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However you are onto something with this argument. Clive Bell did write something persuasive about work needing to have “aesthetic emotion”. He argued that artwork should be a visceral experience that prompted a response. However both Bell and Kant argued that formalist qualities like composition and colour were the defining features of something being art, and that the most developed work had no subject, only form. I’m afraid that your naked ladies will almost always count as a ‘subject’, so that argument goes out the window too. (Plus… I’m not sure that photography in general has yet has grasped the importance of form – a discussion I’ve had several times with some rather good photographers).
“But X painted naked ladies”
I know, it’s so unfair. All these incredible artists in the past, they painted naked ladies. However you have to take into consideration the movement of time and culture when you’re making these kinds of comments.
For instance, during the Italian Renaissance nudity appeared to be primarily about the artist showing off their skill as a craftsperson. The meticulous observation and skill involved in painting the mens rippling muscles and the women’s contorted torso’s were really quite something. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever studied anything in the way that Da Vinci or Raphael did, but then again I’m not quite sure I fancy cutting up dead bodies and observing the way that the internal organs sit under the skin. Thankfully we have books for that now. But my point is that they were doing something genuinely unprecedented. As Vasari waxed lyrical, their ‘truth to nature’ was truly the high point of art. (Except later it turns out it wasn’t, he was wrong). But the sad fact is, that as a photographer you’re not producing groundbreaking pieces of artwork based on many, many hours of anatomy studies. You’re photographing a naked chick. It’s not quite the same and it takes an awful lot less skill.
