BBC
By Bethany Bell
An exhibition in Vienna probes our attitude towards nudity – people in the West have become accustomed to the naked
female form, but male nudes can still shock. Before the show opened, the museum even covered up parts of its own posters, saying they had caused public outrage. Five naked male statues on a pedestal confront you as you enter the new exhibition at the Leopold Museum.
The earliest is Ancient Egyptian, and the most recent a figure based on a shopping mannequin. Tobias Natter, the director of the Leopold Museum, says the opening display is a “walk through 5,000 years of history”.
“You have an old Egyptian nude, which is very unusual for Egyptian art, you have Roman art, you have Rodin from the 19th and 20th Century, to a postmodern statue. It tells the visitor the male nude in art has a very long tradition,” he says.
The exhibition features a diverse range of styles, from paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cezanne, Edvard Munch and the expressionist artist Egon Schiele, to more modern and sexually explicit works by the US photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the London-based artists Gilbert and George.
There are images of erect penises, and of anuses.
Natter says the museum is breaking new ground.
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