Faceless Nudes

In Abstract and Minimalist Nudes

Of The Smithsonian

Out of those drawings, 37% are Faceless.

There is a common trend within drawn minimal and abstract nudes to create figures without faces. What is so minimal about this art then? The face is removed to be "minimal" yet the breasts remain.

Out of the 68 artists of the nude drawings, 6 are female.

Marguerite Zorach
Lily Cushing
Louise Nevelson
Alice Pike Barney
Jane "in vain" Winkelman
Louise Cox

23 of the 623 nude drawings were created by these women and 91.3% of them have faces.

Removing the face from the figure leaves no way to identify a person, leaving them as just a body, just an object.

Objectification

noun

the act of treating people as if they are objects, without rights or feelings of their own

“Sexual objectification doesn't get oppressive until it is done consistently, and to a specific group of people, and with no regard whatsoever paid to their humanity. Then it ceases to become about desire and starts to be about control. Seeing another person as meat and fat and bone and nothing else gives you power over them, if only for an instant. Structural sexual objection of women draws that instant out into an entire matrix of hurt. It tells us that women are bodies first, idealised, subservient bodies, and men are not.”

― Laurie Penny

Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution

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