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Read the full, unedited interview below Note: this is an unedited transcript of our recent podcast Mary Beard on the nude in western art, which you can listen to here. It contains some explicit content.
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M ary Beard is standing on a chair, chiselling the fig leaf off a large classical statue in Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. One of the challenges of the subject, Beard admits, was how to place herself as the presenter. Given the brickbats that Beard has suffered over the years, this challenge to the usual formalities of art scholarship is both pointed and brave. Over the years Beard has repeatedly faced down the misogyny of the media — both conventional and social.
But how far does the history of Western art, composed for the most part by and for men, really lend itself to subversive interpretations? As she points out, all we see is the sexual trunk: head, feet and hands, the thinking and doing parts, are missing. The practice of covering up the genitalia of nudes of both sexes became widespread in 16th-century Europe. She joins conservator Eoghan Daltun, who is prising the fig leaf off the genitals of a plaster cast of a Greek male nude. Unfortunately, as she discovers, the penis was destroyed in the process of attaching the fig leaf. All that remains is a chipped pair of testicles: a metaphor, perhaps, for the effects of Christianity upon eros. To make this point, she joins a hen party at a life drawing class, where the model is a naked man. There are a few excited murmurs when the model, Julian, steps onto the platform and exposes himself to the female participants — and on national television. So far, so decorous. Hylas and the Nymphs , John William Waterhouse.