Artistic nudity versus pornography

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Author,poet, scholarly Renaissance analyst Judy Kronenfeld in her book KING LEAR and the Naked Truth: Rethinking the Language of Religion and Resistance takes it a step further. Drawing from the academic historian Erwin Panofsky, she writes:

Although Erwin Panofsky argues that the clothed lady is the inferior principle in Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, he emphasizes “the ambivalence of nudity as an iconographical motif.” In fact, the overall stress appears to be on the shamefulness of nudity, rather than on its naked truth, in the group of four symbolical meanings of nudity" distinguished by “medieval moral theology.”
The first of these, “nuditas naturalis”, is the “natural state of man.” “Natural nakedness” represents nature as fallen, perverted,or weak, in a shameful or helpless state “conducive to humility” -that is, requiring grace, culture, art, or discipline to repair or rectify it. “Nuditas virualis” is described as a “symbol of innocence”,“preferably innocence acquired through confession.” Such symbolic nudity employs the Christian trope of divestment of polluted “clothing” to figure the recovery of original innocence, and, as such, uses body to stand for soul.
However because confession repairs man’s"natural" fallen state, the innocence of nuditas virtualis is an achieved innocence. Thus even if nuditas virtualis, and nuditas naturalis as well, are in some degree good, these symbolic categories also suggest the limitations of the natural or the naked.

 

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. . . I was trying to show that there has been a shift in perception, that something that was once considered scandalous smut is now considered (in some circles) to have artsitic merit and be worthy of study, commentary and preservation, and that people can pore over this stuff and talk for hours making academic remarks about the styles of different photographers and the cultural intercontextuality without any inappropriate thoughts even coming into their minds.

In other words, something has shifted in people’s minds. This is a development that has happened within a lifetime, and when we look at the 1950s from today’s perspective, it can be hard to see how people thought the way they did. The shift is not necessarily a one way street. If you look at the development of art over the centuries I think there is evidence of an ebb and flow, of high and low tides. How much more difficult is it to fathom the mores and morality of Micheloangelo’s day without totally studying that period and its thinking?

@Cirdan_XII
This (may we call it a ) paradigm shift is a crucial point, which admits to the fact that we human beings are influenced by our surroundings. When we speak of these things in the general sense, our conclusions usually meet with approval. Perhaps because we’re usually considering what the general consensus was at that time rather than one particular artist’s perception.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work very well when we try to reduce this down to the personal and individual level: We always seem to be brought back to the “eye of the beholder” aphorism.
So while this definition of pornography

PORNOGRAPHY. A description or portrayal of any person or activity that is consciously intended to stimulate immoral sexual feelings. (Etym. Greek porne , prostitute + graphe , writing.

. . . is legitimate , it is incomplete and somewhat arbitrary because it hinges on the intention of the artist and/or producer of the material. It may be that Father Hardon’s definition presupposes that the artist/producer of the material would have a sound conscience. But can we believe that the majority of porn producers have a sound conscience - today ? . . When we have so much evidence of the damage that viewing pornography incurs ? With much less of us going to Confession these days and more of us being influenced by our present surroundings, we tend to become conditioned while sound consciences tend to become rarer.

In our extremely oversexed society of today it is easily possible for someone to be producing material which they personally don’t believe to be pornography while the general public definitely identifies that very same material as pornography.

It begins with conscience, and consciences have to be informed and reformed - otherwise they become deformed.