Public Nudity

[OrphanPip]

There is a feeder fetish after all, someone out there finds that very erotic.

[Delta40]

I love Freud's work and had big sue as my avatar for a while. A realist indeed.

[OrphanPip]

Also, speaking of surprisingly pornographic art, I took this picture of a 10th century statue of Krishna, but I didn't notice what was going on in his lap until I went over my pictures the day after.

[ftil]

stlukesguild wrote:

Artists throughout history have stressed the sensuality and sexual attractiveness of women... but this does not mean that these artists assume that women are nothing more than sexual beings to be judged according to their sexual attractiveness. Are we to assume that Monet was oblivious to the growth of the modern city and urban Paris because of his focus upon the landscape, or that Bonnard was unaware of the ravages of war that were tearing through France at the time he was painting bucolic scenes such as this?

Well, they did. But we have to admit that women are portrayed in a different ways today than in the past. The paintings you posted don’t constitute the majority of contemporary art that depicts women. You may not see it as you are a male. However, I didn’t see it either until a male friend asked me why I posted erotic paintings. I was shocked but when I looked again at those paintings I had to admit that he was right. If artists emphasize eroticism and sensuality, they fragment women to being a sexual object. Artists are not free from programming. Jean Kilbourne beautifully expressed what has been done to women through media and advertisement. Artists do the same consciously or unconsciously.

Killing Us Softly 3 Advertising's Image of Women
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...68502337678412

[JuniperWoolf]

In my experience quite a lot of girls watch porn and self-cater themselves too. Though amongst girls it is more taboo to talk of such things, especially when guys can hear.

*verifies* There's some amazingly well-done porn out there, and contrary to popular belief, women do have a sex drive. They just hush it up.

Though porn really needs to step up its game. The plot lines are affected and the characterization is shallow and confusing. And the dialogue is never witty, and never interesting, it just is there like an ugly vase at the center of the livign room.

Yeah, and mainstream porn also never shows the male's face. It's annoying and off-putting, like watching a random girl having sex with someone's amputated, floating pelvis.

Is flesh always necessarily erotic or sexual?

Well no, especially because that's an animal. Not many people are turned on by this:

For anybody in support of public nudity:

It reminds me of that H. P. Lovecraft story, The Rats in the Walls. This secret society raised herds of humans in order to ritualistically eat them. They made them crawl around on all fours because they were "animals" and they brought them out to graze in order to make them fat. They were described as excessively pink, and lumpy like this picture, partly because the human-cattle were inbred.

Great contribution to the thread, Emil/Brian.

[Vonny]

Thanks for your reply Luke.

I didn’t mean to call a person trash back there – I was just speaking of the tattoos, but I shouldn’t have used that word.

I have contradictions in my thinking that I don’t understand. For instance, my ears are pierced. I’m not sure why I’m not bothered by pierced ears, but I'm grossed out by other piercings.

My thinking has probably been colored from hearing my brothers talk all of my life. My gay brother and his partner like women a lot, but they have issues with "trashy" women. My brother’s partner is in a supervisory position, and he constantly has to enforce a dress code on young women. He had hired a woman from Washington and he had to say to her, "You can’t floss here." (For people who don’t know what that is, I won’t say. I didn’t know, he had to explain it to me.) Maybe I shouldn’t tell this, but he is a comedian, and he goes on and on making fun of these "trashy" women. And they like lesbian women who are ordinary women, but not any kind of "butch" woman or "dyke."

On the subject of porn: A few years ago, I saw a man counselor for a while. He was more than twice my age. There was a "miscommunication" between us. I scratched his face, from the top of his forehead to his chin. He walked around for quite a few days with red "ribbons" down his face that he had a lot of trouble explaining. Anyway, when I scratched him, I was surprised when he didn't get angry. Instead, he completely backed down. He began to confess things to me about his "activities" over many years of his life. He was a Christian, he claimed, and he felt guilty. He had gone to strip clubs and different kinds of places where women danced. He told me that when he looked into those women’s eyes they usually looked as though their eyes were dead, and their souls were dead. This guy had been a counselor for many years and so he understood women very well. I can’t in a few sentences reproduce what he explained to me, but most women working in this "industry" are very damaged and vulnerable women. So to me, I see abuse in this entertainment.

As a teenager I sought out porn, I guess. Some girls would bring their father’s magazines and books to school and we would stand around in the hallways with 3 or 4 of us looking at this, or all of us reading a book. What I noticed is that porn is not about sex and arousal, as the definition that someone put up implies. There was one story where a woman’s home was invaded by a man and she was raped – and she enjoyed it! Now, something is crazy in that. In the porn that I’ve seen, it is about abuse and degradation of another person. I just realized that it is the sadistic/masochistic thing that I can’t stomach.

