NYT: The Nude Selfie Is Now High Art
It has become an act of resilience in isolation, a way to seduce without touch.
The nude human form as a subject of art dates back tens of thousands of years to explicit cave carvings and a woolly mammoth tusk-ivory sculpture: Though headless and small enough to wear as a pendant, the “Venus of Hohle Fels” has huge, gravity-defying breasts and some semblance of a vagina. She might be 40,000 years old. But nude self-portraiture, especially of women by women wresting free from the male gaze to play both artist and muse, didn’t become popular until the beginning of the 20th century.
Modified on April 24, 2020