Considerations on the Human Body in European Art from Ancient Times to Present Day

The present considerations on the human body tried to place the exploration of the topic in its radically cultural dimension, hence the references to the body being already addressed to the anthropomorphic, descriptive, symbolic sign completely emerged in artistic exercise. We outlined artistic findings from old times to contemporaneity wherever the motive of the human body was central in this selection; furthermore, the nude has made and still makes the subject of convergent discourses on its representation, intensity or weakening of its capacity for signifying. Land of inexhaustible negotiation between nature and culture, available to primitivism, always found again as more sophisticated, transformed by the demands imposed throughout history, ideals and illusions, the body imposes itself on cultural conscience as an irreducible challenge. This paper is consecrated to the nude and aims at overviewing a large series of investigations from European art on the topic. I believe that from more ancient times to contemporaneity, the human body proved to be an excellent landmark in the approach of any artist; moreover, this seduction will continue to exert itself on the upcoming artists, irrespective of the future’s artistic tendencies. The fact that, in time, the human figure has been an extremely important motive for the artistic laboratory determined me to choose this topic; in addition, throughout the article, I have attempted to prove the interest in the nude, recalling the most important tendencies and manifestation from old times to contemporaneity. In this approach, we started from the finding, which has actually marked many years of my creation, that the human body may show itself in a sacred and profane hypostasis; as a result, this study was structured to account for the two dimensions. Along the documentation and drafting, I realized that, in fact, the human body can only be sacred even in its nude hypostasis. The purpose of the present paper is far from exhausting the problematic of the human body; its aim is to draw attention to the importance of the topic. The concerns on this topic have taken various forms throughout art history. We brought into play the significance of the human body in Old Greeks quoting Thucydides who argued that the difference between Greeks and barbarians was marked in a civilising way since nudity had become the rule in the Olympic Games; I wrote on Christian art during the first centuries AD, then about the art of the Middl