It was the invention of clothing, and certainly not an imperative of nature, that made “private parts” private. Things we don't usually see. The Nude: Art from the Tate Collection follows the nude across two hundred years of art and, as the title suggests, draws on a single source: the Tate collection. It is a spectacular thematic tour de force through a mix of major artistic movements, including romanticism, cubism, expressionism, realism, surrealism and feminism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayMore than a hundred works of art are divided into eight sections arranged chronologically: The Historical Nude, The Private Nude, The Modern Nude, The Real and The Surrealist Bodies, Paint as Flesh, The Erotic Nude, Body Politics and The Vulnerable Body, intended to reveal the perception of bodies across time and raise questions about beauty, desire, truth, mortality, equality and power. The highlight of the exhibition is Rodin's iconic marble sculptural blend of eroticism and idealism, The Kiss in the Erotic Nude section, with its smooth, fluid modeling, dynamic composition and charming theme. Picasso's portraits never disappoint and the representation of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter and his redefinition of the human figure are no exception: in line with the school of British Vorticists, he channels the signs of their time into something dynamic, angular and sometimes completely abstract. The theme of the harem or odalisque permeates the works of Matisse, while the rich chromatic range of Pierre Bonnard with its cropping of figures gives an interesting and different perspective, accentuated by its shift of attention to the main incidents which occur at the edges of the web. The expressively brushed and suggestively distorted nudes of Francis Bacon after the suicide of his lover, Georg Dyer, and the nude portraits of Lucian Freud dominate the Paint as Flesh section. Bacon's Triptych resembles a memento mori with Dyer struggling in vain to survive and with what death has not yet consumed incontinently seeping out of the characters like their shadow blood. Body Politics features artwork from the 1970s, when the naked body in art became a political statement. as feminist writers and artists began to question the power imbalance in traditional nudes and thus challenge stereotypes. The Vulnerable Body features newer artwork emphasizing vulnerability, imperfection, and a sense of mortality. Photographs of women holding their babies shortly after giving birth remind us that the way we all enter the realms of this world would have made us prime candidates for the exhibition. The surprisingly realistic verisimilitude of Ron Mueck, the almost three meter tall wild man. looks so uncomfortable in his (pre)skin that he would like nothing more than to join you as we exit the exhibit gift shop – a display of anxiety, intimidation and vulnerability resulting from objectification. A turnaround. The journey through human emotion and the depiction of its physical embodiment in its purest state is curated by Justin Paton, Chief Curator of International Art at the Art Gallery of NSW, in tandem with Emma Chambers, Curator of modern British art at the Tate. They wanted to show that the nude has changed radically over the last two hundred years, with the constant being that the representation of the model has always been.