Naked #02 Painting

Is there a difference between ‘The Nude’ and ‘The Naked’ or are these descriptions interchangeable? Perhaps the word ‘naked’ implies vulnerability greater than the word ‘nude’? ‘Nude’ adds decorum to ‘being naked’, ignoring society’s demands for modesty, for clothing, as the requisite to being civilized, a way of differentiating man from other animals and the civilized from the savage. ‘Naked’ has other connotations, an implication when applied to the human body of ‘shame’, as applied to ‘Eve’ when she succumbed to temptation! Whereas used otherwise, for instance in the phrase ‘the naked truth’ it indicates ‘factual reality’. The ‘Naked’ series is a demonstration of this, the attempt to cover-up what ‘the Nude’ is oblivious to any suggestion of impropriety. Added to that, the title ‘Naked’ as opposed to ‘The Nude’ is indicative of Society’s implied differentiation, identified perception of the same subject – the human body.