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Chapter Section: Looking at the Body since 1750:

Nude in Art: Classicism to Modernity 1750s onward

Introduction

The nude has traditionally been upheld as a form of art rather than the subject of art. (Clark p1) The way the nude has been theorized in the late 20^th and 21^st centuries has modified the way we view the undressed body. Traditionally the word ‘nude’ was used rather than ‘naked’ when looking at visual art  and nude signified it was a cultural object, representing ‘civilization’ and ‘accomplishment’. The nude was usually displayed in the context of spaces dedicated to reflecting elite culture, such as art galleries and museums or sculpture gardens and parks. In the west, at the end of the 19^th century the ideas on this linguistic differentiation of the undressed body, centered on the argument that the ‘nude’ was an abstraction, ideally spiritual and symptomatic of high art aspirations; whereas the ‘naked’ body was sexual charged, erotic and embodied aspects of broader visual culture. It has been argues that nude and naked signified class distinctions (Nead 1992).  Modern art began to question and challenge the way we view the body and Edouard Manet’s painting of Olympia in1863 was seen as the beginning of the end of the nude. Since then the undressed body was used to address a broad range of issues from personal to political issues and questions. In the late 1960s and 1970s feminist, gay and race politics theories contributed to our understanding of imagery of the body. Whichever way we look at the undressed body, traditionally or contemporaneously, as a cultural commodity the nude is highly formalized, conventionalized and dense with meaning and significance.

The Nude Elsewhere

The nude as a form of art, as defined above, did not exist in north East Asia until cultural exchanges in 19^th century (Hay 1995). Japanese art portrayed naked and semi-naked figures in work and social situations as incidental to activity and through its vibrant culture of erotic art, such as the shunga (The Floating World) throughout the 18^thand 19^th century. But these figures were not seen as the object, they are part of the scenery or narrative. Hay argues the nude did not exist in Chinese art because ‘the culture itself did not so represent its own body’. He also argues that there is less distinction between male and female bodies in Chinese figure drawing, yet at the same time recognizing the cosmological fact of sexual polarity in Chinese culture (Hay pp 43-52). Similarly the undressed figures in African tribal art was viewed by the west as ‘primitive’ and perceived as lacking the sophistication of the western culture.

The Male Nude

Although female nudes predominated in classically based western art, the male nude is a distinct and separate criteria. Kenneth Clark writing in 1956, wrote of the nude as ‘harmony, clarity and tranquil authority … calm, pitiless and supremely confident’. We may guess that he isn’t writing about the female nude. Masculinity, like femininity, is socially constructed and not fixed and can be quite subtle. The traditional male nude tends to be associated with war: chivalrous patriotic and heroic. As well in visual art, male sexuality and desire were controlled and kept subservient to the great moral truth (Mahon p49). If the penis was not coyly hidden by scabbards, shields or drapery it was shown as a ‘modest size’ and limp. Robert Nye argues that class enters into “masculine management” influencing the way in which male bodies were portrayed. He contends that it was very complex for the socially mobile French bourgeoisie of the18th century who were aspiring to enter into the world of the declining Ancien Regime. Estates were divided in the lower classes between all sons. In the nobility, the eldest son (or appointed successor) inherited all the lands to maintain a strong and powerful unit, while the lower classes were weakened by subdivisions. The bourgeoisie had to prove, over three generations, that they could display the same worthiness and honor of the aristocracy through constant vigilance and refined standards, practicing contraception through coitus interupptus, reducing marital fertility and protecting lineage through small families (Nye pp 31-46). The limp penis in art indicated such dignity and control.

Whereas the classically portrayed female nude is frontal and addresses the viewer, with the spectator presumed to be a male with his clothes still on. If there is a nude male lover in imagery, the female still turns towards or at least acknowledges the viewer of the image.

