By The Landlord
“I wasn't naked, I was completely covered by a blue spotlight.” – Gypsy Rose Lee
“I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.” – Josephine Baker
"Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed." – William Blake
"If you see somebody running down the street naked every single day, you stop looking up." – Stevie Nicks
"Naked is the best disguise." – Jeanette Winterson
“I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and a progressive religious experience.” – Shelley Winters
"A poem is a naked person..." – Bob Dylan
“If only my genitals didn't float
When I relaxed in the bath
And we both looked down and we both agreed
It's stupid to be a man” – Leonard Cohen
"Disgusting!"
"All this sex and every wretched thing!"
"It'll bring all the riff-raff out, attract all the scoundrels!"
"It's so liberating. The freedom of movement, with no clammy wet costumes."
These were among various reactions in 1973 when the British Naturist Council selected the North-East Yorkshire coastal resort, Hornsea, for a perhaps unlikely designated naturist beach, voted for by town bigwigs by 8 votes to 3. The scandal bristled locals' opinions more than hairs from the chill wind coming off the North Sea. But the best kind of exposure came in the form of a BBC Nationwide report presented by Bernard Falk, with a classic piece of entertainment journalism. Expose yourself to this and enjoy:
Animal essentials?
Naturism has been around forever, but the term naturisme wasn't coined until 1778 by a French-speaking Belgian, Jean Baptiste Luc Planchon (1734–1781), who used the term to advocate nudism as a means of improving the hygiène de vie or healthy living. The International Naturist Federation (INF) held at Agde, France, in 1974 defined naturism as: “a way of life in harmony with nature characterised by the practice of communal nudity with the intention of encouraging self-respect, respect for others and for the environment.”
Some cultures cover themselves up completely, others like to let it all hang out. Naturism became particularly big in the 1930s, and has remained so, especially in northern Europe, ironically in the colder countries rather than the hotter, southerly ones, or the US. Perhaps Puritanism and Catholicism still like to make a cover-up. Religion and nudity have always had a strangely guilty relationship, ever since the mythological idea of Adam and Eve.
Would you Adam ‘n’ Eve it? Peter Paul Rubens’ The Fall of Man (1628-29)
Religious exposure: Stephen Appleby 2011
Personally, I didn't stumble on practising naturism in the flesh, as it were, until relatively late, and not in the usual way, such as when turning a corner on a beach to find a sudden sight of sunburnt schnitzel within a group of holidaying Germans.
It happened when visiting a girlfriend's house for the first time as a somewhat embarrassed, but sexually excited teenager. I was more than a little surprised to discover, without warning, that her parents didn't have any qualms about nudity at home. I walked in, turned a corner, and almost parked my metaphorical (or even literal) bike into the upturned hairy posterior of her dad. He was bent over on the floor doing some DIY, waving back at me, hammer in hand, gleefully nailing down a section of shag-pile. Then, retreating into the kitchen, I caught the even more voluminous eyeful of her mum, unwittingly jiggling large, pendulous breasts while she vigorously manoeuvred a rolling pin backwards and forwards across a slab of moist dough, her hospitable smile broad and warm as prepared some kind of buttery bake. “Hello! Do you like pie?” she beamed.
What that did to my early romance, I don’t know. In that context it was sort of shocking, although also comical. But nakedness has always been part of us. It's the first gift of anyone's life in the form of the birthday suit and we're arguably just human-animals in clothes, for which cold weather aside, animal-animals in clothes are mostly just plain wrong. But what is it about nakedness or nudity in humans that inspires such a wide variety of emotions, reactions, challenges to value systems, and in turn will surely make for a great song topic?
Is it because going naked might inspire and unleash, or instead dampen the sexual drive? That it will liberate, or reduce us, to animal existence?
Or is it because going naked exposes our differences, yet also reveals us all to be all equal?
Is the manufactured shame or embarrassment of nakedness a way to control society, and really just an illusion, or is it just sensible and practical?
Sign of past times …
All of these things certainly expose many religious, moral or social values.
And what about the idiomatic concept of the Emperor's New Clothes, from the Hans Christian Andersen folktale about a vain emperor who parades before his subjects with nothing on, but no one dares say anything? This is an idea also played on in Robert Altman's 1994 fashion satire film, Prêt-à-Porter, when the final big catwalk show, applauded by all, is just a series of walking naked models wearing not a stitch.
So where will your searching eyes, and ears, gingerly, or boldly, venture this week? There's many options, with songs touching on high to low forms of art, from Michelangelo’s David to smutty seaside postcards, from the burlesque of Gypsy Rose Lee to sweaty, tacky male strippers entertaining hen nights, from art-film to porn, from shame to inspiration, from the sexual to the comic, from religious repression to full-on naked expression?
