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A Brief History of Nakedness, by Philip Carr-Gomm
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Confrontations with naked human bodies can provoke powerful, and often contradictory, impressions and feelings. Just as they might either thrill or revolt, they can signal innocence or sexiness, frankness or madness, a oneness with nature or a separation from society. Advertisers and the media are very aware of the complex and highly subjective associations that most of us have towards nakedness, and use images incessantly to compete for our attention. Yet mystics have embraced nudity to get closer to God or to some other remote power, while political activists have discovered that baring all is one of the most effective ways to gain publicity for a cause.In A Brief History of Nakedness, Philip Carr-Gomm traces our preoccupation with nudity in three distinct areas of human endeavour: religion, politics and popular culture. Rather than study the history of the fine-art nude, or detail the ways in which the naked body has been denigrated or imprisoned, this book explores new territory – revealing the ways in which religious teachers, politicians, protestors and cultural icons have used nudity to enlighten or empower themselves, or simply to entertain us.From the naked sages of India and St Francis of Assisi to modern-day druids and Christian nudists, from The Full Monty and Calendar Girls to Lady Godiva and Lady Gaga, A Brief History of Nakedness surveys the touching, sometimes tragic, and often bizarre story of our relationship with our own and with others’ naked bodies.
- Sales Rank: #252782 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-05-26
- Released on: 2012-05-26
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"It’s safe to say that Philip Carr-Gomm is the rare man of letters who would admit to reading "Playboy "for the centrefolds, rather than the articles. His new book, "A Brief History of Nakedness", is exactly what it sounds like, complete with numerous photographs such as the one seen above. But rather than providing flimsy justifications for his ogling, the book instead offers a sustained mediation on the spiritual, cultural and political implications of being naked in public."--"Toronto Star"--Ryan Bigge
"A kooky survey of the clothing-free."--Alexis Soloski "Village Voice "
"I absolutely loved "A Brief History of Nakedness". Besides being a fascinating read, it contains the most fun, intriguing, and diverse collection of nude photographs anywhere. A must for anyone interested in art, political activism, and cultural studies. This 'brief' history must have taken forever to research. It makes me want to rip off my clothes for a good cause immediately." --Annie Sprinkle PhD, artist / sexologist
"In this lucid and wide-ranging book Philip Carr-Gomm . . . strips bare the paradoxes of humanity's attitude toward its own naked figures. Using a snappy blend of history and imagery, he invites readers to join him in making thrilling, confusing, funny, and beautiful realizations about that simultaneously mysterious and obvious state of unclothedness. From the rituals of witchcraft to the human art installations of Spencer Tunick to the non-nakedness of the Naked Chef, Carr-Gomm offers the revelation that far from being merely a basic physical state, human nakedness - sacred, obscene - holds the key to understanding politics, culture, and our very nature as human beings."
--Kathleen Rooney, author of Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object
""A Brief History of Nakedness" admirably uncovers religious, political and popular performances of and reactions to nudity in a remarkable array of cultures. Everything from ancient religious devotional practices to recent streaking controversies is discussed in an expert and delightful manner."
--Graham Harvey, Open University
"Philip Carr-Gomm has an idea: Stop reading and start taking off your clothes. He makes that suggestion at the outset of his new book, "A Brief History of Nakedness". He aims to underscore the extent to which our stance toward nudity is riddled with contradiction. He has a point."--Evan R. Goldstein "Chronicle Review "
"Not only the best book on its subject, but a marvellous read: racy, compassionate, candid and perceptive."
--Ronald Hutton, Professor of History, University of Bristol
""A Brief History of Nakedness" by Philip Carr-Gomm is full of surprising reasons people get naked, and funny ones, and practical ones, and sensual ones, and many more. What might have seemed a topic that was too simple to repay extended thought turns out to have many subtle (and not-so-subtle) facets. . . . This book is as fun as history gets."--Dispatch (Columbus "MS) "
"It's safe to say that Philip Carr-Gomm is the rare man of letters who would admit to reading "Playboy" for the centrefolds, rather than the articles. His new book, "A Brief History of Nakedness", is exactly what it sounds like, complete with numerous photographs such as the one seen above. But rather than providing flimsy justifications for his ogling, the book instead offers a sustained mediation on the spiritual, cultural and political implications of being naked in public."--Ryan Bigge "Toronto Star "
About the Author
Philip Carr-Gomm is a writer, psychologist, psychotherapist, and the author of many books, including The Druidcraft Tarot and The Druid Planet Oracle.