To be naked is to be oneself

To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself (Berger 54)

The Rise of the Nude

Interest in the nude was awakened in the mid 18^th century with the rediscovery of Greek-based Roman art found at Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748). This was followed by a number of publications on antiquities of Greek and Roman Art. The first was Antiquities of Athens (1762) by British architects and travelers, James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and Nicholas Revett. More momentous in the dissemination of information was The History of the Art of the Ancients (1764) by Winckelmann. This publication was pivotal in laying the foundations of the theory of Neo-classical art of the 19^th century. He spoke of ‘noble simplicity’ and ‘calm grandeur’. Southern Europeans, particularly, the Italians, have had long and continuous interest in portraying the undressed body in art via interests in, and proximity to antique art. In Northern Europe there was very little imagery of the naked body produced. The British artists did not fully engage with the art form until well into the 19^th century.

Collecting marble statuary and fragments by wealthy aristocrats had begun in the seventeenth century but a further catalyst was the fashionable the Grand Tour of the 18^th century. Artists and gentlemen improving their education took the Grand Tour to view art and the diggings first hand. Marble antiquities made their way back to France, Spain, Prussia and Britain to be appreciated and these were used by some artists, such as Ingres, who never ventured far from home yet successfully specialized in the exotic locations of the ‘Orient’.

Subsequently multiple plaster casts were used for figure drawing and painting in art schools and artists’ studios when drawing directly from the human body was either prohibited or not possible. Artists were ‘academically’ trained, rigorously drawing, painting imagery and producing sculpture derived from classic statuary. The systematic training of the rigid academic style resulted in these Neo-classic artists not striving for the personal mark of gesture or spontaneous vision, but complying with contemporary theoretical treatises, such as those written by Joshua Reynolds. They sought perfection, artifice and refinement, holding to a belief that art was transcendent to the ideal (Holt p116).

Nugent notes that the drawings of indigenous Australians by Sydney Parkinson, an artist who accompanied Cook and Banks on the Endeavour, were worked into prints by Thomas Chambers in the mode of classical warriors. These figures were quite unlike what Parkinson may have recorded or the body type of Australian aborigines. [Nugent p30] Chambers had been had been trained at the Royal Academy and may have found it difficult to perceive and reproduce images of the body outside that framework.

‘Beauty’ is the key element which allowed the body to be mapped as an ideal nude in western European art, and in the eighteenth century, particularly in France, the classical nude was a vehicle to mobilize ideas of civic virtue and high moral purpose. This contrasts greatly with ‘low’ forms of body imagery in carnivalesque public entertainment such as fairground dummies and automata or dolls and waxwork exhibitions. Perfecting the ideal human body through classicism persisted for many artists till the 20^th century.

Artists observed the boundaries of propriety and conformed to moral codes. This framework helped to put distance between the live naked female body and the awareness of the (male) viewer’s voyeurism. The nude was morally accepted in the context of the narrative, the allegorical, the mythological, the historical and the exotic settings used by the orientalists. These include the fashionable chinoiserie, japonisme, and harem scenes. Despite the association of social purity of the Victorian era, the nude abounded in high culture particularly when illustrated within the context of narratives of shame, redemption or transcendence (Smith 1996).

The ‘Doctrine of Distance’

This academic framework also provided a language of art criticism of the nude. The comments focused on technical aspects of draughtsmanship, handling of colour, treatment of colour, the pose itself, effect of light, excellent drawing and modeling, foreshortening of the limbs and quality of the flesh tones. Formal analysis is supposedly a bridge between what we see and what we say (Summers p127). Sexuality was edited out of the language used.

Peter Gay write on this ‘doctrine of distance’: the more generalized and idealized the presentation of the human body in art, the more draped in elevated associations, the less likely it [was] to shock its viewers. In practice this meant abstracting the nude from contemporary and intimate experience by lending it the alien glamour that titles or poses drawn from history, mythology, religion, or the exotic could provide.’ (sited by Pennings p147 Gay, Peter, the Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, vol. 1, Oxford University Press, New York 1984)

While the lure of perfection in classic nude paintings and sculpture was accepted into the cultural institutions and wealthy domestic households, a move from idealism to realism, with relaxed interior settings that abandoned the allegorical or narrative schemata emerged. It was Edouard Manet who first challenged the academics. His painting,Olympia, 1863, caused an enormous stir by stepping outside the aesthetic norms, when it was exhibited in Paris.Olympia, with signifiers of a black cat, a bouquet of flowers and a black woman, the depiction of a ‘grubby’ naked prostitute was just too much for the audience at the salon de refusés that year. It is difficult to see how this could be today.

