Teaching Art - the sensitive concept of nudity

This photo has nothing to do with this post (though the caterpillar is certainly naked) but I shot it today and wanted to share.  It is sometimes called a 'parsley worm' but will turn into a black swallowtail butterfly.  It would be great, I think, for teaching pattern and repetition, or for an Eric Carle lesson on the Very Hungry Caterpillar! 

Because of Pinterest, people often view posts I wrote a long time ago.  Today I received a comment on a post from December 2010 titled Surrealism again - 4th grade collages.  In this post I mention the video Get Surreal with Salvador Dali, as I have on several other posts on this blog.  I have shown it many times over the past few years.  The commenter said "I am appalled that you would show that video to fourth graders. It has SEVERAL instances of nudity. I am a teacher, by the way, and I would never expose such young souls to any form of nudity. That is precisely why this country is going down the toilet."  I responded by thanking the writer for his/her comment, and saying that I would address the topic here in a new post.  So here I am.  Though I must take a moment here and say I am flattered.  I  have never been accused of anything quite so profound as the demise of our country.  Wow.  I wonder how my showing a museum-made movie about a famous artist and art movement to 4th graders compares to the performance of Miley Cyrus at last night's VMA awards?  Which one of us is more morally bankrupt?  Do you think Miley learned those moves from watching a movie about a famous artist?  Am I being too snarky here?

So, about that video, referred to in the comment:  Get Surreal with Salvador Dali is an award-winning half-hour video available for free to educators from the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg Florida.  It is an educational video made for kids.  It is narrated by two kids.  By the end of the video the kids will be singing along with the Dali song.  They love this video!  A shorter version of it is also available on YouTube, though I personally use the full-length version.  Yes, I admit it has some brief glimpses of nudity, which I referred to in my original post as 'giggle-worthy', and will describe here.  First of all, at one point there is discussion of a double image in a painting, and there happens to be a part of a woman with her naked breast showing off to the side of the painting, though this part of the image is never discussed.  But the most prevalent nudity in the video is the use of quick clips which show this statue (below) chatting with another piece of artwork as part of the narration of the video.  The drawers open and close as she talks and it is very silly. 

 Before I showed the video to my 4th and 5th graders, I discussed with my students what they would be seeing, in regard to the nudity.  (I also discussed it with my principal, who absolutely gave me the go-ahead to show the video.  Believe me, I did give it the appropriate consideration before showing the movie.)  Anyhow, prior to the movie, I reminded the kids that lots of artwork throughout history has been done based on the human nude, because it is a beautiful source of artistic inspiration, and that if they went to an art museum they would likely see paintings and sculptures based on the human form.  I told them that sometimes when they saw a nude in the Dali video it would be funny and it was OK to giggle, but to control themselves so they didn't miss any of the movie since it moves very quickly and is quite informative, and I expected them to remember and be able to discuss what they had seen.  In truth, the kids laughed more at the flying mustache than at the talking 'chest of drawers'!  But the biggest giggle from the kids, the only place where I actually have had to stop the video briefly, was when the word 'crutch' is spoken with a trill of the letter R.  (crutches are mentioned in the video as a commonly used item for symbolism in Dali's paintings.)  The kids thought the word spoken had been 'crotch', not crutch!  Here's a Dali painting with a crutch.  This painting is one that is discussed in the video. 

When showing work of  famous artists to my students, I have always eliminated anything that I thought potentially inappropriate.  I clipped together pages of books that included nudes so that the kids could not see them.  But sometimes the human body found its way into art projects in ways that were unavoidable. For example, when my 6th graders built these sculptures of  'people in motion' (this was not a surrealism project), it was important to be as accurate as possible to create a realistic look.  So 'boobies' were added as needed with little wads of newspaper and tape, hips were shaped, and so on.  And aren't the results super? 

basic armature structure

adding plaster bandage

  

 And of course, adding paint and embellishment

Anyhow...  I did consider introducing the artist Niki de Saint Phalle to my students, and using her work as inspiration for some projects, and while I adore her work, I decided against it because I was concerned someone might be offended by the overabundance of large colorful breasts.  Here's a sample of her amazing, colorful, joyous work.

And I even edited some nudes out of the children's art books of Mike Venezia.   But lets face it, the truth is, when we get out of the shower, we are all nude, are we not?  So I'm back to the comment written by my reader, about my 'exposing such young souls to any sort of nudity'.  I don't think what I showed them was really that damaging or provocative, or even previously unseen.  What do YOU think is or is not appropriate for art class, and at what age?  Would you show this particular video?  I'd love your opinions, whether or not you agree with mine.  By the way, here are a couple of collages done by my 4th graders based on a  project they saw presented in the Get Surreal video. 

And now I'll end this post, with another nude from nature, shot during a recent kayaking sojourn.

I call this 'Turtle Ballet'