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Mary Beard naked (in the literal sense)

2020-09-09T02:51:14.949Z


The historian of the classical world stars in a series about the nude that Movistar + premieresHistorian Mary Beard, a Cambridge classics professor who has managed to become an international media star and, at the same time, remain a respected scholar and a feminist reference, has a habit of not avoiding, rather the opposite, any controversial topic in his essays, in his public statements, in his interventions on social networks or in his documentaries for the BBC. Until now, her works for


Historian Mary Beard, a Cambridge classics professor who has managed to become an international media star and, at the same time, remain a respected scholar and a feminist reference, has a habit of not avoiding, rather the opposite, any controversial topic in his essays, in his public statements, in his interventions on social networks or in his documentaries for the BBC.

Until now, her works for television had focused on ancient Rome, but this time she has decided to deal with a subject that even in the West in the 21st century continues to cause a mixture of fascination, morbid and scandal: the nude.

Mary Beard, the nude in art

opens on Wednesday on Movistar +, although the original BBC title,

The impact of the nude,

better reflects the spirit of a documentary that aims to provoke viewers, argue with them and, above all, force them to reflect.

In an interview at her home in Cambridge at the beginning of March, shortly before the great seclusion of the pandemic, Beard (Much Wenlock, England, 1955) explained with laughter to what extent the subject remains sensitive: “It is a documentary about the.

As in all his works, both his brainy essays -

The Roman Triumph,

SPQR

or

Pompeya -

and his documentaries on the Roman world -

An Empire without Limits, Caligula

or

Julius Caesar

(available both in Movistar + and in Filmin) -, Beard mixes scholarship with humor, entertainment and provocation.

Her knowledge of classical art is enormous - she is the co-author of the volume dedicated to Greece and Rome in the Oxford History of Art - but this documentary goes much further, because it is not only about the representation of the nude in painting or sculpture But about what the nude means and how societies relate to it.

As Beard herself explains, her intention with this documentary, which she writes and presents, is "to pose uncomfortable and essential questions about who we are."

Throughout the two episodes of almost an hour each, she visits museums and art galleries around the world, but also a painting workshop in which a group of women, joined by Beard, have on their menu of a bachelorette party learning how to draw a nude model.

And the questions it puts on the table go far beyond art: what is gender?

How has art treated sexual violence, showing it and hiding it at the same time?

When did the infantile nude begin to hide?

How is it possible that an account on social networks can be censored for reproducing a painting by Gustave Coubert,

The Origin of the World

, which shows a female sex in the foreground despite being exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, one of the the most visited in the world?

As always, it also shows unknown aspects of what we think we are seeing: three paintings by the baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi actually hide a hidden complaint of rape, which she herself suffered at the hands of her teacher at a time when abuse Thus it was considered almost a male right, or we are shown by a Roman sculpture, which houses the Louvre Museum, which on the one hand shows a naked woman, although, on the other, she has a penis.

Some historians believe that it was a joke of a rich patrician to display at his parties, although Beard thinks there is something much deeper behind it: the idea, which already existed in Rome, that it is not only sexual organs that mark gender.

Look at the body

"We decided to do the series about the nude because we think that it is a subject on which everyone has an opinion," he explained in that interview for

Babelia

, carried out in March when the series had just premiered on the BBC.

“We could have dealt with landscapes or portraits, but the nude is something that produces intense discussions.

We wanted to make a series that showed a controversial vision of art, before which you have to take a position.

What is interesting about the nude is that it has been controversial since Antiquity, since the fourth century BC.

And it still is.

We continue to discuss what you can show on Facebook or Instagram.

You can go to a museum and see nudes that if you put on your Instagram account they suspend you.

It is a good topic to think about how we look at our body and how the way we look at it changes.

What bodies we do not see, for example, a topic that we dealt with in the second program.

How far does the nude go?

Older people, for example.

It is a very interesting topic to discuss ”.

And precisely to debate about that, the nude of older people, Mary Beard takes to its last consequences the principle that governs all her documentaries, but also the rest of her intellectual work: empathy.

"I didn't want to be the academic who never puts herself in the shoes of the people she talks about," she explains.

The researcher tries to explain the complicated relationship that all societies have with the naked body and the taboo that the nude represents of bodies that are not considered perfect, especially women, in a world that tends to promote an ideal of beauty.

She does this by showing a sculpture by Rodin but, above all, posing herself naked before a portrait painter.

And she does it with a mixture of humor, closeness and self-confidence that forces us to reflect on the canons of beauty in which we are trapped.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-09-09

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