In art, the nude has an inextricable dialectic with clothing. A clue to the degree to which Manet was shocking the Paris audience by his crossing of boundaries was through a previous painting, Music in the Tuilleries 1862 where he was ridiculed by the critics for dressing figures in ‘horrible modern French clothing’ (King  p89). In academic art, dress was used to pay homage to the classics. Drapery was used to recall Greek and Roman statues by the Neo-classicists and was also employed to both reveal and conceal the body to advantage within the framework, not to reflect the current state of dress.

Some argue that nudity is a form of clothing (Berger p54, Hollander 447). Hollander states: Clothes have the same relation to the body that language has to truth or pure thought. That is, they are somehow a necessary form that bodily truth must take I order to be told and understood by all. (Hollander p447)

Hay points out, interestingly, that women in ancient Greece did not go about naked, yet they are the gender that dominates the nude genre (p44). In Ancient Greece, men were involved with physical activities, particularly socioscopic events such as sport and particularly in the gymnasium where philosophers and artists viewed and considered these bodies ‘at work’ (Irwin pp28-29). Winkelmann’s study of classical sculpture in the 18^th century wrote of the importance of improving the body through physical exercises in the gymnasiums. The Prussian military introduced the gymnasium to improve and to take the peasant out of the enlisted men (Peoples 2008 p135). The gymnasium has been significant in developing bodies with nationalistic sentiment in the Prussian/German armies, with a crescendo in the Nazi regime.

The Naked Body

From idealism to realism – the naked body

In many ways Manet was declaring through Olympia and his naked figures that ‘the king has no clothes’. He was calling the nude’s bluff: the nude is erotic and no props, context or formal analysis can really hide that the naked body is erotic. Emergent technologies began to affect the way that bodies were viewed in the West. Ocular devices, grids and perspective theories have mediated the way artists viewed and represented the body for centuries. [Durer’s Man Drawing a Reclining Figure] However technologies stemming from the daguerreotype developed in 1839 by Louis Jacques Daguerre have continued to have an enormous impact on the way we not only view the dressed and undressed body, but the world. From daguerreotype to photography, and from the moving image through to current digitized technologies, all are fundamental to our lives and constantly link the sexual to the visual. Printmaking has a long association with erotica and its transgressive alliance, pornography. Once technological advances in printmaking combined with those in photographic imagery, erotic desire could be fulfilled with the erotic excesses of pornography to a much wider audience and was far more difficult to control.

Artists since Manet have increasingly employed the erotic for its subversive potential and significance. While contemporary artists do draw on pornography and their work is considered obscene and ‘an outrage to morality’, it is not only for sexual arousal alone, but often use for a political stance, altering both imagery and the body itself through technologies. Voluntarily altering the form of the body has a history as long as tattooing, altering the surface of the body. Artists have been using practices such as piercing, scarification, dieting, corseting, drug taking and implants to highlight what theorists from Marcel Mauss, Pierre Bourdieu to Judith Butler observed, that nature turns out to be culture all along. Contemporary artists push their bodies to the limit and, by trial and error, and often displaying and engaging the limit of their bodies to an audience.

The shift from idealism to realism for the body occurred in the 18^th century not only in visual art but also through an increased appreciation of scientific realities the body, sexuality and ideas on gender. There was an analytical preoccupation with population, birth and death rates, marriage, sexual disease and contraception. Convicts from Britain who were sent to Australia at the end of the 18^th and early in the 19^th centuries were measured and recorded systematically: eye colour, distinguishing birth marks, subsequent markings, the state of health, height, posture and facial descriptions were recorded (Nicholas 1988). Photographic technologies later assisted this process and contributed to the study of physiognomy and later psychology and psychiatry. There also emerged an interest, from philosophers, evolutionists, sociologists, ethnologists and even economists, in why and how we dress the body. A short distance along the continuum from the ‘naturalness’ of nudity arriving at the ‘unnatural’ state of nakedness there is the implicit binary between nakedness, however, the continuum moves onto the dressed body. Revealing and concealing the body is a dynamic relationship between the body and dress.

