Cooley Gallery: The Language of the Nude

Our visit to the Cooley gallery on Wednesday was very fascinating. I hadn't ever really thought about how different the naked human body looks in works of art from centuries past as opposed to today. Although many of the men depicted in the pieces were supposed to be very muscular I tended to see them as more childlike in body then adult. I tried to think of why these depictions of the human body were so different from the reality of the human body that I know. It crossed my mind that not only were there social reasons (ie. nude models were reserved for high end artists and females could not pose nude) playing into the depiction of the human body but there could also be medical reasons. Our understanding of the human skeletal, and muscular systems is far more advanced today than it was two centuries (or more) ago. This could be one reason why some of the proportions of the pieces seemed a little off, or why many of the "muscular" men looked more like they had a little left over baby fat! I was very drawn to the selection of work from the Netherlands and Holland. To me this work stood out from the rest quite a bit, mostly because it was very full of imagery compared to the other pieces. I was particularly drawn to the round piece which showed Neptune. It held my attention much longer than any of the other pieces and had much more of a story to tell.