When I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my group for the research paper, we stumbled upon this painting in the Modern and Contemporary Art section. This painting is called Reclining Nude and was made by an Italian artist named, Amedeo Modigliani. Although his work was inspired ‘Italian Renaissance representations of Venus and other idealized female figures,’ as stated from the art label, it reminded me of Olympia by Edouard Manet. Both paintings are swayed against classical traditions of how female nudes were represented. For instance, female nude paintings were influenced by Greek mythological figures or someone who had power affiliated with them. They also were painted with details to make a woman’s body perfect or ideal. Modigliani’s painting focuses more on her eroticism by mainly focusing on her upper body and having her eyes closed, as if she were moaning. Modigliani also ignored previous standards by painting her with underarm hair, which was not typically seen in paintings. Manet also disregards previous beauty standards of female nudes by creating a painting that is considered flat and portrays a prostitute that is waiting for her next customer. She is staring directly at the viewer and lacks the typical soft gaze that is present in female nudes.
These paintings allowed me to relate it to the concept of “the Others” that we learned about in Classics. We discussed that Non-Greeks were considered barbaric and uncivilized because they were different from the Greeks, who considered themselves perfect. There was a negative connotation towards them just because they weren’t seen as the same as they were. But although these paintings weren’t said to be bad, they still went against what was seen as ‘normal’ during a certain time period. Not to express that it’s wrong to be different from societal standards, but these paintings were “the Other” from Academic or traditional art as the “barbarians” were to the Greeks.
-Estrella Roberts, Team Vulcan
The Past in Present Tense 