ever wonder why so many Greek statues are naked is it about beauty desire or something else entirely bodies are a subject of Fascination in art whether decked out in status symbols or wearing nothing at all and there's a good reason why all Through the Ages many of our most famous artworks have featured the human form despite our many differences we all have a body but we don't all experience it the same way and there are competing ideas about what makes a Body Beautiful on top of that our Notions of beauty and difference have changed and continue to change over time and all of that makes for some fascinating art hi I'm Sarah Urus screen and this is Crash Course art [Music] history when you think about bodies and art one of the first things that comes to mind might be the portrait from the Mona Lisa to that selfie from your recent trip portraits are a record of a body at a particular moment in time but portraits can show us a lot more about a person than just what they looked like they can tell us about a person's class status values character and social influence these details aren't always obvious though like with any artistic representation it helps to know what symbols to look out for for example a subject's clothes can tell us a lot like these ancestor portraits created during China's Ching Dynasty in the 18th century were commissioned by wealthy families to Showcase their lineage and Status hung on the walls of homes the portraits honored departed loved ones allowing them to be remembered by family friends and guests shaen ying and Lady guan's style of dress shows the viewer where they sit on the social ladder shaen Ying was a lieutenant general in the military which the artist communicates with the peacock feather and fur coat these are symbols that people of the Ching Dynasty who valued military service wealth and power would have respected in lady guan's portrait she Dons a fulllength courtly dress which was only worn by high-ranking officials and Nobles and note the three earrings they identify Guan as a Manchu woman part of the lineage that established the Ching Dynasty though they didn't have filters or photoshop like we do now portraits have always contained some embellishments on the truth for example the artist never actually saw lady Guan in person it wasn't considered proper for women of the time to keep company with unfamiliar men the artist relied on other people's verbal descriptions of her face so the portrait is an idealized version of her based more on imagination than observation but portraits are never really real or truthful anyway that's because they free freeze a body's appearance at a moment in time when in reality we're always changing both because we age and also because we're always being seen from different perspectives by others and by ourselves American Artist Cindy Sherman has captured the fluidity of identity in her work over the last several decades including in her 1970s series Untitled film Stills in it she dressed and posed herself in a variety of portraits that reference stereotypical female characters in films in one she's a housewife standing over the kitchen sink in another she's Tangled in the sheets gazing wistfully off camera next she's a student reaching for a library book or a fashionable woman walking down a city street each image could be read in numerous ways depending on your background generation or just which movies you've seen in this way Sherman turns her body into a blank canvas reflecting societ I's many and often contradictory expectations of women her work reminds us that how we see ourselves and how Society sees us is always changing of course not all bodies in art are clothed some of the most famous ones are decidedly not this goes way back to classical Greek and Roman sculpture which celebrated the nude figure as the Pinnacle of beauty and because art students during the Renaissance and Beyond studied these Classics European art from the 15th to the 20th century has no shortage of nude bodies who can be found reclining on beds clouds and even on Sat classical male nudes exhibited perfect athletic forms embodying strength Beauty and determination the ideal masculine figure of course most ancient Greeks didn't actually look like this in general this look was about aspiration and admiration not reality and men in these cultures weren't just valued for their physical prowess their chiseled bods were also considered to be a sign of moral superiority male nudes were typically shown confidently with weapons and you know tough guy stuff female Nudes on the other hand were usually representations of sensuality and fertility at the same time they had to demonstrate modesty here you can see how Aphrodite covers herself and averts her gaze so while the male nude could be loud and proud the feale melne generally exhibited some shame an age-old Trope that we're totally over now right in any case the way we look at and interpret a subject in art especially a human subject changes based on the power dynamics between the viewer and the thing being viewed in art history we refer to this dynamic as the gays so since pretty much all artists in classical Greek and Roman cultures were men they were often imagined as the default audience for art men were the ones looking or gazing at Art and women were the objects to be gazed at you can see this perspective in how nudes are typically posed female nudes tend to lie helpless and passive inviting the viewer to look at and maybe lust after them whereas male nudes are given a place of equal or often higher footing relative to the viewer we gaze up at their greatness and watch them mid action while female nudes are more static and generally below the level of male