The Nude in Art

The Library of Congress subject headings for your topic are s=nude in art as well as related headings, anatomy, artistic; male (or female) nude in art; photography of the nude, etc. Look at the other related headings when you type s=nude in art. If you search using this subject heading, you'll find a list of titles, some on specific artists, some more general, others in foreign languages. Don't overlook foreign language material as it may have useful information, e.g. illustrations and bibliographies. Other related search headings might be s=human figure in art or s=body art (although this is art on the surface of the body, like tattooing, not depiction of the body per se). Keyword searching (such as sculpture and nude) may turn up more titles. Be sure to take note of key authors (like Marcia Pointon or Kenneth Clark) for your topic when you find them, and look for other books, articles or exhibition catalogs by them.

The Dictionary of Art (multivolume, green volumes on Index table)) has a very useful entry on the Nude in volume 23. Be sure to read it as it provides and excellent background for your topic, and includes a bibliography of basic works. See also the entries for Erotic Art, Life Drawing and Photography

To locate periodical (magazine/journal) articles on your topic, you may search Art Full Text. This index covers articles published 1984 to date, although only articles from 1997 and later are full text. Art Index Retrospective, which covers 1929-1984, is also available. Try an advanced search using nude or nude in art in one search box, and another term, such as Renaissance or African in another, as searching using only the term nude will retrieve too many citations. Try indexes for other disciplines (such as history and literature) as well, like Ebscohost and LexisNexis Academic provide full text.

Images/illustrations of art works can be found using the Grove Dictionary of Art Online, the big museum collections online (see below) or painting indexes such as World Painting Index (blue books on the Ready Reference Shelves near the computer area). Look in the title volume/list under nude (in the WPI there are many entries under 'nude') then go to the artist specified in the artist volume, then to the number listed by the painting title to find a book in this library (the call numbers are penciled in.) There are many of these indexes to reproductions of works of art (sculpture and prints as well as paintings) on the top shelf of the Ready Reference Shelves. You can also browse general histories of art (surveys) and look for images of the nude, which is a key element in art throughout the period covered in your course, including many artists (a very brief list ranges from Michelangelo and Titian in the Renaissance, to Manet, Valadon and Degas in the 19^th c., and to Balthus, Lucian Freud, Alice Neel, Philip Pearlstein and Sally Mann and Robert Mapplethorpe in the 20^th.)

Images

Images are also readily accessible via the growing number of museum or image web sites, many of which you can search by topic. Try these important ones, which are just a few of the best museum image sites on the web:

Ad*Access at Duke University. This offers advertising clips from a variety of sources that may prove to be useful for you. The search engine is accurate and it offers a nice browsing feature.

ARTstor provides curated collections of art images and associated data for noncommercial and scholarly, non-profit educational use.

CAMIO offers rights-cleared, high-quality art images for class projects, art history and studio art programs, course Web sites, lectures, presentations, and research resources.

National Gallery of Art. You can do a keyword search using the term 'nude' and find at least 600 works of art.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. "The largest searchable art imagebase in the world" with more than 500 works of art retrieved using the keyword search 'nude' you'll find more than 1000 works; you may specify artist or century as well.

Try image search engines such as Google, ImageFinder (especially useful for photographs) or use a search engine of your choice and add the term images. The online survey, The Nude in Art, is an excellent resource that has around 150 images.

Finally, if you need help writing about art, or need help with art terminology look at guides like Sylvan Barnet's Short Guide to Writing About Art or Marcia Pointon's History of Art: a Student's Handbook. Dictionaries of art such as Artspeak and Artspoke, or the Oxford Companion to Art may be found in the reference section.