Nudity in art.

[Jaime]

Holy Cow Socrates is lauding praises on a sodomite..



Somebody get a weather report from Hell!!

[Sojourner]

[quote name='Socrates' post='962132' date='Apr 26 2006, 07:16 PM']
You seem to be missing a very important distinction here.
Michaelangelo did not create his artwork with the purpose of offending religious or moral sensibilities, and the nudity in his paintings, while it may have offended some, was not done for the purpose of shock value, but rather to display the beauty of the human form, and his skill in portraying it.
It's not as though Michaelangelo was some modern "shock artist" seeking to tick off religious folk by painting genitalia in a church!

Let us not forget that Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel and created other artwork (including his famous "Pieta" and "Moses") at the commission of the Church.
[/quote]
Right. Michelangelo wasn't attempting to shock his audience. That, I'm sure, is not at ALL why he painted his enemies in hell in "The Last Judgement." Never did ANYTHING to shock or offend his audience. And you are aware, aren't you, that he flatly refused orders from the church to cover up some of the nude figures ... which is why they hired someone else to do it after he died.

[quote name='Socrates' post='962132' date='Apr 26 2006, 07:16 PM']
Savonarola, on the other hand, was denounced by the Church, and excommunicated.
[/quote]
True. But there are those who think his excommunication and subsequent execution were unwarranted and support his canonization.

But regardless of his status in the church, the point of my mentioning Savonarola was to illustrate the fact that Michelangelo was not as uncontroversial a figure as you seem to believe.

[quote name='Socrates' post='962132' date='Apr 26 2006, 07:16 PM']
All indications are that Michaelangelo was a pious and religious man. He is quoted as saying: "True art is made noble and religious by the mind portraying it," and that the soul becomes enobled by "the endeavor to create something perfect, for God is perfection, and whoever strives after perfection is striving after something divine."

To suggest that Michaelangelo had similar motivations in his relgious art as the Dadaists or an artist putting a crucifix in urine is beyond absurd.
[/quote]
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Human nature does not change. People today are motivated by the same things that motivated people 500 years ago. This is why we can still be moved by artworks produced 500 years ago.

[quote name='Socrates' post='962132' date='Apr 26 2006, 07:16 PM']
There is unfortunately a prominent strain in modern art which seeks to offend or provoke as a goal in itself. This goal was largely absent in art before around 100 years ago.

While it is true that some have found great art offensive in its day, there is a distinction between art which happens to shock or offend some, and art which [b]has as its purpose [/b] to shock and offend.
[/quote]
Please see my comments re:Michelangelo's seeking to offend or provoke by painting his enemies in hell. This is not an isolated instance.

[quote name='Socrates' post='962132' date='Apr 26 2006, 07:16 PM']
I am under no illusion that past ages were perfect and completely "pure." However, any Catholic who has studied history will have to agree that modern times are in many ways singularly evil. Note the unprecedented loss of Faith and apostacy in the West, the rise of atheism, the horrors of Communism and Nazism, and the widespread evil of abortion.
The godlessness and nihilism found in the modern world is often reflected in its art.

To say that things are no different now than they always were shows ignorance of history.
[/quote]
To quote the great Billy Joel, "We didn't start the fire/It was always burning/Since the world's been turning/We didn't start the fire/No we didn't light it/But we tried to fight it." (I would sing this for you if you were here, but as you're not you'll just have to try to imagine.)

People have been godless and evil to one another since the Fall. Killing children is nothing new. Killing one another in huge numbers is nothing new. To say differently shows ignorance of history.

[quote name='Socrates' post='962132' date='Apr 26 2006, 07:16 PM']
Your comparision with protestantism is actually quite apt. For, though most protestants may not be wilfully evil, the Protestant Revolt has done untold damage to Christendom and the Church, which has never been repaired.
So too have early twentieth-century nihilistic artistic movements done damage to the world of art.
[/quote]
My point, as I'm sure you well know, was that artists today, while they may be influenced by dadaist forms, are nonetheless not "formal heretics" in the art world, and in fact are pursuing the same goodness, beauty and truth that their forebears did, albeit in different forms.

[Cow of Shame]

oh come on...all that we see in the classics is those guys were a bunch of chubby chasers

[Sojourner]

[quote name='Cow of Shame' post='963034' date='Apr 27 2006, 02:33 PM']
oh come on...all that we see in the classics is those guys were a bunch of chubby chasers
[/quote]
Hater. Big girls need love too.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Sojourner' post='962622' date='Apr 27 2006, 06:59 AM']
Right. Michelangelo wasn't attempting to shock his audience. That, I'm sure, is not at ALL why he painted his enemies in hell in "The Last Judgement." Never did ANYTHING to shock or offend his audience. And you are aware, aren't you, that he flatly refused orders from the church to cover up some of the nude figures ... which is why they hired someone else to do it after he died. [/quote]
You are again missing the point. No serious person would claim the main point of Michaelangelo's artwork was to shock or offend. His work had the approval of the Pope.
Some Church officials wanted the figures "covered," but the Pope himself was in favor of having them uncovered.

