a baby. Centuries later, many painters created images of nude children that carried no religious significance. For instance, Henry Scott Tuke

Henry Scott Tuke

Henry Scott Tuke, RA RWS , was a British visual artist; primarily a painter, but also a photographer. His most notable work was in the Impressionist style, and he is probably best known for his paintings of nude boys and young men....

painted nude adolescent boys doing everyday activities; his images were not overtly erotic, nor did they usually show their genitals. Otto Lohmüller

Otto Lohmüller

Otto Lohmüller is a German figurative painter, sculptor and book illustrator. His art typically features images of early adolescent males, both clothed and nude, although in his published work there is little overt eroticism.He works almost exclusively with the human form, usually with minimal...

became controversial for his nude paintings of young males, which often depicted genitals. Balthus

Balthus

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....

and William-Adolphe Bouguereau

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist; in his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.-Life and career :William-Adolphe...

included nude girls in many of their paintings.

Some sculptures depict nude child figures. A particularly famous one is Manneken Pis
Manneken Pis
, is a famous Brussels landmark. It is a small bronze fountain sculpture depicting a naked little boy urinating into the fountain's basin. It was designed by Jerome Duquesnoy and put in place in 1618 or 1619...

in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

showing a nude young boy urinating into the fountain below. Jeune nymphe descendant dans l'eau (1824) by Georges Jacquot

Georges Jacquot

Georges Jacquot was a French sculptor of the 19th century.-Biography:He was a pupil of Baron Gros and sculptor François Joseph Bosio...

shows a seated nude prepubescent girl.

Professional photographers such as Jock Sturges

Jock Sturges

Jock Sturges is an American photographer, best known for his images of nude adolescents and their families, primarily taken at communes in Northern California and at the Atlantic-coast naturist resort at Montalivet, France. His work has been the subject of controversy...

, Sally Mann

Sally Mann

Sally Mann is an American photographer, best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death.-Early life and education:...

, David Hamilton

David Hamilton (photographer)

David Hamilton is a British photographer and occasional film director most known for his images of young women.-Early life and career:...

, Jacques Bourboulon

Jacques Bourboulon

Jacques Bourboulon is a French photographer, specializing in nude photography. In 1967 he started as a fashion photographer, publishing in Vogue and working for the fashion designers Dior, Féraud, and Carven. In the mid-1970s he switched to nude photography.Bourboulon's pictures were shot with a...

, Garo Aida

Garo Aida

is a Japanese photographer known widely for his erotic work. He has also worked in advertising, contributing his photographs to various Japanese companies' commercial ads, such as those by Fujitsu and Nippon Oil....

, and Bill Henson

Bill Henson

Bill Henson is an Australian contemporary art photographer.-Background:Henson's art has been exhibited in many locations, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Venice Biennale, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in...

have made photographs of nude children and adolescents for publication in books and magazines and for public exhibition in art galleries

Art gallery

An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...

. According to one school of thought, photographs such as these are acceptable and should be (or remain) legal since they represent the unclothed form of the children in an artistic manner, the children were not sexually abused, and the photographers obtained written permission from the parents or guardians. Opponents suggest that such works should be (or remain) banned and represent a form of child pornography

Child pornography

Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

, involving subjects who may have experienced psychological harm during or after their creation. Sturges and Hamilton were both investigated following public condemnation of their work by Christian activists including Randall Terry

Randall Terry

Randall Almira Terry is an American pro-life activist and candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2012. Terry founded the pro-life organization Operation Rescue. The group became particularly prominent beginning in 1987 for blockading the entrances to abortion clinics;...

. Several attempts to prosecute Sturges or bookseller Barnes and Noble have been dropped or thrown out of court and Sturges's work appears in many museums, including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

The provocative photo of a nude prepubescent girl on the original cover of the Virgin Killer
Virgin Killer
Virgin Killer is the fourth studio album by the German heavy metal band Scorpions. It was released in 1976 and was the first album of the band to attract attention outside Europe. The title is described as being a reference to time as the killer of innocence. The original cover featured a nude...

album by the Scorpions

Scorpions (band)

also brought controversy. By contrast, most would consider the naked male baby shown on the cover of the Nevermind
Nevermind
Nevermind is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991. Produced by Butch Vig, Nevermind was the group's first release on DGC Records...

album by Nirvana

Nirvana (band)

Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...

to have no sexual connotation.

There have been incidents in which snapshots taken by parents of their infant or toddler children bathing or otherwise naked were destroyed or turned over to law enforcement as child pornography

Child pornography

Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...

. Such incidents may be examples of false allegation of child sexual abuse

False allegation of child sexual abuse

A false allegation of child sexual abuse is an accusation that a person committed one or more acts of child sexual abuse when in reality there was no perpetration of abuse by the accused person as alleged. Such accusations can be brought by the alleged victim , or by another person on the alleged...

and the overzealous prosecution of such cases has been described in terms of a moral panic

Moral panic

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...

surrounding child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...

and child pornography.