Dimensions
252 x 267 x 13mm
Combining the traditional genres of the nude and portraiture, the naked portrait represents a fascinating and international phenomenon in the art of the past century. The subjects are men and women, old and young, black and white, healthy and disabled. They might be lovers, friends, celebrities or strangers. In this ground-breaking book Martin Hammer, Reader of Art at Edinburgh University, makes sense of such a rich vein of visual material by examining works in many different media by artists as diverse as Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, Marc Quinn, Alfred Stieglitz and Diane Arbus. This innovative study seeks to explain naked portraiture as a symptom of the wider contemporary cultural impulse to reveal what is hidden beneath the surface façade, and addresses how and why the genre of portraiture has been radically extended and reinvented within the art of the last hundred years. The catalogue accompanies the exhibition The Naked Portrait at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Publisher National Galleries of Scotland Size 265 x 245mm