Putting one's enemies in hell of course creates controversy, but was part of an old artistic tradition (think Dante). It was hardly something original or shocking.

[quote]True. But there are those who think his excommunication and subsequent execution were unwarranted and support his canonization.

But regardless of his status in the church, the point of my mentioning Savonarola was to illustrate the fact that Michelangelo was not as uncontroversial a figure as you seem to believe.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Human nature does not change. People today are motivated by the same things that motivated people 500 years ago. This is why we can still be moved by artworks produced 500 years ago.
Please see my comments re:Michelangelo's seeking to offend or provoke by painting his enemies in hell. This is not an isolated instance. [/quote]
No one claimed he was "uncontroversial" nor that great art never creates controversy.
My point is that there is a huge difference between the great art work of past ages, which stood on its own artistic merit and had the primary purpose of glorifying God, and modern "shock art" which has little purpose beyond being deliberately offensive. Many modern artists pursue "shock" as a goal in itself, which was a foreign concept to classic art.

This is usually done through calculated and deliberate obscenity and/or blasphemy.

[quote]To quote the great Billy Joel, "We didn't start the fire/It was always burning/Since the world's been turning/We didn't start the fire/No we didn't light it/But we tried to fight it." (I would sing this for you if you were here, but as you're not you'll just have to try to imagine.)

People have been godless and evil to one another since the Fall. Killing children is nothing new. Killing one another in huge numbers is nothing new. To say differently shows ignorance of history. [/quote]
I've heard the Billy Joel song, and it really proves nothing.

Of course, sin and evil has existed since the fall, but it exists in the modern world in an unprecedented scale (at least since the pre-Christian world). Compare the numbers involved in 20th-Century genocides to those in teh past. Also look at the unprecedented loss of Christian faith and growth in atheistic philosophies. And now all kinds evil and sin are becoming increasingly accepted and sanctioned by society. (Of course, liberals consider this "progress.")
I am not saying that everything now is evil, or that all was sweetness and light prior to the 20th century. However, to deny that thre has been a serious growth in evil and godlessness over the past hundred years or so is to be willfully blind to the facts.

[quote]My point, as I'm sure you well know, was that artists today, while they may be influenced by dadaist forms, are nonetheless not "formal heretics" in the art world, and in fact are pursuing the same goodness, beauty and truth that their forebears did, albeit in different forms.[/quote]
If they are, they are largely failing.

Which would you say is more conducive to reverence in worship, traditional church architecture, or "modernist" church designs?


[quote name='hot stuff' post='962161' date='Apr 26 2006, 05:41 PM']
Holy Cow Socrates is lauding praises on a sodomite..
Somebody get a weather report from Hell!!
[/quote]
There is no conclusive evidence that Michaelangelo was a sodomite. And even if he was, his personal vices have absolutely no relevence whatever to this discussion.

Please kindly take your trolling elsewhere.

And congratulations.
You are now on my "ignore" list.

[Jaime]

Holy cow, you compliment someone and they put you on the ignore list.. I should have complimented you months ago.

[styx chyx]

In general, I do believe that the people of today are very different from the people of the past. However, I do not believe that human nature has changed in the slightest. The people of today have 'seen it all', the media seems to have a strange desire to subject people to very confronting images etc. For this reason, art too has had to change. In order for an artist to get their messages across, they MUST create something that will stand out, something that will be noticed. When people see a piece of artwork that is itself in some way confronting, they are more inclined to stop, to observe, and to think about it.

Socrates you are, understandably, horrified with Andres Sarrano's photograph of the crucifix submerged in urine, and are unable to think past the insult that this piece inspires. When I first saw and heard about this piece (as weak as this sounds), I cried. I was insulted to the core, but I did not, and could not, stop thinking about this piece of 'art' for a long time afterwards. The more I thought about it, the more I got out of it. I started to see this piece of art as more of a comment on today's society - what does this photograph say about modern religion? Sure, there are many other much less offensive ways to inspire deeper thought and analysis of society etc, but this piece of shocking art created controversy. In a world which thrives on the media, controversy is gold; it results in publicity on the grandest scale, and mass exposure, which, obviously, allows the artist to expose greater numbers of the world's popultion to their own thoughts, beliefs and issues. Perhaps this piece of art was not, in the artist's eyes, a comment on society etc, which is what I interpreted it as, but the idea of art is that people are able to take from it what they will. People will analyse art in their own way, and create their own responses, and that is the beauty of it. One piece of artwork can speak volumes to hundreds of people, and with their own stories, they each get an entirely different interpretation and construct something entirely new. Surely you can see the slightest trace of beauty in that ability?

