The Impossible Nude
The undraped human form is ubiquitous in Western art and even appears in the art of India and Japan. Only in China, François Jullien argues, is the nude completely absent. In this enthralling extended essay, he explores the different conceptions of the human body that underlie this provocative disparity.
Contrasting nakedness (which implies a diminished state) with nudity (which represents a complete presence), Jullien explores the traditional European vision of the nude as a fixed point of fusion where form joins truth. He then shows that the absence of the nude in Chinese art evinces an understanding of the human body as changeable and transitory. Viewed in light of each other, these differing concepts allow for a new way of thinking about form, the ideal, and beauty, enabling us to delve deeper into the relationship between art and the ideas that lie at its roots. Beautifully illustrated and gracefully translated into English for the first time, The Impossible Nude will fascinate anyone interested in art history, Chinese art, or aesthetics.
“By examining the impossibility of the nude in the Chinese tradition, François Jullien brings to light the unexamined conditions of possibility of our own philosophical and cultural choices. Stripping the nude of its self-evidence and allowing its strangeness to emerge, Jullien gets us to look at our own tradition from another point of view—a perspective from the outside that makes possible a deeper understanding of ourselves. Combining elegance, imagination, and erudition, The Impossible Nude adds a new dimension to the history of aesthetics and metaphysics.”<Arnold Davidson, University of Chicago>
“Starting from the puzzle constituted by the absence of the nude in Chinese art . . . Jullien succeeds in shedding a fascinating light upon what this contradiction tells us about that which distinguishes two views of men and two understandings of the world. . . . Those who have made an effort to take ‘the Chinese detour’ can no longer contemplate with the same eyes the nudes they admire in museums or in modern photography.”<Les Echos, on the French edition>
PART 1 A History of Being
For an Ontology of the Photographic Nude
PART 2 The Impossible Nude
By the Same Author
Illustration Credits
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