THE NUDE: A Study in Ideal Form (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts) - Softcover

The simple and often quite beautiful statement of a man of letters ... [in] a book which is as much a pleasure to read as it is informative and provocative. -- The New York Times A feminist critique of a male (and Western) view of the Tantric tradition [and also] a balanced reassessment of a tradition too long misunderstood. -- Parabola Probably no one else alive today writes about art with Sir Kenneth's precise combination of intelligence, urbanity, and erudition... This is an important book and a fascinating one, and the illustrations do much to illuminate it. -- The New Yorker

From the art of the Greeks to that of Renoir and Moore, this work surveys the ever-changing fashions in what has constituted the ideal nude as a basis of humanist form.