Back to the question of nude modeling

[Paddy_Walker]

I can see that many here would be unsuitable for a missionary vocation, medical vocation, marriage and probably lots of other things. Lest you forget, we are born naked and we will die naked. We were created naked to live naked. And many people in Amazonian rainforests still live naked and pay no attention to it. Even in this cold, wet country we have the Forty Foot where you can jump naked into the sea, winter or summer. Most of the people who do are ancient and wrinkly.
Being an artist is a profession, not a mickey mouse job. As an animator you can earn $250,000 a year, but you are expected to be perfect. An artist who cannot do art will not last long. Sculpture budgets are often $1,000,000, and you cannot have amateurs working with a budget like that.
Art is a profession. It is serious business. The amount of processes and paperwork involved in commissioning work is considerable. You can end up with a stack of forms 6 inches high of every known and unknown kind. No, I’m afraid that art is for the professionals. And if ever you have to get a figure right for commission or for gallery you are not going to risk ruining your reputation and your profession any more than a doctor or surgeon would.:twocents:

 

[GEddie]

Except that most people probably don’t die naked, unless they die while sleeping or on an operating table.

I would hope though, that in our Resurrectional Bodies, our innocent naked skin would be restored.

ICXC NIKA!

 

[Paddy_Walker]

Except that most people probably don’t die naked, unless they die while sleeping or on an operating table.

I would hope though, that in our Resurrectional Bodies, our innocent naked skin would be restored.

ICXC NIKA!

Oh my gosh! you sleep naked??

 

[GEddie]

Oh my gosh! you sleep naked??

Doesn’t everybody???

If God meant us to be naked, we’d have been born that way!!!

ICXC NIKA!

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

It all depends. What’s the point of the nude modeling?
Is it for artistic purposes? What kind of poses are involved?
Does the modeling involve anything “suggestive”?

 

[jmcrae]

The point of nude modelling is to learn to draw the human figure with accuracy. The models are both male and female, and of many ages and figure types. Unlike fashion models, ther are very few “sexy” models among artist models.

The poses vary, but none of them are intentionally suggestive. The purpose of the poses is to allow the artist to view the limbs from a variety of different angles.

The same course of studies also includes drawing the corpse with the skin off, and drawing the human skeleton - again with a variety of subjects of both sexes and all different sizes and ages.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

The point of nude modelling is to learn to draw the human figure with accuracy. The models are both male and female, and of many ages and figure types. Unlike fashion models, ther are very few “sexy” models among artist models.

The poses vary, but none of them are intentionally suggestive. The purpose of the poses is to allow the artist to view the limbs from a variety of different angles.

The same course of studies also includes drawing the corpse with the skin off, and drawing the human skeleton - again with a variety of subjects of both sexes and all different sizes and ages.

Ah, smashing!
I see no issue.
You may have already heard what (To Be Saint) Pope John Paul II said about nudity.
I’m sure based on your description, this modelling has the Moral Seal of Approval.

 

[OurLadyPray4US]

Over the past 40 years, the secular media has removed privacy from its proper place and turned sexual intimacy into a plaything. Art is not a bulletproof shield or an excuse. “It’s art” should never remove from our minds the goal: lust. Today, that is too often the case.

The excuse consistently offered here are the Sistine Chapel and ancient statues. No one buys or looks at such photos or paintings or statues for their erotic value today.

I worked in a hospital for nearly 10 years. At times, parts of the body needed to be uncovered for the purpose of treatment. This was understood by the patient, doctor and nurses as necessary. There was no other motive.

“Art” is not a magic word.

Dear Ed,

I have been reading your posts with great interest.

Below I will present some of the experiences of my generation - a bunch of kids who experienced puberty during the late 1970s - early 1980s, in an environment where pornography was not readily available. We used art as our substitute for porn.

I remember I was 7th or 8th grade when our arts teacher first showed us the painting by Botticelli, The Birth of Venus. Poor arts teacher tried to explain something about the importance of the nude in arts, but her voice was drown out by giggles, oohs and aahs, as we boys stared at the painting with wide eyes. Yeah, I know, I’m bracing myself for other posters on CAF to jump on me and say that my whole generation was a bunch of perverts, but please don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just trying to give a faithful account of our reactions, as boys experiencing puberty, to what was presented before us. And our reactions had a lot more to do with sexual arousal, than with appreciation of art, that’s for sure.

