The Naked Portrait, 1900-2007

Combining the traditional genres of the nude and portraiture, the naked portrait represents a fascinating phenomenon in art and photography of the past one hundred years. Martin Hammer makes sense of such a rich vein of visual material by examining works in many different media by diverse artists. This study seeks to explain naked portraiture as a symptom of the wider contemporary cultural impulse to reveal what is hidden beneath the surface facade, and addresses how and why the genre of portraiture has been radically extended and reinvented within the art of the last hundred years.