Photography

The technology of photography also facilitated the demise of the classic nude, as photography could reproduce such realistic renderings and what was to be believed to be objective documentation beyond what artists could produce. It brought art into the industrial age. Fine art influenced photography and vice versa. Photographers, such as Juliet Margaret Cameron and George Davidson borrowed painterly techniques, as well as allegory, to distinguish their work from social documentation. It has been speculated that Manet used photographs of the model in Olympia with the light rendered giving a flatness to the body, much the way interior photographs of people did at the time (Ross King).

Although nude photographs began in the academic fine art studios, the audience broadened beyond the audience of the art galleries, and with a voyeuristic public, a new popular culture of pornography emerged in Europe. The portrayed figures were based on the canonical high art tradition, along with the props of exotica and theatrical settings. Photography allowed for new configurations and articulations of the body. It brought about new images of masculinity, femininity and of children. These were often implicated in erotic art, as well as pornography.

In the 1970s, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe used sexually explicit imagery to push the boundaries of the homoerotic in the visual arts through imagery of taboo and transgression. Although the Mapplethorpe used the body dressed and undressed, often indicated within the context of S/M subculture, he claimed to be paying attention to form, light and shape, balanced compositions and pictorial beauty (Mahon p217), again using the language of the ‘doctrine of distance’ in describing very explicit sexual material. His interest in transgression also extended to exploring form through photographing the bodies of black males. Kobena Mercer, argues in her analysis of The Black Book 1983, that Mapplethorpe perpetuates the patriarchal view of the absolute authority over the image of black men, transferring gender to racial difference. Mapplethorpe did photograph females, again in a state of transgression: female bodybuilders (Mercer 1999).

BODY FORM

The search for the perfect body through the idealized classic form has continued from the Neo-classic period through to the 21^st century. It is not just the private body but also the public body, the body politic. An historical thread can be drawn from the formation of the military gymnasiums Prussia in the 18^th century, mentioned earlier. In 19^th century Napoleon forbade the use of arms by the Prussians, who, as a result, trained the troops by developing physical exercises to maintain strength in the gymnasium. (Murray 1984) This thread of interest in the body, its shaping and formation was intrinsic to the ideas of Francis Galton, (Charles Darwin’s cousin) who in 1883, coined the word ‘eugenics’ (good birth) and ‘racial hygiene’. Such healthy bodies improved the quality of the race (Laura Bossi 2008 p50).

These biological concepts became absorbed into political ideology and were used as a party platform by the rising Nazi Part of the 1920s. The rise of the New Man, Uomo Nuovo and Neue Mensch of the 1930s saw the relationship of the body and the state strengthen. Visual representations of the body, the regenerated man, the ‘pure’ hero, worker, warrior or citizen-soldier were explored by artists, photographers and filmmakers such as Leni Riefenstahl, Max Ehlert, Alexander Rodchenko and Hans Schmitz-Wiedenbrück.

Body Building

The ‘sport’ of body-building is essentially a photographic genre evolving from Weimar ideals in the early 20^thcentury. The static posing mimics that of classic antiquities and it is for viewing only. The only movement that appears to occur is for the actor defining and causing an asynchronous rippling effect as it moves along the oiled and glistening body. Despite the practice of bodybuilding now perceived as a degenerate version of ‘high’ culture it does have a link to performance art, discussed below. In popular culture the bodybuilder takes toning and shaping the body to the extreme, where balancing outlandish body sculpting a body to within the range of ‘normal’. Fat is eliminated through drugs which assist in defining each muscle which then becomes part of the essential vocabulary, a constituent to the culture. This body is not one of strength – that is left to the weight-lifters. It is implied strength. The diet and weight control regime would not support such use of the muscles. The muscles become the dress. What happens when it is a female body such as those photographed by Mapplethorpe? Muscles are equated with masculinity. For many, the concept of females crossing the gender divide, particularly outside this arena, is abhorrent, much like showing underarm hair.

