Naked Ambition

The Naked Portrait is a rather unassuming – almost modest - title for this summer's blockbuster exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. If it's nakedness you want, it's nakedness you'll get. In fact the NPG has given us a right eyeful – and then some.

Of course the term 'portrait' comes with a lot of cultural baggage: it sounds formal and rather prim. The Queen gets her portrait painted – although mercifully her likeness cannot be found hanging on these walls. No, if this exhibition teaches us anything, it's that the term 'portrait' can mean just about anything you want it to. Correspondingly, it is apparent that there are just as many different ways of being naked as their are ways of being represented.

Ironically, it's one of Queenie's former portraitists, Lucian Freud, who gets the ball rolling with the appositely titled Small Naked Portrait: a spellbinding almost-miniature (by Freud's standards, anyway) of a naked girl lying awkwardly, yet radiating a stillness that could be read as peacefulness, hopelessness or anything in between. It's one of many such captivating solo pieces which jostle for the viewer's attention in a show that is positively overflowing with work.

It is this superabundance of images – crowding every wall, and sequenced in a less than logical manner – which gives the show its distinctive character. Although it has inevitable downsides – works by Bacon, Saville, Howson and Gilbert & George lack any sort of suitable context – the wealth and diversity of images does create a frisson of electricity within the gallery space, and an empowering sense that the infinite variegation of the human form is indeed something that deserves to be celebrated by a show as outlandishly ambitious as this.

There is no doubt that this show should be commended for bringing some astonishing work to the capital. Five studies by Egon Schiele have found their way here from the Leopold Museum in Vienna, and they are every bit as exciting as one would hope. Schiele's lines, simultaneously liquid and brutally dynamic, are simply captivating – some of the most radical draughtsmanship you're likely to see. Lesser-known artists are also generously represented: Nan Goldin's serial portraits of her lover, Siobhan, have a soft intimacy that approaches the erotic and suggest a number of complex, emotional narratives. Similarly, the naked self-portraits of Francesca Woodman – who tragically went on to kill herself at the age of twenty-one – are a genuine enigma: the artist obscuring herself with props, or within her surroundings, seemingly torn between a desire to explore her image and a desire to hide. These photographs often evoke the language of Surrealism, but are shot through with an uncomfortable sense of angst – perhaps even desperation is not too strong a word.

Of course, our own cultural codes dictate that we often find something inherently humorous in the unclothed form, and the exhibition also explores this aspect of the naked portrait. John Coplans' Self-portrait (Back with Arms Above) transforms the artist's back into an unnaturally rectangular monolith, his clenched fists appearing as strange antennae – or perhaps this is some kind of menacing, low-budget puppet show? Whilst there has always been something snigger-worthy about Sam Taylor-Wood's stilted pathos, it is Lewis Morley's photo of a rather ungainly and angry looking David Frost – here doing his best to obliterate any notion of sensuality from Christine Keeler's infamous chair-straddling pose – which delivers the real laughs, and perhaps the highlight of the 'Fame' section of this exhibition.

The Naked Portrait could have been an overwhelming show – it is certainly one that requires real stamina in order to take everything in – yet the essential simplicity of its conceit, not to mention the wealth of outstanding work on display, ensure it will be one of the many highlights of the summer.