Then, I don’t see sex as for procreation, but for me it’s not simply a recreation. For me, my soul is somehow entwined in it. I know that if I was forced to work as a prostitute or a stripper, it would kill my soul.

And porn – especially visual porn – does nothing for me. Looking at strangers in pornographic poses does nothing for me – and it strikes me as purely dirty.

For me it only works if it is purely imaginary. I need to imagine it, I have to write my own script and visualize it in my own way. And it has to involve someone who has some substance, not just a body.

Luke: Of course I used the term "Puritans" to denote those who would attempt to impose their morality upon others... rather as the original Puritans did in England which resulted in their virtual expulsion. How much do you know of the history of the Puritans beyond that which was presented in rather idealized light as part of grade-school American history? The noble Pilgrims were not exactly the most noble beings. take a look at the Salem Witch Trials, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter or their role in English Reformation including the banning of the theater, the banning of music in religious ceremony (which led to the destruction of many church organs), the elimination of erotic or love poetry with the exception of the Biblical Song of Solomon, the unquestioned bowing to authority... including to the church leaders... the wife to her husband, and the child to his or her parents. Individual will and desire were to be destroyed.

What we have now is the kids are the authority, and then the wife after that. What a mess.

The Mennonite people that I see aren't responsible for any of that history. And I'd rather see them in my town than prostitutes. I was looking online for a Mennonites picture and I couldn't find one that looks like ours, but I like seeing these women. They are almost always thin, and often are tall and blonde, and they look like artwork, really.

[stlukesguild]

ftil-...we have to admit that women are portrayed in a different ways today than in the past.

Do we? I'm not convinced. Few writers in the whole of history have produced characters of either sex who are incredibly well-rounded and fleshed out. Most literary characters are rather one-sided... because that is the aspect of the character that the author wishes or needs for the narrative at hand. By the same token, most paintings of women or men present but a single side of the individual. This is is necessitated in a way by the very nature of painting. A character in literature exists over a period of time, and so the author can explore the different sides of the individual... as well as develop their personality. Certainly, we have someone like Rembrandt who is a master of character who is capable of painting a human being that never seems one-dimensional.



Rubens also displayed this ability... when painting someone to whom he was specially close, as in the case of his beloved first wife, Isabella...



or the sister of his wife-to-be, Susanna... with whom it has been suggested he may have had a love affair...



But this is not as true of his royal portraits or his mythologies. His Bathsheba, for example, is far more simply a seductive sexual being, than is Rembrandt's far more contemplative version...



Just as in literature it is true that character development is not always a central issue, so it is equally true in the visual arts. Many paintings of women (or men for that matter) may be categorized as falling into a certain type or role:

Woman as Goddess... appreciated for her physical beauty...


-Giorgione

The woman as femme fatale... the dangerous woman... the woman whose beauty has the ability to unhinge male reason and emasculate him...


-Lucas Cranach

The woman as Virgin and doting mother. This ideal was the basis for the cult of Notre Dame and all the great French cathedrals. Ironically, Raphael, the master of the genre, was a notorious Casanova (who died quite likely of syphilis) who was known for his liaisons with his beautiful young models who posed for the endless Holy Virgins. One almost imagines a Renaissance variation of the Hollywood "casting couch": "Hey, honey, you wanna be in pictures?"


-Raphael Sanzio d'Urbino

Having said all that... I will agree that to a certain degree you have a point with regard to how women have been represented in the arts and media over the course of the last century of so. I would suggest you check out the book, Venus in Exile by the feminist art historian/critic,Wendy Steiner. Steiner explores the bias against "beauty," women and femininity, domesticity, and the bourgeois in Modernism and posits a theory that this owed much to the misogynistic and anti-social attitudes of leading artists/theorists beginning with Kant.

Femininity, color, sensuality, pattern, ornament, domesticity, family, the care of children... and "beauty" all bespoke of an art linked with the bourgeois or middle-class and women. If you delve into the late 19th and early 20th centuries you will find a great many intellectuals and artists expressing attitudes about women that verge upon the misogynistic. There was also a certain disgust with the middle-class that had begun to abandon the artists as their work became more experimental. The middle-class or bourgeois was also obsessed with class and appearances and represented a direct opposition to the rebellious, anarchistic artists.