These are 20^th technologies and it is doubtful that these bodies have been made in the late 18^th century. Technologies of food and dietary supplements, exercise equipment and regimes, as well as a greater understanding of the body, highlight that these bodies belong in a vastly different era with vastly different views of the undressed body.

Visual artists in the late 20^th century began investigating ‘techno-body’ intervention (Mahon 2007 279) also have utilized cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, such as French performance artist, Orlan (b1947). Her performances rely on film and digitized technologies. These technologies, and the critical commentary (like that on the classic nude and Mapplethorpe’s work), also help to distance between viewer and documentary object. Nine operations inThe Reincarnation of St Orlan, were performances reminiscent of Renaissance anatomy theatre. One such operation saw her forehead implanted with ‘Dionysian horns’. Orlan claims to questions the body in society (particularly the female body) to the classical nude through her arts practice (Mahon, 2007 p278).

Artist, Stelarc, also explores the relationship between body modification and digital technology. He sees the body as not just as a host for technology but it can also be inhabited by a multiplicity of remote agents by being wired up to the internet with collaborators around the world intervening in his host body (Featherstone 2000).

BODY SURFACE

It is not just voluntarily altering the form of the body for the sake of visual art has undergone enormous changes. Since the late twentieth century, the surface of the body has been the focus of many artists exploring the tensions between desire and taboo, pain and pleasure, art and pornography.

Body Hair

Depending on the time and context, the naked body could switch to pornographic with the presence of body hair. The pornographic body is just as concerned with revealing and concealing the body as was the classic nude. The presence or absence of body hair must be considered as any element of dress. According to Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne Eicher, dress is more than clothing. They define dress as all body modifications and body supplements.[1] This includes a long list of changes which are either permanent or temporary, such as body shape, posture, tattoos, clothing, cosmetics, hair and other aspects of personal appearance. Hair (or lack of hair) on the head, from the ‘crowning glory’ to eyebrows and moustaches, is part of our identity. However pubic hair is rather different. Greek antiquity bequeathed the West the norm of depilated women. In charting the changing fashion of body hair, we can see what Elias notes as the ‘shifting ‘thresholds of embarrassment’ (Elias 1994). Until 1970s pubic hair in pornographic imagery was either touched-up or discreetly concealed and out of sight, although there was the occasional daring presence of pubic hair in the late 1960s. By the 1980s pubic hair was present and obviously trimmed, and therefore to be viewed, but it was in the 1990s with photography of genitals in pornography, pubic hair seems to have disappeared (Barcan p27-29). This has also paralleled changes in laws associated with morality around the world, such as in Japan where in manga comics genitals were previously blanked out of full frontal undressed bodies.

Tattoos

One technology associated with the surface of the skin has dramatically re-emerged and changed its associations is the tattoo. Tattoos have shifted in both class and meaning, from ‘primitive’ to rebellion to mainstream popular culture.  It is claimed that tattoos have existed since the Stone Age and carved figures indicate such markings on the bodies. However, as the skins on which tattoos are inscribed deteriorate rapidly, the only evidence available is mummified bodies dating from 4000 BC from Egypt. There are many countries that have a continuous history of tattooing the body such as Africa, China, Japan, Indonesia, Peru, New Zealand, and Samoa to name just a few. The first recorded modern European to be tattooed was a French sailor, Jean Baptisti Cabri, who jumped ship in the Marquesas in 1795 and had his body tattooed. The following year Omai was brought from Tahiti on the Endeavour with Captain Cook to Britain in 1769. His body was extensively tattooed and supposedly this was the catalyst for many of the British aristocracy to be tattooed [Sanders and Veil p15].

Electronic tattooing machines were developed at the end of the 19^th century and this resulted in a rise in popularity, at least in America, where it became the site for working class ‘folk art’ with motifs of hearts, daggers, flags and various souvenir motifs (deMello 2003 p10). Tattoos also had a strong association with criminals and prison culture. When motor bikes developed into communities with outlaw associations, tattoos indicated belonging to particular groups. Tattoos were also associated with freak show and carnivals.

