NUDE, YET NOT NAKED

Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, introduction by Charles Saumarez Smith (London: The Folio Society, 2010) ("The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word nude, on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects unto the mind is not of  a huddled and defenceless body, but of a balanced, prosperous and confident body: the body re-formed. In fact, the word was forced into our vocabulary by critics of the early eighteenth century to persuade the artless islanders that, in the countries where painting and sculpture were practised and valued as they should be, the naked body was the central subject of art." Id. at 3.).