Attitudes to nudity and photography as well as other art forms

[BrianShaw]

... They really are thinking about lighting, posing, is that leaf getting in the way in a good or bad way, etc.

What leaf, a fig leaf?

 

[mr rusty]

There is (virtually) no answer to this because attitudes vary so much. Of course, there is a point where nudity, art, sexuality, pornography combine to an extent where someone gets offended. That point is not a singularity but depends on the viewer, their culture and perspective. Yes, for most (all I hope) of people here, there is a point we must not cross that takes us into things that are down right illegal in all cultures, but I don't mind art that to some would definitely be classed as porn; mentioning no names, but there are artists here who have parts of their gallery that should only be entered with an open mind, and why not!. On the other hand, there are certainly cultures where even the very uncontroversial images (to most european eyes) we see in the gallery would be anathema to public display. This subject comes up regularly, and I say live and let live. If you don't like something, don't look. I have never seen anything here that crosses into illegality in any western sense, so what's the big deal. Some of the most interesting images on here have been male nudes, and I'm male, so nudity isn't necessarily sexist. And one of the most disturbing images (to me) on here involved clothed people (and I'm not re-opening an old thread, so won't be specific) My 2p/c

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

The attitude of nudes as porn has changed. While I was in college in the 80's, the women's studies majors railed against naked women in photos produced by male photo students. It was considered exploitation of a women's body. I now work in a university art department's computer lab and I've seen a young women retouching her own nude photo of herself on a with her private area clearly exposed. What ever is consider is art or pornography is a transaction between the creator and the consumer. The intent of the work and why and how it is consumed. What the difference in what transpires in an art museum and in an adult bookstore? What's the difference between public desire and private desire. Is one more shameful than the other? One has more cultural value? I do think that porn does distort the view of sexuality while art hopefully makes us think beyond what is presented to us.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I've heard it said (I forget by whom) that the difference between art and porn is that porn has one purpose only: immediate sexual stimulation. Art is ambiguous - it may or may not have immediate sexual stimulation as a byproduct, but that is not the primary or only intent of the piece.

 

[Alan Klein]

There's a difference between prudishness and modesty. Especially for women.

I wonder how many men who love to look at photos of naked women would jump at the chance to be seen totally naked on a public web site.

 

[darkosaric]

some people see porn in fruits and vegetables, others in trees

Guy went to psychiatrist and they perform some test:

Doctor draw a triangle and ask - what do you see?

-Naked women!

Then he draws a circle - asks again what do you see?

-Naked women!

Same answer to square. Then psychiatrist told him "you are pervert", and he answers - "you are drawing - not me"!

 

[cliveh]

As a heterosexual, I find the sexual nature of viewing a female nude is a distraction from the art of the image. But when viewing something like the picture by Herb Ritts - Fred with tyres, I can more appreciate the artistic merit.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=H...es-GIANT-39x55-Poster-%2F350920847249;225;300

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Remember the movie Frankie and Johnny?

Guy went to psychiatrist and they perform some test:

Doctor draw a triangle and ask - what do you see?

-Naked women!

Then he draws a circle - asks again what do you see?

-Naked women!

Same answer to square. Then psychiatrist told him "you are pervert", and he answers - "you are drawing - not me"!

The cook said "That boy, all he got on his mind is p_ssy. Yea, you open up his head I bet you find is little hairy triangles."

 

[eddie]

I wonder how many men who love to look at photos of naked women would jump at the chance to be seen totally naked on a public web site.

In my youth (and a time I was in better shape), I did do some modeling. A few times the photographer was female. Once, male (and my wife was also in the photos). For one of the female photographers it was part of her Master's thesis show. While it was pre-internet, I was at the opening, with about 100 other people. The photos weren't anonymous- it was easy to tell it was me. Large, silver gelatin prints... At first, I didn't go near the photos I was in, but was conscious of people looking at the photographs then turning to me. That only lasted a few minutes, though. After that, all I felt was a sense of pride in being involved in the project. Alas, I wish I could say that women gave me business cards, or wrote their numbers on my hand, but it didn't happen.

I did it because they were all photographers I respected and trusted. I also had never shot nudes, but hoped to, so I wanted to know what it felt like to be on the other side of the camera. I think the experience served me well when I returned to my normal side of the camera.

