Nudity and Art

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ForwardProgress

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From my research, it seems that nudity in art is ok, for the sake of portraying something that is not overtly sexual, ie, venus demilo, or David, Sistine Chapel, etc…

How about photographs…they are just another medium, as a canvas is to a painter that is painting a real model, right?

How does the church’s teachings that require modesty not conflict with someone modeling nude for art? Modesty is the moderation in one’s appearance, so if someone takes nude pictures for the sake of art to display to 3rd parties, they are being immodest and therefore sinning? Seems like it would make all nude art based on a re-presentation of a live person sinful in all regards.

Discuss.
 
Taking a photo of anything is not exactly art.
Take a skyscraper for an example. Take a photo of it, and you know as much about the building as you did before you took the photo.
Draw the skyscraper as an artist, as leonardo or whoever, and you will try and understand it. Which means removing its curtain walls to see the structure beneath. I think art is about understanding.
 
If the photo was intended as art, then it’s art.

To just take a snapshot is not exactly art.
Artistic photography needs proper planning, composition, lighting effects, etc.

In some cases it may be more difficult to see if it was intended as art or not, but with digital media these days, one cannot exclude all photography online from art, there are definately some very good artists around using photography as their chosen medium.
 
ForwardProgress said:
From my research, it seems that nudity in art is ok, for the sake of portraying something that is not overtly sexual, ie, venus demilo, or David, Sistine Chapel, etc…

How about photographs…they are just another medium, as a canvas is to a painter that is painting a real model, right?

How does the church’s teachings that require modesty not conflict with someone modeling nude for art? Modesty is the moderation in one’s appearance, so if someone takes nude pictures for the sake of art to display to 3rd parties, they are being immodest and therefore sinning? Seems like it would make all nude art based on a re-presentation of a live person sinful in all regards.

Discuss.
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Based on what is taught in the Catechism (specifically paragraph 2523) I would say that there is a definite conflict with nude modeling and nude photography. I would say that a Catholic with a properly formed conscience would probably not be a nude model or take photographs of nudes…however artistic they may be. Outside of the artisitic merits of such images they could definitly lead others to sin or near occasions of sin.
 
Do a search. We had a HUGE thread on this not that long ago. Unless it was lost in the crash/hack.
 
I_Leatherman said:
I think art is about understanding.
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Art is about exploration. It is about a search for understanding and wisdom. It is about communicating truth through aesthetic beauty.

Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time (and a devout Christian), says that all art – whether the artists desires it or not – communicates something of God’s truth. Artists, she says, are God’s instruments, and if they seek to do His will, they serve Him by serving the work they create.

In my mind, there is nothing inherently immoral about nude photographs, just as there is nothing inherently immoral about nude paintings. A photograph of a skyscraper, a nude model, or a couple of Marines hoisting a flag on a battle-torn island can all be called art.

Is there objectively “bad” art? Sure. Is there objectively immoral art? Absolutely. These are the work of artists who lack skills and/or the desire to serve the Lord through their work.

Is the Lord at work through a film like The Passion of the Christ, which features no nudity? I think so. Is He at work in a film like Schindler’s List – which at one point depicts many nude women crammed into a gas chamber? I beleive so.

Is the Lord at work in The Chronicles of Narnia? I would say yes. Is He at work in The DaVinci Code? Believe it or not, I would say He is, whether or not Dan Brown wants Him to be – if for no other reason but the fact that it’s gotten many people to research the actual history of the Church and learn more about it than they knew before (despite the fact that it has undoubtedly poisoned some people’s understandings of the Church).

Is there a difference between art – good or bad – and smut? Oh yes…but sometimes it’s blurry. Therein lies the moral minefield: if one is prone to impure thoughts and actions, one ought to steer clear of it entirely.

A final point: God created man in His image. In doing so, He endowed us with the ability to (imperfectly and temporally) create. Art is one venue in which we actualize that aspect of our being.

Please note the lack of a nihil obstat on this post. 😉

Peace,
Dante
 
PennitentMan said:
If the photo was intended as art, then it’s art.
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In art, there is a difference between ‘intention’ and ‘goal or direction.’

Some say that intention is the death of art. What does this mean? It means that the intended idea has become an idol. It has destroyed the natural marriage or dance between idea and medium.

Does this mean that anything goes? No.

Even in completely non-objective art, what makes it art is if it evokes a sense of time and therefore tells a human story. How does it do that?

Take work #1. Take work #2. If there is some sense of continuity and growth between work #1 and work #2, then both works are art. If continuity and growth are non-existent, then both works are craft not art.

There are many many other indicators of whether or not a work is art. Dennis Cliff says that art has mystery. Richard Diebenkorn says that art must be difficult. Mark Rothko says that art is a response to tragic history.

And so on. It is useful to look at what the great artists considered to be art.
 
When Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel there was some question as to whether or not Adam should have been nude. However, Genesis tells us that after the Fall Adam and Eve clothed themselves out of shame.

Moreover God clothed them in the skins of animals. Given that folks prior to Noah’s Rainbow were vegetarians, those skins were likely a shocking symbol to the generation of Adam and Eve which imho were a symbol of death but also prefigured the redemptive Blood of the Lamb.

(Note the lack of Nihil Obstat on my profile.)

:tiphat: :rotfl:

Christian history draws heavily on Greek culture. The lingua franca in Israel at the time of Christ was likely Greek more than it was Latin or even Hebrew or Aramaic.