Most helpful customer reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Nakedness Laid Bare
By Rob Hardy
If you are like me, you take off all your clothes in order to change into other clothes, to bathe, to sleep, or to make love. You do not get naked to advance your religion, nor promote a good harvest, nor to support a political or social cause, nor gain money, nor participate in artistic display. There are, however, plenty of people who have done such things and continue to do so. In fact, throughout history people have taken their clothes off for reasons more than quotidian, and in fact, a history could be written about such stripping, and in fact, such a history has been written. _A Brief History of Nakedness_ (Reaktion Books) by Philip Carr-Gomm is full of surprising reasons people get naked, and funny ones, and practical ones, and sensual ones, and many more. What might have seemed a topic that was too simple to repay extended thought turns out to have many subtle (and not-so-subtle) facets. The author, who has written many serious and academic tomes, says that when his friends learned the subject of his newest book, they wanted to know what could possibly be said about it. He has found plenty to say, and for the most part avoids any academic stuffiness; this book is as fun as history gets.
One reason that Carr-Gomm can exploit the subject in so many ways is that it is universal; all of us get naked from time to time. Another reason is that the subject is full of contradictions. Religion has emphasized the shamefulness and lust associated with a naked body, and yet some highly religious people have abandoned clothes in a show of innocence, lack of shame, or denial of materialism. There has been a role for nakedness in Christianity, which originally insisted on baptism only of naked candidates. Isaiah underwent three years of nakedness as "a sign and wonder," and in the seventeenth century, other Christians were shocked when some Quakers explicitly followed his example. One of the most famous examples of nakedness as protest probably never happened. Lady Godiva sympathized with tax protesters, but her husband said he'd only change the tax laws after she rode through the streets of Coventry naked. Naked people, especially naked women, have ever since used the power of being in public to get their points across without even the defense of clothes. An antiwar protest group Breasts not Bombs happily displays the former, with the sensible idea that anyone offended by seeing a breast but not by seeing young men killed in warfare needs an adjustment of opinion. It is more fun to consider nakedness for the sake of a prank, streaking, which Carr-Gomm has traced to 1804 when college student George Crump ran naked through Lexington, Virginia. He became a Congressman. Students have continued to follow his lead, but the phenomenon seems to have peaked in the 1970s; after all, hundreds of naked students all running at the same time has far less shock value than one naked person running onto a football field. There is a nude rugby game held annually in New Zealand, and sometimes a naughty clothed person streaks across the field, only to be tacked and subdued by the players.
You can find out here about the disadvantages of nude air travel (no hot drinks were served by the attendants). You can see the famous picture of Michael O'Brien who streaked a rugby match and was arrested, with a thoughtful bobby doffing his helmet to place over the streaker at just the right location to allow a photograph that could be printed in the newspapers (in a pose which looks very much like Roman soldiers leading the naked Christ to Golgotha). Erotic films are barely mentioned, but the influences of _The Calendar Girls_ and _The Full Monty_ are examined, wholesome films that showed that taking off one's clothes publicly can be heroic and generous. There is an explanation of the work of Spencer Tunick, who gets huge numbers of volunteers to disrobe so he can take pictures of the mass, often within well-known settings. John and Yoko's famous pictures are here, along with one of the performers of "Puppetry of the Penis." And here you can learn Lyndon Johnson's nickname for his penis, which he displayed in a Zen response to a reporter's question of why he continued to bomb Vietnam. Thoughtful and funny, here is a history book taking a unveiled look at varieties of a human universal. Not only that, but the beautifully-produced book seldom goes three pages without an illustration, and the illustrations are consistently of naked people, not always handsome (although plenty are) but always using a lack of clothes to provoke, amuse, or enlighten. So does Carr-Gomm's book itself.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
The Naked and the Nude?
