The Free Thinking Festival Essay : Sculpture and Seduction in the 18th Century

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2015

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 18th century was the age of politeness - and of bawdiness. Fine manners and fine art co-existed with earthy attitudes to sex and the body, even in the most elevated circles. Curator and art historian Danielle Thom of the Victoria and Albert Museum explains why classical sculpture, the high point of 18th-century artistic taste, had a surprising influence on rude, lewd and erotic prints; and what this tells us about the surprisingly modern attitude to sexuality in the Georgian period.

The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.

The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Danielle Thom answer questions about her research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music
0:27.0	when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:36.5	Imagine that you're a Georgian lady or gentleman sitting down to breakfast on a fine morning in August 1788.
0:48.3	Picking up your copy of The Times, you read the latest review of the annual art exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.
0:59.2	A naked male figure is a disgrace to public modesty, thunders the review. And if that hasn't put you off your toast, it continues.
1:10.5	Some naked figures stood in the sculpture room
1:13.5	that highly displeased their majesties. There was not so much as a fig leaf. The public afterwards
1:22.1	complained. 200 years later, when I read this review in the archives, I was slightly surprised to learn that a sculpture could cause this kind of outrage. To me, the pure white marble nudes of the 18th century seem like masterpieces of innocence in comparison to what we witness every day.
1:45.0	Western culture is saturated with images of the naked or semi-naked human body
1:51.0	in every imaginable contortion and every imaginable scenario.
1:56.0	It's all over the internet, advertising, films and television.
2:00.0	Frankly, there's very little left that could shock me now.
2:04.6	And yet, it wasn't always this way.
2:07.6	As a society, we've had a long-standing ambivalence towards nudity and art
2:13.6	because of its power to arouse and titillate.
2:16.6	The nude figured in Western sculpture from the 15th century because of its power to arouse and titillate.
2:21.0	The nude figured in Western sculpture from the 15th century and in painting from the early 16th.
2:24.6	But it was not until the 18th century
2:27.1	that painting and sculpture became visible to a wider audience
2:31.3	than that of artists and their wealthy patrons.
	...

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