For all the hoopla they sometimes create, especially in social media, implicit art nudes, or art nudes of any kind, are so far removed from anything sexual as to make the imposition of a sexual comment laughable. Artists, whether painters or sculptors or photographers, are consumed with the details of how to recreate or represent the totality of what is before them. Models are more than flesh and bone, but an architecture of emotion, experience, beauty, and humanity. How does one accurately capture all that in a single image in a way that communicates to the viewer everything the artist is feeling? The model, on the other hand, wonders if the pose looks as silly as it feels, if maybe she shouldn’t have had that burrito for lunch, and if she’s going to be done in time to let the dogs out before they mess on the carpet.

What implicit nudes do to the viewer, though, is challenge one’s perception of what is versus what may be. If one comes to an image from the perspective that all things are sexual, then one is going to perceive a sexuality where none was intended. If one approaches an image while consumed with a given emotion, one is going to find that emotion first and perhaps dominantly within the image regardless of what the artist sought to communicate. One of the greatest challenges in working with nudes is that the artist can only control what’s happening, what’s seen, what’s felt, what’s intended, as the image is created. We do not control the viewer’s experience.