Perhaps as a society we’ve actually grown up. Having seen episode one of Bridgeton and social and emotional suppression taken to extremes, lived through the sexual revolution of the late 60s when for some all ‘rules’ went out of the window, to whatever we have today with teen explicit TV streaming into homes all over the world, there is no mystery to why the nude selfie has taken off. Nudity is everywhere. No longer just the province of artists in studios, the nude self-portrait is now the ultimate in self-expression – if you can afford a smart phone and can jazz up your bedroom or bathroom with a bit of lighting and an array of camera filters.

In 2017, the Saatchi Gallery in London opened a show, From Selfie to Self-Expression, blurring the line between traditional artist-generated self-portraits and the humble camera phone shot which turns everyone into an artist. The nude selfie though is something else. According to author Holly Williams love, lust, pleasure, desire, beauty, anatomical study, self-expression and egotism are just some of the impulses behind sending nude selfies. Creating nudes and sharing them seems to be part of human nature according to the author.

Certainly, in the age of gods, everyone was naked – you only have to look through the works of Michaelangelo, Raphael, Bronzini or catalogue the marble flesh cavorting in the fountains littering Rome to see buttocks and six packs everywhere. Perhaps this is the age when everyone gets to become a god by virtue of technology. Having said that though, the gamut of artists I know wouldn’t be comfortable as gods and even the ones who double as life models are under no illusions about what artists and art students like to draw. Lumps, bumps, protruding scapula and defined rib cages are preferable to the perfection of the page three girl or guy. Advertising has a lot to answer for in creating the myth of perfection.

But, should the nude selfie be classified as Art or is it in a category of its own? After all, everyone with a Smartphone can call themselves artists and who can deny them that. The irony is, though that the posed, filtered, openly explicit images, shot at arms-length we so recognise as a smartphone image have more in common with the aesthetic of the traditional art nude in that ‘naked’ has simply become codified, conventional and boring. The over-the-shoulder, alluring pose with bits strategically covered [or not] of the erotic photograph has become not exactly god-like so much as exposed. When you think of the Munchian world of shame, the warts and all worlds of Schiele and Freud, the lumpy nudes of Jenny Saville and any other recent artist pointing at their own imperfect bodies it does seem as though we’ve seen it all before. Schiele, Freud and Saville get their names in the art archives but should they be joined by all and sundry?

The ease of taking, replicating and sharing naked images has led to anxieties about everything from revenge porn to celebrity sex tapes, hacked private images to sexting teenagers. You’d think by this time in human history, the mystery of the human body arranged for viewing would have lost its appeal but apparently not. Male or female gaze aside, when Spencer Tunic gathers hundreds of naked bodies together to create a carpet of flesh, there is no mystery. It is fairly obvious that no two bodies are the same and any erotic charge is quickly dismissed when sagging rumps and breasts are interposed with the taut exomorphic sparcity of fleshless bones in the manner of a Schiele nude self-portrait. I’m not sure what Tunic sees.

Once upon a time those in the money paid artists for a picture of the wife or mistress reclined nude on the expensive sofa but that too is a thing of the past. In this homogenised and democratised age, you simply get out your Smartphone and do it yourself with the help of your local digital printer and the corner shop framing business.

So, what has changed, if anything? Sending nude selfies, albeit artistically concocted according to the options presented by big tech via your phone, is a world-wide obsession dismissive of a shame factor or the threat of revenge porn. What shame? If you are going to open yourself up to the world for inspection, then there is no shame. If the vengeful partner believes in the power of image blackmail a simple, ‘this is me, isn’t it good’ statement quashes all follow up. Assumptions of the laws of decency don’t come into it. They don’t exist in the world of art if in fact they exist in other than name in the non-art world. Should we then be treating nude selfies as Art and providing a critical framework? Probably. If you are going to the trouble of rearranging your bathroom and adjusting the lighting artistically then, yes, there are obvious criteria. Is it about naked flesh at all in the end? Probably not.

One thing’s for sure, I won’t be joining the crowd rushing to turn my phone on myself but as one of the crowd in a Tunic shot…… I’d probably be in that.