Also, I remember Liberty Leading the People, by Delacroix… this painting was some kind of holy cow to our Marxist and communist teachers, while we boys giggled some more, and rolled our eyes looking at the lady with exposed breasts…

Oh boy, we were not buying ANY of it! Our hormones were raging, and that’s the TRUTH!

OK, I hear it already, CAF members chastising me, we were all perverts.

I concede, dear CAF members, and I congratulate you for diagnosing my whole generation as perverts, you are probably right.

Also, our TV stations and movie theaters (70s-80s and later 90s) were serving us a steady stream of movies to keep us sexually aroused:

-Michelangelo Antonioni
-Bernardo Bertolucci
-Federico Fellini
-Pier Paolo Pasolini
-Marco Ferreri
-Roger Vadim
-Jean-Luc Godard
-Francois Truffaut
-Jean-Jacques Beineix
-Eric Roehmer
-Andrei Tarkovsky
-Luis Bunuel
-Stanley Kubrick
-Peter Greenaway
-Paul Verhoeven
-Paul Thomas Anderson
-Robert Altman
-Jiri Menzel
-Pedro Almodovar
-Miklos Jancso
-Karoly Makk

…and so on.

I remember, how utterly disappointed we were at about 15 years old, once after we stayed awake late into the night and watched a very long movie entitled Rocco and His Brothers (by Luchino Visconti), and there were NO NUDE WOMEN AT ALL in that movie! You see, someone told us that there would be nude women in that movie (don’t all Italian and French art movies feature nude women?? ), we boys stayed awake and watched a rather boring (well - boring to us - at that time) movie, we sacrificed half of our night for it, and in the end, NOTHING!

I also remember this: the girls giggling, seeing a replica of Michelangelo’s David.

I guess my whole generation were perverts… boys and girls alike…

I’m just saying… I’m telling the truth. This is how we took nudity in arts.

Later on when I became more serious about religion, quite a few of my DVD movies went to the trash can. If they had a nude scene, I threw them to the trash can. Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Roehmer, Fellini… I really love these artists. But I threw some of their movies to the trash. I chose not to even sell them or trade them in.

Nowadays, I’m a scientist. The artists’ infatuation with nude scenes reminds me of the scientists’ infatuation with embryonic stem cell research. Spiritual searchers’ infatuation with the occult aspects of yoga, with astrology, and so on.

I’m not against the human body, but I don’t see how can the artist show the nude body without harming the models, harming himself (the artist), and harming the audience.

I still don’t get it, why is it necessary for Michelangelo’s David to be naked?

I know, I’m just a stupid non-artist (I was good at technical drawing, but that’s it), however I still don’t get it.

 

[Paddy_Walker]

Life drawing is the technical drawing of realistic artists.
Life drawing is the physics, chemistry and maths of the scientist.
If I had to make a horse for a million dollars but I refused to look at a horse… …do I just make it up?
Before you can sculpt a realistic figure clothed or not you have to understand and make the human form naked, and then you cloth it, if you are adding clothes.
Leaving the form naked is artistic choice. A painting of Adam and Eve would get the same giggling response if they were painted fully clothed. It just depends on what the piece of artwork you are making demands.

And differently than some I don’t consider film to be artwork, per se. Though it can be artistic.

 

[Thinking10]

Dear Ed,

Later on when I became more serious about religion, quite a few of my DVD movies went to the trash can. If they had a nude scene, I threw them to the trash can. Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Roehmer, Fellini… I really love these artists. But I threw some of their movies to the trash. I chose not to even sell them or trade them in.

Nowadays, I’m a scientist. The artists’ infatuation with nude scenes reminds me of the scientists’ infatuation with embryonic stem cell research. Spiritual searchers’ infatuation with the occult aspects of yoga, with astrology, and so on.

I’m not against the human body, but I don’t see how can the artist show the nude body without harming the models, harming himself (the artist), and harming the audience.