 

[removed account4]

I've heard it said (I forget by whom) that the difference between art and porn is that porn has one purpose only: immediate sexual stimulation. Art is ambiguous - it may or may not have immediate sexual stimulation as a byproduct, but that is not the primary or only intent of the piece.

that might be true some of the time not sure about all the time scott ...

there are many subsets of pornography.
some call boudoir photography porn
some call erotica porn
and some call softcore and hardcore porn "art"

i have seen what some might call hardcore porn billed as art / fine art by the maker
and later i am SURE they were sold through galleries as "fine art photography" ...
in my one farsighted, one nearsighted eyes, a pig wearing lipstick is still a pig
... no matter how it is dressed-up...


the difference is that if someone doesn't want to go to a viewing of erotic photography labelled "fine art" they don't have to, and
if they do and say "ewww" that's OK, the person displaying the work probably expected someone to say "ewww" but often times
if someone says "ewww" to what they equate to tasteless or bad nudes in an online gallery they are labelled a prude
or an art hater or anti-whatever ... because they voiced their opinion. if the maker of the artwork
is able to voice their opinion ( by posting the work in the gallery ) why shouldn't a viewer be able to voice their opinion ?
people call bad portraits, or landscapes bad portraits or landscapes why is saying the same thing about a nude taboo
because it shows raw honesty and vulnerability or because it is so hard to make ?
and we don't really live in an honest world, people make up all sorts of bul$hit about their photography
nudes or whatever, whose to say their intent wasn't to create porn and disguise it as art to begin with.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I wasn't intending it to be an all-encompassing complete definition of what is or is not art. Justice Potter's statement still applies: "I can't define it but I know it when I see it". But I do think that comes closer to a definition than many I've heard. Then of course, it takes for granted what is stimulating to everyone, which is obviously not universal. To one person, it's toes, to another, it's fat toes, to a third, it's fat hairy toes, and to a fourth, it's hairy earlobes and toes have nothing to do with it.

 

[gandolfi]

Please try googling

Christinia Copenhagen
.

As a Dane I got interested in this: Wow - yet another Danish Porn actress I don't know about?

(But I don't get the suggestion, even if it is not by said porn actress, and it would be Chriatiania... (with an a))

 

[gandolfi]

i have seen what some might call hardcore porn billed as art / fine art by the maker
and later i am SURE they were sold through galleries as "fine art photography" ...
in my one farsighted, one nearsighted eyes, a pig wearing lipstick is still a pig... no matter how it is dressed-up...

.

yes - but isn't it about how you depict it?

John: I would like to show you some images I have done... (Can't show them here... )

 

[Xmas]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

 

[Gerald C Koch]

But when viewing something like the picture by Herb Ritts - Fred with tyres, I can more appreciate the artistic merit.

The iconic photo "Fred With Tires" I think would be said to possibly be erotic and not pornographic. After all the figure is clothed in very baggy ovdralls. To me the photo portrays great physical strength. Today if one wishes to see erotic and borderline line pornography one need only look at today's advertising photography.

The story behind to photo is said to be that Ritts and a friend were out driving when they experienced car problems. They pulled into a gas station. Fred, who was a student at a local college, happened to be working that day. The rest was history and art.

 

[Maris]

Well, you all know my attitude to it by now. I have no problem with it in just about any form (pedophilic porn being the obvious exception). But getting back to the original subject, I think there is something essential about the nude in art: we NEED to have it because it serves to expose raw truths about us as humans - there's no hiding behind clothes or costumes. Literally stripped down to the absolute minimum, anything included in a nude must be there for a reason, either as a signifier or a distraction.

How well said!

Frankly, the world does not need more pictures of pretty girls without their garments. And the nude in art would seem a desperately tired genre that has run out of things to say. But amazingly it isn't so in at least two ways.

The nude remains an eternal metaphoric space in which aspects of the human condition can be explored and commented upon. The unclad figure, taken out of humdrum context, becomes every-man or every-woman at any time or at all times. If you have a broad visual statement to make about humanity, uncluttered by the here-and-now, the particular, and the picayune, then the nude is what you should use.

It is a blessing born of long tradition that most people are familiar with the nude in art. They can accept the surface view, "this is so and so with their clothes off", and then pass beyond to read the underlying message. The tension between the nude as carnal and the nude as sublime has existed for a long time. Praxiteles (4th Century BCE) knew this when carved his Aphrodite for the city fathers of Knidos and employed his mistress, the famous courtesan Phryne, as the model. The city fathers were embarrassed (some knew Phryne "commercially") and grumpy but they paid Praxiteles fee and the statue became the most famous Aphrodite ever. Photography can likewise celebrate the clash between eros, as felt, and logos, as thought, and it can do it with wit and wisdom.