At this time we begin to see the great dichotomy put forth suggesting Male=Intellect and Art/Culture while Female= Emotions and Nature. This was also an era in which science had begun to unveil the links between diseases such as syphilis and sex, reinforcing the notion that women/sex was dangerous. Women were also beginning to assert their rights politically and socially, which scared many men... and we had the spread of the revolutionary ideas of Freud concerning sexuality. The male fear of losing control... the fear of the seductiveness of women/sex... of ability of emotions to overwhelm or unhinge intellect... shows up as early as the Romantic era is the guise of novels such as Frankenstein and Dracula and art works such as Goya's well-known print, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters...



It is quite telling how many images of the femme fatale can be found in the art of the era... especially in the hotbed of Vienna where Freud's ideas were spreading like wildfire at the same time as the old Austrian Empire was becoming unhinged and women were a convenient scapegoat (as the Jews would later be)...


-Alfred Kubin


-Gustav Klimt


-Egon Schiele


-Oskar Kokoschka


-Edvard Munch


-Franz von Stuck

The musical creation par excellence of the era was undoubtedly Richard Strauss' shocking opera Salome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI02Rj5xhFM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJiFH...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op1Vo...eature=related

continued...

[stlukesguild]

Modernism theorized a future of "better living through technology"... science... reason... and intellect. Anything that spoke of emotions and passions challenged this because it was recognized that emotions and passions might easily undermine reason. The architect/theorist, Adolf Loos spoke of ornament... which surely only interested women... as "crime" in his open attack upon the sensual, woman-based art of the leading Viennese painter, Gustav Klimt. Even Matisse... whose formal innovations couldn't be denied, was taken to task by critics for being too much of the sensualist... a hedonist... and not enough like Picasso.

World War One only further reinforced these feelings among the artists. After all, it was the old bourgeois society that had led to the horrors of the war... the same bourgeois whose lives revolved around marriage, raising children, and social climbing. With the war, an entire generation of men had been wiped out. Thousands of women were reduced to prostitution as their sole means of income.


E.L. Kirchner


-George Grosz

These women roamed the streets of big cities such as Berlin dressed all in black as vampires. Vampires, indeed, once again became a central image in art and film (Nosferatu). An entire fetish for women dressed as "war widows" developed resulting in the erotic costume known as the "merry widow":



Stories of "sex murders" and "serial killings" and the murder of children began to make the news and show up in the paintings of the German Expressionists (Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann), in films such as M, and in plays such as Frank Wedekind's "Lulu" plays based loosely upon the Jack the Ripper murders.

Then, of course, we have the central figure of Modernism in the visual arts: Pablo Picasso. Picasso's art is highly autobiographical and his themes frequently vacillate between sex and violence. Freud would loved to have had Picasso as a case study. As a adolescent, Picasso was traumatized by the death from diphtheria of his beloved sister, Conchita... seen celebrating her first communion in this painting made by the 15-year-old Picasso...



This trauma was repeated in a true Freudian manner when the artist's closest friend, Carles Casagemas, committed suicide in response to being rejected by his lover... whom Picasso quite likely was also involved with. The ultimate result of this was Picasso's masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the most iconic painting of Modernism...



The Boulevard d'Avignon in Paris was an infamous street where the prostitutes plied their trade. Picasso viciously parodies them as monsters and vampires in African masks and Egyptian poses. Each time one of the artist's love affairs ended, he repeated this pattern of painting women as horrific monsters... great insects, like the Praying Mantis who devours her mate...



The artist's distrust of women and hatred of bourgeois values was further exasperated by the failure of his marriage to the beautiful ballerina, Olga...



It soon became clear that Olga, the daughter of a family of minor Russian aristocrats now in decline looked to Picasso, the hot young "art star" as a means of social climbing. She had little interest in his art, but greatly enjoyed traveling in the high circles of society of his collectors.

As the United States took the lead in art, the misogyny of Modernism was merged with a certain American Puritanism. To this we might also add the effect of the great shift in artistic education and training away from the art schools and ateliers... which stressed hands-on process of making art and the embrace of the sensuality of materials and images... toward university art departments which stressed words... philosophies... theories... and concepts over all. Once again, reason and logic and rationale (stereotyped as Male attributes) were stressed over feelings and emotions and sensuality (stereotyped as female attributes). The open hostility aimed toward the Pop Artists who once again began to embrace sensuality as well as glitz and glamour, is quite telling.

In spite of this, it should be recognized that there remained a great wealth of representations among Modernism of beauty, sensuality, love, and sensitivity toward women. We shouldn't forget that the single most reproduced painting not only in the whole of Modernism... but in the whole of art history is Gustav Klimt's affectionate and loving The Kiss...



Klimt also holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting for his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer... presented as a Byzantine saint... or goddess... in spite of her less than seductive looks...