By Donald Knowles Richardson
After a discursus on nakedness as an expression of religious belief in Jainism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Druidism, the book moves quickly to the uses of nakedness in political situations. Most of those covered (apart from the legendary mediaeval Lady Godiva, who rode naked through Coventry in protest against her husband's taxation policy) are from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Many of the latter will be remembered by those over 30 years of age. Although Carr-Gomm mentions that `The Duke of Wellington saw Napoleon naked every day', he abstains from retailing the fascinating history of Canova's colossal sculpture of the fallen emperor, which still graces the stairwell of the Duke's home at London's Hyde Park Corner.
Thus, the book could more reasonably be titled `A Recent History of Nakedness'.
There is an interesting and learned discussion of the concept of being `clothed with the sky' - the attitude of those religious who believe that it is essential to be naked before nature or one's god - quoting justification from religious texts. Similarly, the concept and practice of nudism and streakers at sporting matches.
The section, `The Desire to See - The Voyeur in Us All' is an interesting read.
But, apart from a brief mention of the famous Venus of Willendorf sculpture and of Donatello's and Michelangelo's representations of David, there is surprisingly little reference to nakedness in art. The group nude photographs by Spencer Tunick, sculptures by Marc Quinn and Antony Gormley and some work by Banksy are the exceptions.
The only art-historical reference quoted is John Berger who - in Ways of Seeing, in 1972 - distinguished only superficially between nakedness and nudity. But there is no acknowledgement at all of Kenneth Clark's 1953 book, The Nude: a Study of Ideal Art, although it remains the authoritative distinguishing in English between the nude - as a form of art - and the, simply, naked. Despite this, however, Carr-Gomm is able to conclude, correctly: `Nudity happens in art, nakedness happens in your bathroom'.
Surprisingly - there is no more than a passing reference to nudity/nakedness in ancient Greek life and art.
What Art Is - and Isn't: An Aesthetic Tract
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
From A Participant's Point Of View
By Roger Coss
I'd first heard of this book in a review on line back in May '10. It came up in a search on Spencer Tunick, the American photographic artist who covers landscapes in both rural and urban setting in nude humans to create a very diverse body of work(pun intended)as well as individual portraits. The review I read was positive and said that Mr. Carr-Gomm did cover Spencer's works and a whole lot more. I left a comment on the review as a participant in Spencer's art and was surprised to find Mr. Carr-Gomm replied. I was hooked,and resolved to buy the book when I could afford it. Shortly after I was able to order a copy through Amazon. Couldn't wait to read it! Yes, I said "read". Not that there are not a lot of photos. Really very good ones, and many NSFW, so be warned. It is beautifully and thouroughly illustrated. But this book is an in depth look at the history of us humans in the raw from the start till the present. Mr Carr-Gomm gives a look at humans and nudity/nakedness in religion,culture,politics, theater, music and of course, art. Wherever we humans go, whatever we do we decide on what clothes we must wear - or if not, why not. Mr. Carr-Gomm has done a lot of research and given a lot of thought to the history and taboo of nudity. And he makes it a good read with much humor and affection through out. It never becomes dry or tedious nor does it pander to the salacious. If you are looking for porn, you will be disappointed. Not to say he does not speak of sex. How can you not in a book about naked people? His point is that our skin is about so much more than sex. I would add that this is Spencer Tunick's point as well, and Philip Carr-Gomm gives Spencer's work a good deal of credit for changing the minds of a lot of people about nude bodies. Do I have any negatives about the book? Only a couple, one a very personal nit-pick. Mr. Carr-Gomm mentions Cleveland OH as one of Spencer's installations- But he doesn't have a photo of it! I'm not in the book! The second, and rather more substantial, is the index. There is a good index, I just wish it were a bit more extensive. Though as this is not a textbook I can understand.
If you are curious about the human need to be uncovered, which seems to be as strong in some ways as to be covered, I highly reccommend "A Brief History of Nakedness". Maybe someone who is a bit unsure of how they feel about the naked body will gain a new perspective. Meanwhile I guess I will have to wait till Spencer's much anticipated book to see more of his work, and so I can say "See, I'm in there somewhere.".
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