The shift since the late 1970s doesn’t appear to be linked to any technological change. It actually occurred at the time of the rise of HIV and Hepatitis C and tattooing became heavily medicalized. This would seem contradictory but perhaps it reflects the tattoo as a form of an act of rebellion. In the West tattoo motifs have changed from the stock-trade of the long apprenticed tattooer or from motifs with strong cultural ties, to more individual designs that have a ‘tribal’ flavour, or abstract fantasy designs by the self-taught tattooer or tattooee designer (deMello 2003, Broome 2006). The renaissance of tattoos within Pacific cultures has been perhaps in response to the change in perception by the West where it has shifted from lower to middle-class, given serious cultural analysis, investigated through exhibitions in museums and galleries to television programs such as Miami Ink.

The body has been central to visual art and although interest in the classic nude has long since waned, practices such as life-drawing continue to be a mainstay subject in art, design and architecture school curriculums. Works of art and theories about the body now seek to redress the balance of power in how we view the body. However, as viewers we still rely on ‘artistic deciphering’ as we have moved from seeking beauty and perfection to what we might consider as artists overstepping the line by exploring the abject body.

Image of Power – Representation of power

This section looks at the transformation of the body and power through dress

Transforming the body through dress

Textiles and dress have a long history of marking social and physical transformations of the body. Marking these transformations are also performed through ritual practices and imagery of these events are only part of documenting the rites of passage. The new born baby is dressed in a Christening gown to mark moving from a state of gracelessness to becoming a member of a Christian church. Up until the end of the nineteenth century all very young children wore dresses; boys were ‘breeched’ between the age of three and six.[2] The Judaic striped tallit shawl is used in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Academic gowns mark the intellectual shift from student to graduate. The wedding dress used to indicate moving from the state of female virginity to that of reproduction. Shrouds symbolise the transition from life to death. The symbolic function of these textiles and dress is to define stages in life’s cycle. They also indicate notions of belonging, of participating and of citizenship.

In the past the dress of the monarch transformed from the individual ‘body natural’ to that of the ‘body politic’. Although the term ‘body politic’ originated in Britain in the 16^th century, its current usage derives from postmodern theories of the fragmented body. This concept of the two bodies, the body natural and the body politic was favourable to the ruling monarch and hence spread throughout Europe. During the 18^th century the term, body politic, began shift away from indicating solely the monarch’s body to a wider usage with the transition of power from absolute monarchical power to symbolic monarchy and its representatives. The acting out of symbolic power was reinforced through dress practices, performances of representation and ritualized theatre. The rise of the military uniform in this period also indicated the political shifts. Military spectacles of the 18^th and 19^th centuries attest to this theatricality. The ‘theatre of war’ is explored by Gillian Russell (1995). The symbolic construction of authority through ceremonial performances and ritual events reinforced hierarchy and power.

Representations of power were also presented in artworks. By the 18^th century academies of fine arts had developed a hierarchy of categories of artworks. At the top was istoria, the practice of history painting, illustrating the deeds of the heroes of European culture, whether secular or sacred. Portraiture was next in the hierarchy. Here the visual appearance of the role and class were to the fore rather than likeness to the sitter. These were indicated through dress, stance, props, attributes and setting. They were didactic. This category was closely linked to history painting. Next down the hierarchy were the categories of landscape painting, genre (scenes form ordinary life such as market scenes) and still life. Towards the end of the 18^th century ‘naturalistic art in the services of empirical science’ began to be asserted with the rise of colonialism (Smith 1992 p31). As well there was the rise of the nude as subject in response to the discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Portraits of the monarchy bridged istoria and portraiture. They were place in foremost positions and central (both physically and metaphorically) to art academy exhibitions. Dress was indispensible to the functioning of the monarchy. The robes highlighted a luxury that was rarely afforded by those outside the aristocracy. Male aristocrats were portrayed in military uniforms to indicate power. George III and George IV in Britain were so enthusiastic about military uniforms, they were directly involved in the designing process. George IV, when Prince of Wales, had his portrait painted a number of times in various military dress of his own devising and unrelated to any military regiments. This military dress was the genesis of the flamboyance and extravagance of the 19^th century military uniforms. Gustavus III of Sweden also understood the power of dress. He had a collection of 90 of his most important costumes: coronation, chivalric, ceremonial, national and military dress preserved in the Livrustkammaren (Mansel 2005 p51-53).

