Drawn to Life: Celebrating the Tradition of the Academic Nude

The Florence Academy of Art at Mana Contemporary presents an exhibition of valuable 19th century original works centered on the theme of the academic nude, the basis of traditional academic art training and a key element in Western art. Classical art training required budding artists to work from live models, yet elide and erase imperfections according to a strict set of beauty ideals, transforming real-life humans into timeless, idealized figures. The 19th century saw both the popularization of the academic nude and the appearance of its challenger: the contemporary, modern nude, whose naturalistic features departed from the tradition.  

This exhibition features two fine examples of female and male academic nude studies by Abbott H. Thayer, the American artist, naturalist, and teacher, as well as works by Richard Tweedy, Augustus Vincent Tack, Louis Fancher, Victor Hecht, and Dennis Miller Bunker.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form surveys the ever-changing fashions in what has constituted the ideal nude as a basis of humanist form from the art of the Greeks to that of Renoir and Moore.

The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form