The art of the nude

The nude human body has been a subject of artistic expression pretty much since artistic expression first happened.

And much of the nude human body in art is a depiction of the female nude body.  This is strongly and primarily due to the male visual fascination with the nude female body.

That is not something I need to apologize for.

This post is about a picture in which there is a nude woman.  I'm posting to make a distinction about artistic nude and the stimulating, ahem, pornographic nude.  In the case of the former, the purpose of the art is to express something about the nudity of the woman.   In many cases, the artist is expressing admiration of the beauty of the nude woman.  That is not always the case, and there is a wide variety of depictions of nude women and what their appearance in art is intended to express.  It could express vulnerability, courage, aloneness, sisterhood, fertility, motherhood, life, beauty, abstraction... I couldn't hope to cover all the possibilities.

In the picture below, from an Instagram account in which the woman has no qualms about her appearance in the nude, the picture captures the curvaceous grace of a nude woman in motion, captured in a natural setting.  The black-and-white tonality of the picture emphasizes that this is a figure study and not a picture that is primarily intended to get men excited (which is the purpose of pornographic nudity).

Don't be surprised when I tell you that the lady is a model and a dancer.