CULTURE The ConversationFRANMONKS/BBCJanina Ramirez: I wanted to ask you
about three specific artworks that pop
up in the series, and why we should be
looking at them afresh. I know you’ve
been looking at the first, the Aphrodite
of Knidos (see page 75), for a long
time, and that she’s close to your heart.
Has the way you’ve thought about
her changed?
Mary Beard: Yeah, I think it has.
When I was a young classicist, I thought
that the line-up of nudes going back to
the Aphrodite of Knidos was actually
pretty dull. Let’s face it, you go into
museums in which there are lots of
statues lined up against the wall and
see, quite understandably, people
walking right past them. It took about
20 years for me to see that the statue
was really edgy and controversial.
That was the first time I realised that
things that are ‘classic’ in every sense
of the word can also be dangerous
and difficult.
She is naked, in that she has no clothes
on, but it’s something more than
that, isn’t it? She conceals yet reveals,
doesn’t she?
Yes. She’s a very naughty sculpture,
really, because she looks as if she’s being
a bit modest – she’s got her hands over
her breasts and she’s got a towel and
water pot by her side. But all of that
is to give the viewer an excuse to look
at her, I think. You can’t look at
a woman, or a goddess, just like that;
you have to imagine that you’ve just
surprised her as she was having her bath.
This is where we start to get into
the problem of the female nude in
particular, and nude bodies more
generally. How complicit are we in the
looking? If we think about an artwork
such as Courbet’s Origin of the World
(right, below), that is purely a woman’s
private parts on display. There’s no
head – it’s just the lower body.
I don’t think there is ever any good
definition of pornography but, if you
look at what people say makes some-
thing ‘pornographic’, it’s that you have
no head, no face, no personality – all
you have is genitals. And in every way,
on that kind of definition, Origin of the
World looks like a piece of porn. But
it is now treated as art, and even I, to
some extent, actually enjoy looking at it.
Yet you can see that everyone is terribly
careful to remind each other that it is art.All the talk about the wonderful
use of mustard and brush strokes!
The website of the museum where it’s
displayed [the Musée d’Orsay, Paris]
tells you that it’s not pornography
because of the nice colours – and you
can see where they’re coming from, but
it’s desperate. They put it in the kind of
gilded frame reserved for masterpieces,
not pornography. And we also have no
idea who gave it its title...It’s such a huge, all-encompassing
title, isn’t it? And as soon as you title
something, you’re leading the viewer
down a particular route.
Yes, it says women’s genitals are mystical.“You can’t just look at a woman, or a goddess,
naked; you have to imagine that you’ve just
surprised her as she was having her bath”
Mary Beard talks to art historian and broadcaster Janina Ramirez
about three key works explored in the series
Art historian, author and presenter Janina
Ramirez, who discussed Beard’s new series
at its launch in London earlier this yearMary Beard pictured at Laboratori Artistici
Nicoli in Carrara, Italy. The studio makes
reproductions of classical statues