Bonnard was also admired for his loving portrayals of his wife, Marthe, over the course of his entire career. Here she stands bathed in the light like a modern Danae, seen by her doting husband as a glorious goddess... even in her late 40s...



The paintings you posted don’t constitute the majority of contemporary art that depicts women.

Well... the "majority" of art would not be the best art anyway... the majority of all art being mediocre at best. But I suspect you are suggesting that the majority of the images by the leading figures in art present women solely in a sexist manner.

Let's take a look at that suggestion. Here I have chosen an entire array of typical works by a number of leading artists... artists who have successfully shown and sold for years as well as current hot "art stars". So what do we find?

Well... we have the traditional representation of the classical nude...


1*

The artist clearly enamored of the beauty of the young female form...


2*


3*


4*

Here we have a wealth of Rubenesque female flesh as landscape...



continued...

[stlukesguild]

We also have intimate narratives in the manner of Bonnard...


5*


6*

We have the traditional femme fatale...


7*

We have images of the less-than-ideal or even older woman who still exudes sexuality...


8*

In this instance it is the black woman and the bald and tattooed woman who assert their sexual attractiveness...


9*

And we have the image of lovers engaged in the act abstracted in the manner of William DeKooning...


10*

And we have strippers...


11*

And parodies of the traditional stereotypes of the past: Snow White... or Sleeping Beauty...


12*

And the Baroque and Rococo Goddesses of fecundity, fertility, and abundance...


13*

We even get parodies of the stereotypical pornographic/pin-up image...


14*

Of course these example are all drawn from the world of "high art" When we delve into the world of "low brow" art we still find images of women as helpless doe-eyed damsels with long flowing hair...


15*

Femme Fatales...


16*

and the usual pin-ups...



The only problem with this is that each and every one of these paintings was painted by a woman. Female artists for some time have been far more forward... at least within the context of "high art"... about openly expressing their sexuality than many of their male counterparts who have been scared off by continued harassment from militant feminist critics. The reality is that the concept expressed in this quoted line: "If artists emphasize eroticism and sensuality, they fragment women to being a sexual object," is a sadly outdated mode of Puritanical Feminism that would censor sexual expression. There is more to men and women than their sexual beings... but to suggest that any art which celebrates the sexual... the beauty of the human body... fragments and objectifies the individual is nonsense.

(Artists: 1. Alyssa Monks, 2. Francine van Hove, 3. Martha Erlebacher, 4. Patricia Watwood, 5. Kyle Staver, 6. Do Fournier, 7. Colette Calascione, 8. Anne Harris, 9. Margaret Bowland, 10. Ceciley Brown, 11. Marlene Dumas (currently holds the record for highest price paid for a work by a living female artist), 12. Judith Schaechter, 13. Julie Heffernann, 14. Lisa Yuskavage, 15. Kelly Vivanco, 16. Tara McPherson, 17. Olivia De Beradinis)

Jean Kilbourne beautifully expressed what has been done to women through media and advertisement. Artists do the same consciously or unconsciously.

Does she? And would you have us believe that women are so easily swayed and weak-minded that the media has had such a profound effect upon them... and yet not equally upon men? It would seem to me that men and women are equally influenced by the images put forth in the media... while at the same time, the media is quite often a mirror of society... and the roles assumed by men and women.

[Vonny]

After I wrote last night and came back today, and you weren't on this thread Luke, and I was worried about you!

Luke: Does she? And would you have us believe that women are so easily swayed and weak-minded that the media has had such a profound effect upon them... and yet not equally upon men? It would seem to me that men and women are equally influenced by the images put forth in the media... while at the same time, the media is quite often a mirror of society... and the roles assumed by men and women.

In general I think that women are a little more susceptible to the media than men are. Marketers know it.

I think today the media drives the society more than mirrors it. The media may pick up some small trend in society but then it magnifies and distorts it, and figures out how to sell it.

Luke: Thousands of women were reduced to prostitution as their sole means of income.

This is basically what my mother did after my father left, although she got married. But it was okay, it did pay off for us. It still pays off to this day for me - I have some income I wouldn't have otherwise.

[Emil Miller]

I think today the media drives the society more than mirrors it. The media may pick up some small trend in society but then it magnifies and distorts it, and figures out how to sell it.

That's exactly what happens. Nobody understands the herd instinct a well as the media, unless it be politicians.

[Delta40]

Thanks Luke I was going to post Yuskavage as an example and I agree about the outdated mode of thinking especially when the female body is depicted in all conditions through art.

[ftil]

ftil-...we have to admit that women are portrayed in a different ways today than in the past.