One aspect of flamboyant dress is the amount of space that it taken up by the wearer. We can see this, particularly in portraits such as Alan Ramsey’s George III with the king in his coronation gowns. The space taken up by George’s ample costume indicates his position of power. The cape flows down the stairs to the left and across the table on the right. JC Flügel explores this concept of the ‘extensive’ function of garments and their relationship to power. He argues that the more space taken up through exaggerated extensions of dress clearly indicates where the wearer sits in the hierarchy of power. Coronations often show the long cloaks assisted by numerous attendants. This not only displays the intrinsic wealth in the apparel, but being able to command the resources of such assistance.[3] It could be said the same of Ramsay’s portrait of George III. It would be almost impossible for him to walk about unaided despite the apparent ease portrayed. The body politic overrode the function of the body natural.

Flügel’s extensive function was not limited to the monarchy. Large hooped dresses, incredibly high hairstyles or extraordinary long ostrich feathers, all indicate in some way the relationship between space and power. This way of dressing illustrates that the wearer inhabited vast architectural spaces that could accommodate such extravagant displays. This contributes to a sense of visual hierarchy denoted by size. Some aspects of military uniforms, such as bearskin busbies worn by the grenadiers, indicate the regiment’s position in the hierarchy of the military. Members of the cavalry command great areas of the field but also require for more resources for upkeep. As well military dress was for an audience, be it the enemy or those at home.

The horse has played a significant role as a powerful adjunct to the appearance of power, both in the East and the West and it had a strong association of masculinity. Femininity was an issue for female monarchs and they understood that their success or failure depended on the image they presented. Aristocratic women used the masculine association of power, horses and uniforms, to carve out a place of their own. Since the late 18^th century elite women leisure fashions have appropriated male riding dress. Joshua’ Reynolds portrait of Lady Worsley 1780set this style of ‘Amazon’ dress which was imitated for over a century. At this time also female monarchs were depicted as sitting astride, rather than side-saddle, to increase the sense of power. Marie Antoinette of France, Catherine II of Russia, Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II of Britain have been painted as such.

With the shift from the autocratic divine right of kings to representational government, hastened by the American and the French Revolutions, the importance of the military uniform grew as a visual a tangible representation of power. Uniforms originated in the late 17^th century and they were much like work clothes, but by the 18^th century had developed into decorative dress indicating hierarchy. The idea of protecting the body warped very quickly. It soon became apparent to the military that the body, in transformation from private individual to a cog in the war machine, was a site of display for status symbols and power. Within that machine the various level of authority, particularly the wealthy officers, could display their association with the nobility through conspicuous decoration.  A visit to any war museum will show paintings and sculptures will attest to the spectacle of the dress uniform.

It is not only the uniform itself that distinguishes the civilian and the military. Military dress practices shape the body. Constant exercising and drilling, loading and reloading firearms as well as the epaulettes on the shoulders of uniforms tends to exaggerate the width of the shoulders. This muscular physique of the upper body has become associated with masculinity and strength.

The gait and the posture of those with long association with the military do not leave the body very easily once retired from service. Theorists, Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu, were interested in the way that culture is embedded in the body. They both used the term habitus, although with slight variation, to describe the formal and informal acquisition of internalized frameworks for conduct (Mauss 1973 (1934; Bourdieu 1986). Mauss had been credited with coining habitus, however, it was originally a medical term used to describe the outward appearance of the face and the body in relation to the person’s internal state of health or illness (Probyn 2005, p57).

In the cross-disciplinary vein, Marcel Mauss adopted a triple viewpoint of physiological, the psychological and the societal factors to comprehend the total person[4]. His term, ‘techniques of the body’, highlighted internalised social factors and their manifestation in the body. Mauss studied cultural differences of the way in which bodies performed.  He proposed that movement is culturally contingent and therefore asserted that the ‘natural’ body does not exist. His heightened awareness of cultural, and occupational, ‘techniques of the body’ coloured his observations of human movement in day-to-day activities. These daily and unremarkable practices such as walking, running, eating, and drinking become stylised and can affect the physical shaping of the body[5]. One example he used to comment on the way women learn to walk in high heels, a feat that requires training and is a marker of socialization in that the majority of men do not acquire this skill.