The second celebration of the nude that will never run dry is celebration of real beauty for its own sake. I think of "What a piece of work is man... Hamlet, Act 2, scene II" and assert that if we cannot admire our common humanity at its best then we fully deserve the miseries of body-denying asceticism. Heaven forfend! Beauty beyond the cliches of fashion and celebrity is everywhere and everywhere fading. The photographer's tout accosting women in the street with "C'mon luv have yer pitcher done. You'll never look more beautiful than today" spoke more truth than he knew. The ancient tombstone inscription "As you are now so once was I. As I am now you soon shall be" is grimly true as well. It is absolutely legitimate to use the photographic time machine to capture beauty in the here and now, a face, a nude, a body asserting a sentiment carnal or chaste, and defend it against an uncaring past and an uncertain future.

It is no fault of the nude that many (most?) people first encounter the nude "other" in sexual situations and become fixated on the equation between nudity and sexuality. This too is worth exploring, rejecting, accepting, or transcending through art. And that includes the art of photography.

 

[Wayne]

That was a pretty good Philosophy of Art lecture Maris. I thought you were a chemist?

 

[Maris]

Thanks for the compliment. The pursuits of science and scientific technology were my profession. But they, by themselves, constitute hard bread indeed to nourish a life. The philosophy, study, and practice of art always supplied much needed leavening.

 

[mr rusty]

Maris, that is a truly beautiful piece of writing. It should be made a sticky on this forum for whenever this subject comes up (yet) again!

 

[Xmas]

Well my pig pen collegue had a play boy centre fold of a girly with staple in navel on interior partition I did not mind in least. My side had an air traffic control map which was 100% work related for the air traffic software we did.

I said one or the female collegues had threatened to paste a play girl centre fold in its place.

'You mean a fella without any clothes?'

'respost deleted to avoid upset to gay males or straight ladies' very risible though

He removed the centre fold.

 

[gandolfi]

How well said!

Frankly, the world does not need more pictures of pretty girls without their garments. And the nude in art would seem a desperately tired genre that has run out of things to say. But amazingly it isn't so in at least two ways.

The nude remains an eternal metaphoric space in which aspects of the human condition can be explored and commented upon. The unclad figure, taken out of humdrum context, becomes every-man or every-woman at any time or at all times. If you have a broad visual statement to make about humanity, uncluttered by the here-and-now, the particular, and the picayune, then the nude is what you should use.

It is a blessing born of long tradition that most people are familiar with the nude in art. They can accept the surface view, "this is so and so with their clothes off", and then pass beyond to read the underlying message. The tension between the nude as carnal and the nude as sublime has existed for a long time. Praxiteles (4th Century BCE) knew this when carved his Aphrodite for the city fathers of Knidos and employed his mistress, the famous courtesan Phryne, as the model. The city fathers were embarrassed (some knew Phryne "commercially") and grumpy but they paid Praxiteles fee and the statue became the most famous Aphrodite ever. Photography can likewise celebrate the clash between eros, as felt, and logos, as thought, and it can do it with wit and wisdom.

The second celebration of the nude that will never run dry is celebration of real beauty for its own sake. I think of "What a piece of work is man... Hamlet, Act 2, scene II" and assert that if we cannot admire our common humanity at its best then we fully deserve the miseries of body-denying asceticism. Heaven forfend! Beauty beyond the cliches of fashion and celebrity is everywhere and everywhere fading. The photographer's tout accosting women in the street with "C'mon luv have yer pitcher done. You'll never look more beautiful than today" spoke more truth than he knew. The ancient tombstone inscription "As you are now so once was I. As I am now you soon shall be" is grimly true as well. It is absolutely legitimate to use the photographic time machine to capture beauty in the here and now, a face, a nude, a body asserting a sentiment carnal or chaste, and defend it against an uncaring past and an uncertain future.

It is no fault of the nude that many (most?) people first encounter the nude "other" in sexual situations and become fixated on the equation between nudity and sexuality. This too is worth exploring, rejecting, accepting, or transcending through art. And that includes the art of photography.

wow - this is where I feel being very Danish: I don't understand most of the above... which I can understand is a shame...

 

[Xmas]

wow - this is where I feel being very Danish: I don't understand most of the above... which I can understand is a shame...

Id not worry over much
Your municipal statues don't have fig leaves.
The UK statues and Swedish statues have fig leaves

At least this was true in the parks I've visited.

Is it general in Denmark?

 

[removed account4]

yes - but isn't it about how you depict it?

yes, maybe you are right ..