Today’s Washington Post had an article on classical art that caught my eye. Sculpture of nude women will do that and the Naiad by Canova is well sculpted, displaying a very attractive woman.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/06/AR2009110600041.html?hpid=artslot
The author relates the link between what we view as classical art – stripped of much of its sexuality- and the pornography of the day. Of particular interest was a reference to a series of sonnets penned in 1525 /26 by Pietro Aretino. I Sonetti Lussuriosi, along with 16 or graphic illustrations were banned by the Vatican, along with I Modi (The Sexual Positions) engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi (1475-1534), after the original designs by Giulio Romano (1499-1546. Some few copies were saved and the sonnets with 16 accompanying illustrations can be purchased today for as little as $4800.00 if one is of a mind to own such a document. Some of the drawings can be viewed on line if one invests the time. If one invests time and money, all can be viewed on line.
Mind you, I’m not posting a link to these drawings, the decision to view them should be entirely yours and I will not point you any more directly to them than I already have.
Suffice it to say that classical nudes are not the “chaste nudes” that curators and art historians described in the 50’s and 60’s to keep the censors and fundamentalists out the parts of museums and libraries that required adult thought processes. These drawings and many other works were conceived of and executed as erotic art, the porn of its day.
When I have the opportunity to view classical nudes in any media, paintings, stone, drawings, I’m always appreciative of the fact that the women depicted are, in general, physically appealing and possessed of lines and curves that are in proportion to their height and apparent weight. Reubens’ women always appear, well, Reubenesque. Goya’s Maja is realistic in appearance. Botticelli’s Venus stresses reality, if one ignores the absence of freckles, moles, warts, scars, and other nicks and gouges that we all acquire as we age.
This sense of reality when viewing the classical works of art is, for me at least, one of the things I enjoy in viewing them. I have always enjoyed art museums and periodically find books containing the works of a particular artist in the library and check them out in an attempt to broaden my knowledge base. It has been a long time since the required art appreciation course in university. And that course was too quickly over after covering too little material.
Like every male of my age, I’ve read the articles in one or more “Play Boy." I’ve seen more than one or two porn films but find myself looking for a better script, often before the opening credits have completed. I don’t get the same sense of enjoyment and frank wonder at the artist’s talents when I happen to see what we market as pornography today. The models/actresses are so unrealistic as to be unappealing. Their proportions, thanks to silicone or saline, are just plain wrong. The wonderful fluid motion that characterizes women walking, running, or engaged in any common activity, is not there. I might as well be watching a department store mannequin. Due to the loss of proportion and the lack of motion, there’s nothing below a face with too much makeup to hold my attention or interest. Show me any woman without surgical augmentation and I can find some of the beauty that a truly great artist can see easily. Like the fashion industry, the pornography industry has chosen to focus only on the outer aspects of the bell curve that is female pulchritude. The freaks, self-starved or surgically altered, dominate the eyes of too many of today’s artists and too many of today’s fashion designers. The beauty that originates in the women who fill the bell curve is seldom seen. That is their loss and ours. My wife, Gloria, has those classical proportions, form and lines, that thrill me and would thrill any real artist. I am a most fortunate man.
While I chose not to post a link to what is decidedly pornography from the 16th century, I have no qualms about posting a link to Nudes in art history.
http://www.ocaiw.com/galleria_niah/index.php?lang=en
"Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither..."(Job 1:21)
Don’t worry about finding anything but real art by recognized masters at this site. Enjoy the paintings and sculpture.
There was an article on CBS “Sunday Morning” today concerning the fashion industry’s discovery that most models look nothing like most women. The average American woman is apparently classified as a “plus size” when trying to find clothes that fit. Even in an article about designing for “average” women, the designer they interviewed said, emphatically, that “clothes look better on skinny models.” For “skinny” substitute anorexic. There is nothing about an anorexic human, clothed or naked, that I find appealing in any manner. I’m reminded of stacks of bodies, prisoners starved to death, in the camps of the Third Reich. And, in fact, another quote in the article, from an un-named German fashion critic was, “Who wants to see a round woman?”
It has always seemed to me that fashion designers hate women. They continually try to put them into shoes that ruin their feet and clothes that require starvation. Yet women seem to accept this as normal and make no organized effort to change it.
I would think that a yearlong boycott of all fashion houses, a refusal by women to buy anything not designed, constructed, and marketed for, for, and to average-sized women could be quite effective in changing the course of the industry. I’d love to see it happen. I’d love to see the fashion industry shown that women can exist without it. But I’m not holding my breath.
Dinner last night was excellent. We drove into Jonesborough and had our evening repast at The Dining Room. Gloria had a Cuban roast pork sandwich with onions, cilantro, Manchego cheese with black beans and rice. I had a pressed Cuban sandwich, also with black beans and rice. We finished off the meal with expresso, came home and crashed early.
Today has been a bright sunny day filled with joy and fun.
Dinner tonight is eggplant sautéed with sauce Bolognese, put back into the shells, and baked with Romano and provolone,
As Veterans’ Day approaches, I’ll close with a link to another well written article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08alexander.html?emc=eta1
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You know me, I'm one of those round women of whom you speak.
ReplyDeleteI'm like Popeye, I yam what I yam.
In my current work position, I have a wonderful opportunity to expose the young women I work with to ideas they might not otherwise encounter.
When management decided to vigorously enforce the dress code (yes. In the 21st Century.) I pointed out to the ladies that this was just one more way for the Man to Keep Us Down. As my mother would say, "Comes the dawn!" They hadn't ever thought that perhaps time would be better spent giving employess training in skills that could take them to new better jobs than critiquing their fashion choices.