Similarly Pierre Bourdieu, building on Mauss’ work, also explored the body as bearer of embodied history, by analysing how and why the social enters the body[6]. He considered how society filters through the body and how the body becomes a carrier and reproducer of the social. This exploration highlights how the artificial structures of class and ethnicity are internalized and can actually delimit the way in which members of society operate.

Social status is key to Bourdieu’s book Distinction and visual status is essential to the military as an organizing mode, not only marking distinction from civilian society but within the military. The strong hierarchical markers in the military could be used as a camouflage by those who were not expected to join. In the 18^th century there had been a number of women who cross-dressed to enter the military for various reasons. The successful ones were able to capitalize on the camouflage that military dress practices afforded.

Until the twentieth century, women (apart from aristocratic rulers) were officially excluded from wearing military uniforms and hence share in the presentation of power. For women, the closest to overtly wearing a uniform in association with the military was the nurse’s uniform. Women had always assisted in tending to the wounded in warfare. Armies on the move were accompanied by camp followers of wives, sutlers, vivandières, laundresses, seamstresses and prostitutes. However, healing the wounded and treating the ill were generally left to women in religious orders. Nursing the sick had been associated with prostitution, so there was pressure to distinguish respectable women who wanted to assist in helping the maimed, sick and dying. This could be done through dress. Nurses needed to reflect a strict conformity to social control. High necked, long sleeved, ankle length clothes with the hair covered indicated a lack of sexual availability. Yet, there were also empowering qualities of a uniform. It was the fusion of the saintly image and militaristic discipline that was the foundation of nursing. The French Revolution was a catalyst for secularization of nursing,[7] though it remained a strongly gendered realm. Uniforms legitimised employment or training for women.

Women have been able to officially enter the military since early in 20^th century, however, there is a history of women cross-dressing to take up arms and fight alongside men (Adie 2003; Arnold 1999, Bullough and Bullough 1993;Scarlett 2004; Stark 1996;Tsui 2003). It has been estimated that as many as 1,000 women disguised as men fought in the American Civil War (1861-65) (Tsui 2003). The Royal Army Medical Corp was set up in Britain in 1907 and consisted of women who had both first aid and horsemanship skills, although they were ‘perched decorously side-saddle in dark blue riding skirts with a striking military-style scarlet tunic and cap’ (Adie 2003 p24). They did graduate to riding astride and the role of the women changed. Since that time the role of uniforms has vastly changed yet still indicates sense of power whether as a prop in pornography or a signifier of a subculture (Craik 2005). The body

All of us manage our body’s appearance and we fashion the body politic through certain styles of dress and display. Management of the the body can be potent and has an immediate effect on others. We can see how the organic relationship between dress, body and society comes into play. This is particularly so in the use of military uniforms which can often guide our judgments and our reactions. Those in  power come to understand the importance of dress and learn to manipulate it to their advantage.

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[1] Ruth Barnes and Joanne B Eicher, Dress and Gender; Making and Meaning, ed. Shirley Ardner and Helen Callaway, Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women (New York & Oxford: Berg Publications, 1992).

[2] Colleen R Callahan and Jo B Paoletti, “Is It a Gril or a Boy? Gender, Identity and Children’s Clothing,” in The Fashion Reader, ed. Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun (Oxford and New York: Berg Publications, 2007).p126.

[3] Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes.pp.33-38.

[4] {Mauss, 1985 [1938] #215; Mauss, 1973 (1934) #223} p73

[5] Mauss also highlights practices such as swimming. When we view early films of swimming techniques we can see how styles of movement have changed, particularly in techniques that enhance the speed of the swimmer. Indeed the shaping of the body of a regular swimmer is apparent; the extreme form is the body of an Olympic swimmer.

[6] {Bourdieu, 1986 #132}

[7] Robert Dingwell, Anne Marie Rafferty, and Charles  Webster, Introduction to Social History of Nursing(London: Routledge, 1988).p21.