Top Ten Naked Moments in Art

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Adornment by Spencer Tunick, 2010
Adornment by Spencer Tunick, 2010

On National Nude Day on July 14, AnOther consider ten iconic naked moments in contemporary art

“Draw me like one of your French girls,” was the immortal line by Kate Winslet to Leonardo Dicaprio in Titanic (1997). French girls, British girls, American girls, art has always been steeped in nudity, since the dawn of The Birth of Venus in 1486 by Botticelli or Michelangelo’s 1504 nude sculpture of David. To celebrate National Nude Day on July 14, AnOther consider our top ten iconic naked moments in contemporary art.

Adornment by Spencer Tunick, 2010
Spencer Tunick is renowned for large-scale nude photographs. He has staged 75 around the world, inviting volunteers to pose naked across locations including glaciers, Mexico city and The Sydney Opera House. Adornment was photographed in Hertfordshire in 2010, described as a naked pavement.

Fulcrum by Jenny Saville, 1999
Jenny Saville has been painting Freud-like, voluminous nudes for the best part of twenty-five years. High-calibre brush strokes portray distorted, vast and often grotesque women. Her emotive work first caught the eye of Charles Saatchi, who bought her entire senior show in 1994, and her first retrospective came in 2012.

Verity by Damien Hirst, 2003 – 2012
Damien Hirst caused a stir in 2012 when erected a 67ft sculpture of a naked pregnant woman wielding a sword with an exposed fetus in Devon. Hirst has touched on nudity at various points over the years — he is also famously noted to have served naked at the bar of the Colony Room Club in the late 90s, referred to as his "rock and roll years."

Sphinx by Marc Quinn, 2006
In 2006, controversial British sculptor Marc Quinn debuted Sphinx, a nude sculpture of Kate Moss in a rather compromising yoga position. Although technically in a leotard, it left very little to the imagination. Marc Quinn is one of the Young British Artists that emerged in the early nineties alongside Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin and first rose to prominence in 1991 with Self, a cast of his own head made from frozen blood.

Made in Heaven by Jeff Koons, 1990
In 1990, Jeff Koons released Made in Heaven, a not-for-the-prudish series of candid paintings with wife, porn star and politician Ilona Staller. The provocative and controversial sculptures, paintings and photographs showed the couple in a series of elicit positions. The images were designed to blur and question the lines between art and pornography, and are representative of Koon's kitsch approach to design. Koons' retrospective opened this month at the Whitney Museum, New York.

Monika and Pawel by Pawel Althamer, 2002
Monika and Pawel is a 2002 sculpture by Polish artist Pawel Althamer. Based on himself and his first wife, the figures are absorbed in electronic gadgets — a mobile phone and a video camera — suggestive of society’s obsession with technology. The sculpture was first shown at the After Nature exhibition at the New Museum, New York. Pawel is noted for his sculptures which explore society’s cultural relationships and the communicative power of art.

Table by Allen Jones, 1969
Provocative British pop artist Allen caused a stir in 1969 with his notoriously erotic sculptural furniture featuring naked woman. Table presents a fibreglass woman kneeling on all fours, with her flat back supporting a glass tabletop. Hatstand, Table and Chair cost £1,500 each to make and are now estimated to be worth 2.6million. In 2013 he photographed a pregnant Lara Stone for the Art Biennale in Venice, titled The Way of the Flesh.

Derrick Cross & Friends by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982
American photographer Mapplethorpe immortalised the epochal rock ‘n’ roll art period in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. His erotically-charged photographs reference nudity, bondage, prostitution and sadomasochism, documenting subcultures of the time.  Derrick Cross & Friends is a series of work focusing on various muscles and angles of a naked torso.

Untitled by Tracey Emin, 2002
Never one to shy away from controversy, Tracey Emin’s unique and intimate approach to art is demonstrated in Untitled, a simple yet candidly powerful nude self-portrait. Her work often focuses on heartbreak, trauma and sexual misadventures experienced throughout her unruly upbringing. My Bed, her infamous 1998 installation of her own dishevelled bed following a nervous breakdown, sold for £2.54m at Christie's auction earlier this week.

Big Man by Ron Mueck, 2000
Australian hyper-real artist Ron Mueck’s enigmatic sculptures capture the naked form in all its grotesque beauty. The former puppeteer depicts various stages of human life, from birth until passing, in various astounding scales, with Big Man coming in at 7 foot tall. Mueck had previously suggested that his hairless model attempt alternative positions, and his belligerent, defeated corner slump was in protest to being unable to complete these.

Text by Mhairi Graham