In this lecture, Dr. Rhiannon Paget, Curator of Asian Art at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Florida State University, introduces her current exhibition, In the Flesh: The Nude in Modern Japanese Art, featuring prints and one painting from the 1910s to 1970s. Dr. Paget discusses how the nude entered Japanese art at the end of the 19th century, the debates it sparked, the ways artists responded to evolving expectations in the early modern period, and how the genre developed across the 20th century.
The exhibition explores the emergence of the nude as a provocative and transformative subject in Japanese art from the late 19th century through the postwar period. Long associated in Japan with erotic imagery rather than fine art, the unclothed body became a focal point for debates about morality, modernity and artistic freedom as artists engaged with Western academic traditions.
As Japanese artists encountered new ideas about anatomy, realism and the expressive potential of the human form, the nude gradually entered the repertoire of modern painting, printmaking and other media. Bathing, grooming, and moments of private introspection offered socially acceptable frameworks for depicting the unclothed figure, while later modernist artists pushed beyond idealized forms toward bold color, abstraction and psychological intensity.
Featuring works on paper and an arresting oil painting by Ishikawa Toraji, In the Flesh traces how artists reimagined the body in response to changing social norms and artistic priorities. Predominantly images of women, these works reflect both the conventions of the genre and the perspectives of the artists and audiences who shaped it. Together, they reveal how the nude became a site for negotiating gender, desire and artistic identity in modern Japan.