figures sadly this is not a relic of the past which is why you might hear the phrase the male Gaye being thrown about in cultural conversation and it's also why Captain America poses like this and black widow poses like this of course in art history as in life males don't always desire females and females don't always want to be desired by males there's an entire spectrum of gender and sexuality that is occasionally if infrequently Ed in art like we know that there were lots of Greek and Roman sculptures featuring The intersect figure of hermaphroditus child of the Gods Aphrodite and Hermes but these sculptures have frequently been left out of the conversation because they don't conform to traditional ideas about gender and heterosexual desire thankfully artists have been challenging these Dynamics for decades for example American Artist cassils is transgender and uses their body to critique narrow ideas of gender and the complicated dynamics of the Gaze in their 2012 performance piece becoming an image a nearly nude cassils kicks punches and attacks a 2,000lb block of clay performed in almost total darkness the only time the audience or cassils can see is when a photographer lights the room with their cameras Flash the artist's body is as much a part of the performance as the clay and the fight between the two can be seen as rep representing the ongoing struggle of trans communities to Simply exist the audience is given no choice but to gaze upon cil's body but their view is Thoroughly incomplete captured only during these fractured moments of intense violence in this powerful work cils reclaims power over their body by both revealing it and taking it away we the audience are left with an unforgettable reminder of the frequent violence that occurs against trans people people around the world and we're also left with many questions about our own participation in this continuing brutality whether it's in the artist words as victims or instigators as bystanders as Witnesses and as consumers of these stories but social critique isn't unique to 21st century art like check out eduward man's Olympia from 1863 Manet paints a female nude who may be reclining but is not merely a passive victim victim of our gaze Olympia stares directly at us and rests her hand casually over her lap controlling what we can and can't see the portrait shocked the French public when it debuted mayon's painting references a famous nude in art history tian's Venus of urbino but it also strayed away from tradition tian's reclining nude is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty she's in a wealthy Italian home gazing flirtatiously up at us as her servants in the background prepare her clothing for the day but man's model victorine [ __ ] portrays a sex worker and perhaps was a sex worker in real life though the historical record is unclear in any case she's a workingclass woman who shown displaying ownership over her body by to some degree preventing us from looking instead of painting a delicate modest Aristocrat Manet presents us with an ordinary woman who recognizes the power of her body and gazes right back but victorine isn't the only woman in this painting a black woman named lur is also shown though she didn't get fully credited as a model until 1999 mayon's painting was completed only about 15 years after the abolition of slavery in France in 1848 and it was still fairly commonplace for European Aristocrats to include black people in their portraits in positions of servitude they were often portrayed as submissive visibly impoverished or hypersexualized like peacock feathers and fur coats were a symbol of power in Ching Dynasty China in European paintings servants or enslaved people were often included to reflect the status of the wealthier white folks that were featured as with lore these black individuals though often real people were rarely if ever named but some Scholars have argued mané was pushing that envelope he shows lore neither sexualized nor impoverished as a work working class woman alongside another workingclass woman and when we think about the reality of the painting's creation real life victorin and lore were quite literally doing the same thing being paid to model still lur is placed in a traditional Act of service she's an attendant to the more empowered seeming victorine so when we look at this portrait through the lens of both gender and race it begs the question of not only who gets power over their body but who gets to and who has to serve the Japanese artist yasumasa morimura pushes these questions even closer to the surface in his 1988 Recreation of this work in it he dresses in Drag and takes victorine's place on the bed this urges viewers to consider how changing both the gender and the ethnicity of the subject changes its meaning entirely bodies in art are so much more than sculpted abs and fleshy figures they serve a key role in reflecting and critiquing the complicated relationships we have with other people society and ourselves analyzing these artworks can help us better understand and perhaps disrupt our biases toward or against certain bodies both of the past and today looking at art together might even help make this Universal experience of having a body one that's more Equitable for everybody next time we'll look at how the global exchange of goods and ideas has influenced art throughout history I'll see you there thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course art history which was filmed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in newfields and was made with the help of all these resourceful people if you want to help keep crash course free for everyone forever you can join our community on patreon [Music]