The Greek aesthetic was about the physical being a manifestation of psychological (or spiritual) virtue or vice. They were very much into a world of ideas opposed to a world of physical being. The Greeks exalted physical beauty as an art form. Hence the preponderence of games and sports (which were contested in the nude) and the preponderence of nude art.

The ends of Greek art were not about sexual titillation. They were genuine attempts to touch the Divine.

The difference about ends in this case and intention in a prior post is that it was not only the vision of the artist which was at work. The artists did understand and respect their media. But also the culture in which they worked understood both method and media. There was therefore – as a postmodernist would say – a merging of horizons in Greek art.

The merging of horizons is another feature of what constitutes art.
 
DanteAlighieri said:
Is the Lord at work in… The DaVinci Code? Believe it or not, I would say He is, whether or not Dan Brown wants Him to be – if for no other reason but the fact that it’s gotten many people to research the actual history of the Church and learn more about it than they knew before (despite the fact that it has undoubtedly poisoned some people’s understandings of the Church).
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While it is true that some art provokes and that Dan Brown’s work is provocative, does that necessarily mean that Dan Brown’s work is art? Is not one end of art truth?

The work of Joseph Beuys (Fat on Chair) is provocative. But there is an underlying integrity to his work; a respect for truth; an unflinching eye for the soul of truth.

This cannot be said of Dan Brown’s work. He may have provoked folks to learn more about Church history, but that does not mean that his work is artful. It may actually mean that the response to his work is artful.

Perhaps Beuys’s work is – paradoxically – easier in a way to understand because it is so difficult to understand. It is unpretentious and bald and guileless.

Whereas in Brown’s work there is the illusion of understandability, of facility; but it is fundamentally pretentious and buttressed at every corner with deception.
 
I don’t see it as sinful, as long as it’s not overtly sexual.

I think we need to be careful about saying that nude art is sinful because it could send the wrong message (“the naked body is evil”). I’ve seen some art where the nude body is portrayed as beautiful and dignified and there are those who need to see that. We don’t need to be those who put drapes over nude statues because we find them offensive.
 
:yawn: Dead issue… see the link to the other thread. Long closed.
 
Ani_Ibi said:
a) I usually don’t participate in Art threads because they don’t stimulate me. Thought I’d give this one a run.

b) Is this thread closed?

🙂
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I certainly hope not as there were questions I had asked that were VERY relevant and which were unanswered. Having reviewed that thread I posted earlier to which was just mentioned I have a new question:
  1. Can you provide me with specific criteria to differentiate between tasteful and moral nude art and pornography?
  2. Is sexual art (art that depicts sexual situations) considered always Pornography?
 
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http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k222/dodo123_01/Raphael.jpg Possibly if our culture had developed in the South American rainforests where clothes rot away after three weeks or so this would not be an issue. All of your ancestral paintings in the great dining hall in the brazilnut tree would be in the nude, and very dignified too, I’m sure.🤷
 
I_Leatherman said:
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k222/dodo123_01/Pieta.jpg

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k222/dodo123_01/Raphael.jpg Possibly if our culture had developed in the South American rainforests where clothes rot away after three weeks or so this would not be an issue. All of your ancestral paintings in the great dining hall in the brazilnut tree would be in the nude, and very dignified too, I’m sure.🤷
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I think its HIGH TIME we define what nude means. The Pieta is NOT nude. Crucifixes do not show Our Lord NUDE. To me a nude photo of a man is one which shows him wearing NO CLOTHES whatsoever. When I look at a crucifix Our Lord is wearing some clothes, albeit not very much.
 
The question is about models also. Michaelangelos Pieta had to be studied in the nude, it is impossible to make realistic figurative sculpture without years and years of studying human anatomy.
Heres an El Greco or two or three;
I think you cannot make art or anything else if you don’t know what you’re doing. Figurative art needs nude models. Nudity, or the human figure, can be further used to express ideas about the human condition which just would not scan if the figures were wearing woolly jumpers, specs and wellies.
As someone said, its what comes from within your heart that makes one unclean, not what enters you from without.
If this were not true we’d all be finished.

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Opening of the Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse.

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St. Martin and the Beggar

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Ressurection
 
Church_Militant said:
:yawn: Dead issue… see the link to the other thread. Long closed.
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Also I have to clarify that I am unable to use the links to other CA threads. There is something wrong which the forum admin is attempting to correct. A few weeks ago I couldn’t even log onto the forums, but the FA fixed that for which I am very thankful.
 
By childofmary1143
  1. Can you provide me with specific criteria to differentiate between tasteful and moral nude art and pornography?
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  1. Is sexual art (art that depicts sexual situations) considered always Pornography?
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In regard to your first question, I would have to say that the fundamental difference between moral nude art and pornography is the disposition of the subject. Is the person attempting to arouse erotic desire or are they just living… taking a bath, going for a walk, etc. A good way to determine this is in the subject’s expression, are they trying to put the “come-hither” on you or is there some other expression about them which draws your attention away from sexual thoughts… joy, pain, etc. These are the criteria I have created for myself based solely on the Church’s doctrine and my own conscience to determine the truth of an artistic scene and, for me, they have worked wonderfully.

Now as to your second question, the expressions of the lovers is what I would look at. Are they depicting the joy and love in the image which we as Catholics attribute to this sacred act? Or is it merely an attempt to display some erotic, overly-sexual situation? Now I personally would prefer to see a nude as opposed to a sexual scene, but if the situation is given the due respect it deserves as a marital act of mutual respect, beauty, and love, then I think it can probably be viewed as art and not pornography.

God bless, gw
 
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