Word: nudeness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Marcel Duchamp lived his life with a touch of magic. He thrived on paradox, and invested contradiction with its own kind of inexplicable logic. His now-legendary Nude Descending a Staircase made him the succes de scandale of Manhattan's 1913 Armory Show. Duchamp responded by giving up painting. Next, he presented an unlikely series of "readymade" objects, including a snow shovel and a urinal, as artistic creations, and saw that idea take root. Then, having shaken the pillars of traditional esthetics, he abandoned art altogether. In 1923, not yet 40, Duchamp settled down to a life of chess...
...reminiscent of a grotto. On the far wall, a graceful brick archway frames a wooden door, silvery with age. Near the center of the door are two small peepholes that open onto a beguiling scene. There, lying on a bed of twigs and leaves is a delicate three-dimensional nude, her legs spread provocatively, her left hand holding aloft a glowing amber lamp, her head obscured save for one golden curl that flutters onto her shoulder. Beyond is a landscape in full autumn splendor, a small pond, a shimmering waterfall...
...issue is as old as the fig leaf, as new as tomorrow's nude-theater opening. An erotic renaissance (or rot, as some would have it) is upon the land. Owing to a growing climate of permissiveness?and the Pill?Americans today have more sexual freedom than any previous generation, Whatever changes have occurred in sex as behavior, the most spectacular are evident in sex as a spectator sport. What seems truly startling is not so much what Americans do but what they may see, hear and read. In those respects, the U.S. is now by far the freest country...
...appearances are deceptive. A play in the politest language can be more obscene in essence than a four-letter-word tirade. A sexual embrace depicted with art can be more innocent than a Botticelli Venus. A fully clad model in a TV commercial can exude more sexuality than a nude onstage...
...naked body can bring a visceral vitality to the theater?as several American ballet companies have demonstrated. The bedroom scene in Franco Zeffirelli's film Romeo and Juliet took on a new dimension when the couple were portrayed in the nude. So might many other dramatic interludes...