I still don’t get it, why is it necessary for Michelangelo’s David to be naked?

I know, I’m just a stupid non-artist (I was good at technical drawing, but that’s it), however I still don’t get it.

Nudity = The human body

There is nothing more to it than that.

Is there something wrong with the human body? If the body isn’t being used for anything objectionable, what is wrong with the body? The way the body is used is what can sometimes be cause for immorality, not the body itself.

Just like anything, the human body is not immoral by itself. Just like a weapon, a vehicle, or anything else, a body can sometimes be used in a way that is immoral, but that doesn’t make the physical thing itself the problem.

 

[johndelacruz]

For me, the issue is not whether or not beholding the nude human form is sinful or not - it seems settled to me that the nude human body is good, clean, holy in itself, and can even be a window to behold the unseen God, if viewed rightly and innocently, as God intends - the teachings of the Theology of the Body can do this

However, I know that many (if not most) people (especially men) do not see a beautiful nude body this way, instead it can be a temptation to lust.

Knowing this, my issue with all this is: Is it, as a rule, always sinful for a woman (or man) to pose nude in photographs for innocent artistic reasons, knowing that those images will be available for public viewing (online or in printed books) by people who may not have innocent or artistic views of the human body? If it is sinful for them to pose nude publicly like that, then to me it would seem sinful to seek out those images, since it would be participating in someone else’s sin - even if I am able to look without lust, to look still seems participation in sin since the person who consented to pose publicly nude was committing a sin in making the image.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[edwest2]

Dear Ed,

I have been reading your posts with great interest.

Below I will present some of the experiences of my generation - a bunch of kids who experienced puberty during the late 1970s - early 1980s, in an environment where pornography was not readily available. We used art as our substitute for porn.

I remember I was 7th or 8th grade when our arts teacher first showed us the painting by Botticelli, The Birth of Venus. Poor arts teacher tried to explain something about the importance of the nude in arts, but her voice was drown out by giggles, oohs and aahs, as we boys stared at the painting with wide eyes. Yeah, I know, I’m bracing myself for other posters on CAF to jump on me and say that my whole generation was a bunch of perverts, but please don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just trying to give a faithful account of our reactions, as boys experiencing puberty, to what was presented before us. And our reactions had a lot more to do with sexual arousal, than with appreciation of art, that’s for sure.

Also, I remember Liberty Leading the People, by Delacroix… this painting was some kind of holy cow to our Marxist and communist teachers, while we boys giggled some more, and rolled our eyes looking at the lady with exposed breasts…

Oh boy, we were not buying ANY of it! Our hormones were raging, and that’s the TRUTH!

OK, I hear it already, CAF members chastising me, we were all perverts.

I concede, dear CAF members, and I congratulate you for diagnosing my whole generation as perverts, you are probably right.

Also, our TV stations and movie theaters (70s-80s and later 90s) were serving us a steady stream of movies to keep us sexually aroused:

-Michelangelo Antonioni
-Bernardo Bertolucci
-Federico Fellini
-Pier Paolo Pasolini
-Marco Ferreri
-Roger Vadim
-Jean-Luc Godard
-Francois Truffaut
-Jean-Jacques Beineix
-Eric Roehmer
-Andrei Tarkovsky
-Luis Bunuel
-Stanley Kubrick
-Peter Greenaway
-Paul Verhoeven
-Paul Thomas Anderson
-Robert Altman
-Jiri Menzel
-Pedro Almodovar
-Miklos Jancso
-Karoly Makk

…and so on.

I remember, how utterly disappointed we were at about 15 years old, once after we stayed awake late into the night and watched a very long movie entitled Rocco and His Brothers (by Luchino Visconti), and there were NO NUDE WOMEN AT ALL in that movie! You see, someone told us that there would be nude women in that movie (don’t all Italian and French art movies feature nude women?? ), we boys stayed awake and watched a rather boring (well - boring to us - at that time) movie, we sacrificed half of our night for it, and in the end, NOTHING!

I also remember this: the girls giggling, seeing a replica of Michelangelo’s David.