Recreating Leonardo da Vinci'’s Vitruvian Man at the Burning Man Festival, 2016
Naturism, nudity and nakedness are essentially the same in the flesh but have different cultural connotations. Exposure of naked flesh has been around since our time as apes, and has been depicted in art and sculpture since we could use tools. One of the earliest known examples dates back 25,000–30,000 years ago, found at a Paleolithic site in Austria in 1908, by a workman named Johann Veran. Venus of Willendorf, is seen as some kind of fertility goddess, and is now at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. Here’s a four-sided view, revealing an ideal of beauty rather different to those of modern times.
Various views of Venus of Willendorf, dating back 25,000–30,000 years
I can already think of an acclaimed British singer-songwriter who was inspired to write by an ancient naked artefact. There are other examples from bearded priest-king of Uruk Period, to many female forms in art of Babylonia, naked figures in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and beyond, to Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings and Rubens' depiction of Adam and Eve, all the way to Matisse’s naked dancers beyond. They all have, and inspire many associations, from the erotic to the maternal, from the spiritual to the paternal, from god to creativity, from vulnerability and violence, fear to freedom.
Erotism activity on the Kandariya Mahadev Temple in Khajuraho, India (1050)
The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1484–1486
The Large Bathers by Renoir (1884–1887)
La danse (1909) by Henri Matisse
The Barricade (1918), oil on canvas, by George Bellows. A painting inspired by an incident in August 1914 in which German soldiers used Belgian townspeople as human shields
Brass monkeys, Manchester. Photographer Spencer Tunick, who gathers mass nude crowds in public spaces comes to The Lowry, Salford
But what's the difference between naked and nude? Perhaps one bare definition is that naked is by accident and nude is on purpose. Art historian John Berger puts it in a slightly different way: “Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.”
Curves ahead: Gypsy Rose Lee and burlesque friends
This certainly echoes the remarks of performers Josephine Baker and Gypsy Rose Lee, not to mention that Altman film. But displayed nudity, whether in art, film, or any other form, has many associations.
Of course it's the semi exposure that is always the most potent. “I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed,” says a swivelling-eyed Bette Davis.
“When you get the personality, you don't need the nudity,” says Mae West, who however one assume had no qualms about revealing all to her list of sexual conquests.
But some like to go the full whack. “My ideal is to wake up in the morning and run around the meadow naked,” reveals Daryl Hannah, and that may well be an ideal scenario for many.
“I cook naked, and I walk around naked. I'm very comfortable with my body," says Tracee Ellis Ross, American actress and daughter of Diana Ross. I hope you at least put on an apron with a hot chip pan, Tracee.
Helen Mirren meanwhile, acclaimed for her acting and known for many naked film scenes, expands on this and reckons that “flesh sells. People don't want to see pictures of churches. They want to see naked bodies.” She also says: “I’m a naturist at heart. I love being on beaches where everyone is naked. Ugly people, beautiful people, old people, whatever. It’s so unisexual and so liberating.” How healthy, or are you a dirty, perv, Helen?!
“The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up,” adds Marilyn Monroe, adding to a particularly glamorous film-star table in our Bar this week.
But there’s a dark side to nakedness of course, one of violence and exploitation.
“We seem okay with violence, but nudity we race to criticise and censor,” points out Eva Mendes.
And Isabella Rossellini tells us: “When I took my clothes off in Blue Velvet, I wanted to convey the brutality of sex abuse. I wanted to look like a quartered cow hanging in a butcher shop as well as disturbingly appealing.” Spot on.
Bass layer: Nick Oliveri Queens of the Stone Age
But many say creativity itself is metaphorical nakedness. "Writing songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked,” reckons Gwen Stefani, though she may have said that just for an eye-catching headline.
“All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked,” adds Jimi Hendrix, adding to the metaphor at least.
Author Neil Gaiman goes into more detail on this: “The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked... that's the moment you may be starting to get it right,” tapping into that classic subconscious dream, but also on what happens when we write and expose our feelings to listeners or readers.
As well as the nakedness in lyrics and of the creative process, there are of course many bands who have enjoyed performing naked, whether for attention-seeking exhibitionism or publicity, or to make a feminist or conveying another social message, from Iggy Pop to Queens of the Stone Age, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Rage Against The Machine, GG Allin, to Hole, Rockbitch, Wendy O. Williams of The Plasmatics and others. Playing can also be a sweaty business after all, and guitar also covers us the essentials.
Naked reflection: Avril Lavigne
So what will be exposed this week, and how can we flesh out this topic? Busy at the moment also with promoting a gig for the legendary British country star Hank Wangford, that multi-talent who is also a GP and happens, not by coincidence, to be president of the Nude Mountaineering Society (beware those brambles, Hank), but all the time keeping a good cover on things, let's welcome back the big chief himself, TatankaYotanka! TY will expose his playlists next week, following a deadline for nominations on Monday at 11pm UK time. So then, let's happily all hang out for a few days, but in the process of searching, be careful also with those Googles, Eugene …
Sticky wicket? Micheal Angelow make his leap in the Ashes Second Test, ‘75
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