In this day and age, artists often use shock to attract attention and allow people to analyse what they have seen to evoke their own understanding through interpretation. If an artist simply wanted to tell people what they thought, without them undergoing their own discovery process, they would simply write an essay, or stand on their soap-box.

[Kristen]

There is an interesting entry on Wendy Shalit's [i]Modestly Yours[/i] blog on this topic:

[url="http://blogs.modestlyyours.net/modestly_yours/2006/04/the_modest_nude.html"]http://blogs.modestlyyours.net/modestly_yo...odest_nude.html[/url]

I think Wendy made a similar analogy as the blog author in her book, [i]A Return to Modesty[/i] if i remember correctly.

Is anyone familiar with her book? I picked it out of the "women's" section of Barnes and Noble as a joke, and it ended up being one of my favorite books ever!

[Cow of Shame]

[quote name='Socrates' post='963412' date='Apr 27 2006, 08:17 PM']
There is no conclusive evidence that Michaelangelo was a sodomite. And even if he was, his personal vices have absolutely no relevence whatever to this discussion.[/quote]
Well, they have no relevance unless you feel like you can throw it in the face of your opponent. THEN they'll be crucial to your argument.
[quote name='Socrates' post='963412' date='Apr 27 2006, 08:17 PM']
Please kindly take your trolling elsewhere.

And congratulations.
You are now on my "ignore" list.
[/quote]
What? You put [i]hot stuff[/i] on your ignore list before me? ....oh wait. I get it. I'm already on your ignore list. You just think hot stuff will [i]care[/i] that he's on your ignore list.

lol

[Proud2BCatholic139]

I have mixed feelings about this...
For one, God made Adam and Eve, clothed naked until they ate the fruit from the tree and the serpent tempted them, the first sin.
They found out they were naked and clothed themselves, because they were ashamed of their bodies.

God made us in an image...to treat our bodies as a Holy Temple of God. As now sin came known to man on earth, so have our thoughts about every thing changed.

As I said treating our bodies as a Holy Temple of God, we should preserve it only in a manner for our spouses and ourselves. What I mean is, it is a special gift, keep it pure, and not let no man be tempted to sin.

Being nude in art, even though it may be considered 'art' to the human world, I beleive is totally unacceptable. The only way I can see this done, is portraits of Adam and Eve.

I beleive now a days we should preserve our chastity because due to a high rate of pornographic images being plastered everywhere. As the media says, "SEX sells." Well, it is just upseting our Heavenly Father.

We need to pray to preserve our chastity.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us.

[Socrates]

[quote name='styx chyx' post='964046' date='Apr 28 2006, 08:29 AM']
In general, I do believe that the people of today are very different from the people of the past. However, I do not believe that human nature has changed in the slightest. The people of today have 'seen it all', the media seems to have a strange desire to subject people to very confronting images etc. For this reason, art too has had to change. In order for an artist to get their messages across, they MUST create something that will stand out, something that will be noticed. When people see a piece of artwork that is itself in some way confronting, they are more inclined to stop, to observe, and to think about it.

Socrates you are, understandably, horrified with Andres Sarrano's photograph of the crucifix submerged in urine, and are unable to think past the insult that this piece inspires. When I first saw and heard about this piece (as weak as this sounds), I cried. I was insulted to the core, but I did not, and could not, stop thinking about this piece of 'art' for a long time afterwards. The more I thought about it, the more I got out of it. I started to see this piece of art as more of a comment on today's society - what does this photograph say about modern religion? Sure, there are many other much less offensive ways to inspire deeper thought and analysis of society etc, but this piece of shocking art created controversy. In a world which thrives on the media, controversy is gold; it results in publicity on the grandest scale, and mass exposure, which, obviously, allows the artist to expose greater numbers of the world's popultion to their own thoughts, beliefs and issues. Perhaps this piece of art was not, in the artist's eyes, a comment on society etc, which is what I interpreted it as, but the idea of art is that people are able to take from it what they will. People will analyse art in their own way, and create their own responses, and that is the beauty of it. One piece of artwork can speak volumes to hundreds of people, and with their own stories, they each get an entirely different interpretation and construct something entirely new. Surely you can see the slightest trace of beauty in that ability?
[/quote]
This post actually, I think, gets straight to the heart of the problem with the type of modern "art" I was discussing.

