Posted on 02/28/2006 11:38:34 AM PST by klossg
Too bad Ginger White, a Bradenton figure artist and director of the Anna Maria Island Art League, found it necessary to go to Sarasota to exhibit her work.
White experienced censorship at the Manatee County Public Library in Holmes Beach last year and had to relocate her work to the Digital 3 Gallery in Sarasota. Chalk drawings, which included bared breasts, were taken from view at the library because they were said to be too near the children's section.
As if children haven't seen breasts since birth. As if children think of nudity in the same way adults do.
Not that there isn't such a thing as indecent art. I don't know why more visitors to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., aren't appalled by the display of Benvenuto Cellini's "Virtue Overcoming Vice," which shows a nude man being whipped by a nude woman.
Then there's the bevy of bared breasts in the Ringling Museum collection, some decidedly sexually loaded. I'm thinking of "Bathsheba at her Bath" by Domenico Gargiulo and "Eros Revealing a Sleeping Venus to a Bashful Satyr" by Guissepe Bartolomeo Chiari.
Skittishness about nudity is not new, of course. Before the 20th century, women who wanted to study art were kept from drawing unclad models for fear it wasn't ladylike. Even as late as the 19th century, students in the women's modeling class at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art modeled from cows.
Yet, the nude has been a main subject of art since pre-history. Through the ages, the human figure rendered in the altogether has stood for many states of mind, including patriotism. Eugene Delacroix's celebrated painting "Liberty Leading the People," which ended up on a French postage stamp, depicts a bare-breasted female raising the tricolor of the French flag in battle. The uncovered breast was intended as a reminder that Liberty is the mother of France.
Nudes have also been used in religious works, like Michelangelo's painted Christ surrounded by nude saints above the Sistine Chapel altar wall. You can see a clear feeding of the infant Jesus in Jusepe de Ribera's "Madonna and Child" at the Ringling Museum.
Nude females in art are part of the collective mind. Who doesn't know the Venus de Milo? Even having lost arms to time, the Greek goddess of love and beauty is considered the ideal woman.
All of which makes the concern about White's figure art silly.
If unclothed figures are OK for a great church, a European government and publicly funded museums, why isn't it OK for a public library?
The answer may lie in the warring of two old ideals that continue to hold us: The Renaissance ideal, which says bodies stand for truth and beauty, and the Medieval ideal, which says bodies stand for shame.
By craving the security of the medieval tradition and ignoring that of the Renaissance, we keep alive a belief system best illustrated in a 1473 painting. "The Martydom of Saint Agatha" pictures men mutilating the breasts of a female in the belief that the female is a sexual temptation and must be crushed.
Apparently the crushing goes on.
Joan Altabe, a local writer and arts and architecture expert, appears Sundays in the Herald. She is also the author of the book, "Art Behind the Scenes: One Hundred Masters In and Out of Their Studios" ($14.95, Windstorm Creative, 2005). She can be reached at joaltabe@aim.com
Pornography is a different story all together!!!!
The title alone can generate some interesting comments ping.
Yes, the nude body can be artfully represented, but there's a place for it . I never censored my children much, and I am an artist. But I would not want my elementary school children exposed to nude art while perusing the children's book section at the library.
Aside from the ill-informed knock on the Middle Ages, I agree with the article as well. It is a completely non-Catholic tradition, largely Puritan, that is shy about the nude body.
The famous Michelangelo's Crucifixion has Christ completely naked, and that nakedness has a profound and truthful impact.
It is true that nudity can distract from the message, particularly in religious art. This is why it is uncommon in the Middle Ages, when all art was religious art. But not unheard of. Medieval England for example had a tradition of painted churches, -- most vandalized during the Reformation, -- and the paintings often depicted Our Lady bare-breasted, for the same reason Delacroix had Madame Liberty bare-breasted, to emphasize motherhood.
I just prefer that Art sing.
I think the library should respect your wishes, -- it is, after all, not a museum, -- but why, really, would you be concerned with such exposure?
In my view, it is far better to inform the prepubescent child of the look of the adult body of both sexes, if only to remove the sense of mystery when puberty hits.
I have no problem with a prepubescent child seeing nude art. I do hae a problem with a pubescent child being exposed to it.
Perhaps I should reread the article to get the age of "child" clear.
naked either. Even if there was a moral behind it such as "Please be sure to zip up after using the bathroom."You are right.
How are we going to keep an adolescent boy from seeing the nude body for anything else but erotica?
I also do not believe there is nudity in the art at my Methodist church.
I've been that boy.
Of all things, art is the best thing to introduce erotica in a healthy way. Would you rather he looks at porn or at live nudity? In art, he sees a female body as object of veneration rather than exploitation. Which is the only way to deal with the prurient impulse. Christopher West tells that like any other living male, he cannot avoid seeing live female beauty in an erotic way. But he can say this prayer: "Lord thank you for creating this beautiful girl in Your image". Now, this prayer is in every true art. Perhaps if that boy looks at renaisasance nudes more, he will channel his sexuality constructively.
I understand your point! It makes sense to me. Thank you.
I may be showing my age again, but I remember when porn was not as common in our society as it is today. And back then every boy was a lover of art and diligently searched out the art books in the library for lusty perusal.
BTW Rubens messed me up!
*They've also seen a penis, testicles, urine, feces, vomit, snot ect but that doesn't necessarily mean they ought be objects of "art." There is hardly a place now-a-days that isn't sexualized. I don't know what the "art" in question is but there are, no doubt, many texts in that library with photos/pictures/paintings of breasts etc but why the desire to hang it on a wall? And and to call this "censorship" is another thing kids know about - BS
I'll bet ya a prolife organization couldn't put up art of an unborn child in the womb in that same library
Or, are we being subjected to censorship by the newspaper?
****Chalk drawings, which included bared breasts, were taken from view at the library because they were said to be too near the children's section.****
It would depend on how the pictures are presented. After all, there is quite a difference between a Reniasance beauty with a bouquet of flowers and a Heyromonius Bosch painting showing one person sticking flowers where the sun doesn't shine.
And quite a difference between an etching by Rembrandt and one by Mario Tauzin.
LOL! She's been channeling Freud a little too much. St. Agatha was tortured for being a Christian, and one of her punishments was having her breasts cut off. If she had did a little investigation, she would have learned about that easily.
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