I guess my whole generation were perverts… boys and girls alike…

I’m just saying… I’m telling the truth. This is how we took nudity in arts.

Later on when I became more serious about religion, quite a few of my DVD movies went to the trash can. If they had a nude scene, I threw them to the trash can. Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Roehmer, Fellini… I really love these artists. But I threw some of their movies to the trash. I chose not to even sell them or trade them in.

Nowadays, I’m a scientist. The artists’ infatuation with nude scenes reminds me of the scientists’ infatuation with embryonic stem cell research. Spiritual searchers’ infatuation with the occult aspects of yoga, with astrology, and so on.

I’m not against the human body, but I don’t see how can the artist show the nude body without harming the models, harming himself (the artist), and harming the audience.

I still don’t get it, why is it necessary for Michelangelo’s David to be naked?

I know, I’m just a stupid non-artist (I was good at technical drawing, but that’s it), however I still don’t get it.

You have the right attitude. We, meaning Catholics, were NOT promoting the opening of PORN Bookstores everywhere, or strip clubs or topless bars. And all of that cost a lot of money. A man once said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Today, porn is the drug of choice for too many. And pornographers knew that addiction would occur.

At a young age, and without proper guidance, I can understand why you were so curious to see a nude or partly nude female(s). My hormones raged as well. Then I learned that nudity has no place in modern society. None. Art is no excuse.

You get it. I took art classes but it wasn’t until I could build and light anything from imagination, any life drawing classes I took were a waste.

Art is not a bulletproof shield. No, you were curious. You got access to perverted content and did the right thing - threw it in the trash.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Paddy_Walker]

For me, the issue is not whether or not beholding the nude human form is sinful or not - it seems settled to me that the nude human body is good, clean, holy in itself, and can even be a window to behold the unseen God, if viewed rightly and innocently, as God intends - the teachings of the Theology of the Body can do this

However, I know that many (if not most) people (especially men) do not see a beautiful nude body this way, instead it can be a temptation to lust.

Knowing this, my issue with all this is: Is it, as a rule, always sinful for a woman (or man) to pose nude in photographs for innocent artistic reasons, knowing that those images will be available for public viewing (online or in printed books) by people who may not have innocent or artistic views of the human body? If it is sinful for them to pose nude publicly like that, then to me it would seem sinful to seek out those images, since it would be participating in someone else’s sin - even if I am able to look without lust, to look still seems participation in sin since the person who consented to pose publicly nude was committing a sin in making the image.

Thoughts anyone?

Thoughts are this? Photographs are almost no use for life modeling. Photography flattens images. As an artist it is necessary to see the model in three dimensional form, hence, life model. A photograph is a set of light and shaded areas but to model sucessfully the human form, or any other form it is necessary to move around the three dimensional form to see how it works. And as jpmerger, I think said, hardly any life model is attractive, at least none I have used. You must view the subject as a professional would.

 

[jmcrae]

I agree that it’s inappropriate for children to participate in life studies - either as artists or as models. Kids in Grade 8 also snigger and giggle when they have to change a diaper, too; yet most adults can manage it.

I still don’t get it, why is it necessary for Michelangelo’s David to be naked?

Clothing is style; style is fixed in time (a single decade, in many cases) - David is meant to be eternal.

 

[thewanderer]

I’m not against the human body, but I don’t see how can the artist show the nude body without harming the models, harming himself (the artist), and harming the audience.

I still don’t get it, why is it necessary for Michelangelo’s David to be naked?

You have the right attitude.

Peace,
Ed

Can I just ask for a clarification? OurLadyPray4Us has made it clear that he believes no art, not even art such as Michelangelo’s David (and by extension I assume the Sistine Chapel) ought to portray the nude human form.

You have stated that OurLadyPray4Us has the right attitude towards art. Yet you have previously claimed to accept things such as the Sistine Chapel etc as legitimate forms of art that should be permitted. Did you intend to modify your opinion to say that the Church is wrong for allowing the nude paintings in the Sistine Chapel to remain uncensored? or do you in fact disagree with that part of OurLadyPray4Us’s opinion and only meant to agree with his attitude of suspicion towards the idea of nude art today?