Top 10 Bottoms in Art

For the next instalment of #cheekythursday, we're turning to the world of art where, from classical antiquity to the present day, many a bottom resides in a variety of shapes, sizes and guises. Here we present 10 of our favourite examples of posteriors from the painted, photographed and penned to the printed and sculpted.

1. Yayoi Kusama (above)
Although of course more frequently associated with polka-dots than posteriors, we had to begin our list with this brilliant Yayoi Kusama collage – featuring dots and a derrière combined – which the wonderfully eccentric Japanese artist created exclusively for the third issue of AnOther Magazine.

2. Lisa Yuskavage
Acclaimed American figurative painter Lisa Yuskavage has spent the last two decades conceiving her own genre of female nude, taking inspiration from "the immediacy and tawdriness of contemporary life spurred by the mass media and the psycho-social realm of the individual." Yuskavage's protagonists are cartoonish and self-indulgent, ritzy and curvaceous figures, who ooze an eroticism that stands in marked contrast to their fairy tale-esque settings. Bulbous bottoms and breasts play key roles in the characters' hyper-sexualisation.

3. Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud was of course one of Britain's most revered and controversial portraitists. Particularly renowned for his frank and unforgiving nudes, Freud's inimitable aesthetic embraced every lump, bump, ripple and wrinkle of his subjects, be they young, old, famous or unknown. Some of Freud's most notable posterior-centric portraits include Night Portrait (1978), Night Portrait Face Down (2000) and his portrait of a flat bottomed Leigh Bowery (above), painted in 1991.

4. Tom of Finland
Fetish artist Tom of Finland (real name Touko Laaksonen) was dubbed the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. From the 1950s until his death in 1991, Tom of Finland honed his distinctive illustrative style, creating over 35,000 drawings – mostly of men kissing, tussling or flirting with other men, often in a state of half undress and always with bulging and exaggerated bottoms, muscles and packages. As one might expect, Laaksonen's work was loved and distained in equal measure by art critics but his artistic talent and marked influence on late twentieth century gay culture remains indisputed.

5. Tim Noble and Sue Webster
Dubbed the "enfants terrible of contemporary art", artist duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster have continued their ongoing exploration of self representation with their latest series of artworks, entitled Portraits From the Bottom Up and showcased at Frieze 2013. The collection comprises monoprints of the artists' rectums and bum cheeks – "Black Bottoms" – as well as bronze casts of their nipples and anuses which were then mounted so as to form faces, with surprisingly aesthetic and playfully crude results.

6. Ryan McGinley
Much-loved photographer Ryan McGinley's is a world of joyous sun-kissed frolicking. Men and women, often nude, run, jump and tumble among nature captured in glorious, saturated tones. Bare bottoms feature frequently in McGinley's output, and usually very compact, picturesque bottoms at that.

7. Paul Kooiker
Conversely acclaimed Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker likes (in his own words) "to play with the archetype of the nude woman as a cliché,” encouraging his viewers to question their own definitions of beauty. Many of the women he chooses to photograph are larger ladies, shown in a semi-fetishised way and caught unawares (faces always hidden), making the experience as a viewer a distinctly voyeuristic one.

8. Michelangelo
17-feet high, made from striking white marble, Michelangelo's statue of Biblical hero David is – from head to toe – one of the most familiar and revered images in the history of Western art, his pert derrière almost as recognisable as his challenging gaze. Created between 1501 and 150, David is a Renaissance interpretation of a common ancient Greek theme of the standing heroic male nude – a vision of rippling, self-confident masculinity and sculptural perfection that few other than Michelangelo could achieve.

9. Juergen Teller
Juergen Teller's is a Midas lens. Everything it captures is imbued with his distinct, perfectly-hued aesthetic, be it a bunch of balloons or a grandmother framed by a stuffed alligator's jaws. He is also the master of bottom shots – admittedly aided by his frequently beautifully-backsided models.

10. Lee Miller
Lee Miller has stolen many hearts with her solarised portraits and avant-garde nudes, rife with Surrealist overtones gleaned from her lover and teacher Man Ray. Strangely majestic, with the air of a still life, Nude Bent Forward (c.1930) captures a bottom in a delightfully idiosyncratic manner and is one of our most favourite rear reflections.

Text by Daisy Woodward