The truth is, I was less horrified (in an emotional sense), as I was generally disgusted and annoyed by Serranoo's "Piss Christ." I simply used this as a well-known example, because a lot of ink was spilled on it in the media when it came out.

Such works are not truly art, but are simple provocation and childish screaming for attention. They do not have anything truly meaningful to say, nor are they creations of beauty, but merely seek to provoke a reaction by calculated insult (in this case by defacing a sacred symbol).

Simple provocation does not art make.
Photographing a crucifix submerged in urine does not say anything at all about "modern religion" - instead it shows merely the "artist's" puerile desire to provoke a response and get media attention by pissing on a symbol sacred to Christians, and thus literally "pissing them off."

Similar provocation can be achieved by burning an American flag, by making an obscene comment about another's mother, by screaming racist epithets at black people, or by having a neo-Nazi demonstration in a Jewish neighborhood.
None of these things would qualify as "art," nor do they display any genuine creativity or ability, nor would they have a "trace of beauty."

While it is considered unacceptable to offend other religious or ethnic groups, insulting Christians, and Catholics in particular, is considered by the lefty P.C. crowd a perfectly legitimate form of artistic expression.

(As someone noted, imagine what the reaction would be if a photo of Martin Luther King Jr., rather than a crucifix, were shown submerged in urine!)

And far from being truly "shocking," such tripe is common and predictable from the artsy crowd.

Someone (I believe it was John Leo) once noted that about every year, some drama troupe hosts a dramatic performance which involves 1) Jesus Christ or His Blessed Mother having sex with an Apostle/the Pope/a priest or nun/a barnyard animal.
2) This blasphemy attracts the desired outrage from "conservative" Christians.
3) The "artistic community" then proclaims this episode as showing a need to protect and fund "the arts" to defend against such philistinism.

[quote]In this day and age, artists often use shock to attract attention and allow people to analyse what they have seen to evoke their own understanding through interpretation. If an artist simply wanted to tell people what they thought, without them undergoing their own discovery process, they would simply write an essay, or stand on their soap-box.[/quote]
Again, this is merely screaming for attention, rather than art.

Real art is not a mere publicity stunt to get attention, but requires intelligence and reflection, both from the artist and the audience.

Indeed, it is much easier to simply piss on what is sacred to millions of people, and thus draw attention to oneself, rather than give a thoughtful and intelligent critique of Christianity, or whatever the else the artist wishes to attack.

[styx chyx]

First I'd like to begin with Socrates, nice post! I do agree that artists are having to adopt any method in order to gain attention, "screaming" for it as you put it, and unfortunately, pulling a stunt like Serrano's is rewarded with a huge amount of attention. However should an artist want to 'succeed' today (ie make a lot of money) and survive on their art alone, they must do something that is going to be noticed. Many people find that something offensive and obscene is noticed, and will pursue that path, whilst others will pursue the creation of something beautiful. Unfortunately it would seem that today the obscene and offensive path is the quickest road to 'success' as (as I said in the previous post) it creates controversy, which creates attention, which creates [b]cash[/b] rolling in.

I would like to point out that I find very little contemporary art beautiful, or even REMOTELY attractive, however I am almost always able to get some sort of message out of it, which I appreciate greatly. I find that today's artists are trying to do one of four things: trying to create something beautiful, trying to debunk social constraints, trying to get a message across or trying to make easy money (note I use the word TRYING as some do not succeed!!).

I would also like to make a point on nudity in art, which is what this post was originally about! At the moment I am completing a masters degree in theatre and drama. Often in productions we have used nudity, or partial nudity, in order to communicate themes and issues to our audience, and each time the feedback has been very good. I think this is because nudity is only ever used as a tool for communicating themes and issues, and NEVER just thrown in for the sake of it (probably because none of us are willing to get our kit off unless it's for a VERY good reason!!!). I think that the use of nudity can be very, very powerful. For example one particular scene used in a show I was assistant directing involved a woman's strength, thoughts, constructs etc being ripped apart by society, and in a brief symbolic representation of this, the woman, facing the back of the stage so that the audience only saw her back, had her clothes torn from her body, leaving her in her underwear, crouched in a ball on the floor as the lights slowly dimmed. In this instance, nudity was used ONLY to communicate a general theme of the play, and we received excellent feedback on it.

Well that's another VERY LONG rant of mine, hope you enjoy it!

P.S. Socrates, I absolutely loved your point on how insulting Christianity and Catholicism is perfectly okay, but anyone else is wrong. Brilliant point!