Do we? I'm not convinced. Few writers in the whole of history have produced characters of either sex who are incredibly well-rounded and fleshed out. Most literary characters are rather one-sided... because that is the aspect of the character that the author wishes or needs for the narrative at hand. By the same token, most paintings of women or men present but a single side of the individual. This is is necessitated in a way by the very nature of painting. A character in literature exists over a period of time, and so the author can explore the different sides of the individual... as well as develop their personality. Certainly, we have someone like Rembrandt who is a master of character who is capable of painting a human being that never seems one-dimensional.


Having said all that... I will agree that to a certain degree you have a point with regard to how women have been represented in the arts and media over the course of the last century of so. I would suggest you check out the book, Venus in Exile by the feminist art historian/critic,Wendy Steiner. Steiner explores the bias against "beauty," women and femininity, domesticity, and the bourgeois in Modernism and posits a theory that this owed much to the misogynistic and anti-social attitudes of leading artists/theorists beginning with Kant.

Femininity, color, sensuality, pattern, ornament, domesticity, family, the care of children... and "beauty" all bespoke of an art linked with the bourgeois or middle-class and women. If you delve into the late 19th and early 20th centuries you will find a great many intellectuals and artists expressing attitudes about women that verge upon the misogynistic. There was also a certain disgust with the middle-class that had begun to abandon the artists as their work became more experimental. The middle-class or bourgeois was also obsessed with class and appearances and represented a direct opposition to the rebellious, anarchistic artists.

At this time we begin to see the great dichotomy put forth suggesting Male=Intellect and Art/Culture while Female= Emotions and Nature. This was also an era in which science had begun to unveil the links between diseases such as syphilis and sex, reinforcing the notion that women/sex was dangerous. Women were also beginning to assert their rights politically and socially, which scared many men... and we had the spread of the revolutionary ideas of Freud concerning sexuality. The male fear of losing control... the fear of the seductiveness of women/sex... of ability of emotions to overwhelm or unhinge intellect... shows up as early as the Romantic era is the guise of novels such as Frankenstein and Dracula and art works such as Goya's well-known print, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters...

I am not interested in feminist view. I have study feminist literature as well as feminist psychology, and for a while, I called myself a feminist. LOL Not any more after meeting a number a feminists who took the feminist theory to the extreme, not being able to use critical thinking. However, I still appreciate liberal feminists approach to therapy that focuses on building deep and fulfilling relationships and understands the imbalance resulting from stereotyped roles of women. Sadly, not many men are strong enough to change the dynamic in relationships. If you dig into women study, you will see that dichotomy existed for many centuries and religions played an important part in it.

Secondly, you are talking about past and I am talking about today. We can’t avoid heavy programming that is done through media and advertisement. I can agree with Steven Jacobson, the author of Mind Control in USA who worked in Hollywood editing movies, that Americans are mind controlled as it has never happed before. His book was really mind opening what is going on. Advertisement adds more fuel to it as we are bombarded with images whenever we turn our heads. As I said before, artists are not free from programming.
I don’t know if you have seen Jean Kilbourne’s video I have posted. Perhaps not, otherwise our discussion would be different.

[Revolte]

Well no, especially because that's an animal. Not many people are turned on by this:

As disgusting as dead animal looks to me. Those french fries are pretty sexy. <-- I'm waving at the fries.

[ftil]

stlukesguild wrote:

Does she? And would you have us believe that women are so easily swayed and weak-minded that the media has had such a profound effect upon them... and yet not equally upon men? It would seem to me that men and women are equally influenced by the images put forth in the media... while at the same time, the media is quite often a mirror of society... and the roles assumed by men and women.

Well, how do you explain the growing number of young girls and women who suffer from anorexia nervosa or bulimia? How do you explain the results of a pull done by one of the magazines where women were asked if they had a choice to be slim or to have a successful career, if I remember correctly, it was 93% of women who chose being slim than having a successful career. They had also another choice: to be slim, to have fulfilling relationships, or successful career. If my memory is correct, it was 51% of women who chose being slim than having successful career, or fulfilling relationships. I was shocked reading the results. Media knows how to manipulate us. Men are not manipulated through media to the same extent as women.

Secondly, your response rejects the vast research of women study. You can’t reject the power of stereotypes that dictate how we view women and men. Stereotypes are cognitive constructs that are difficult to change. We have a lot on our plates we have to deal with.

BTW, you love art as much as I do…but I love different kind of art. I don’t care about the price of the painting.

Let’s look at a few the most expensive paintings. I would love to have them……to sell as soon as possible.

Jackson Pollock - $156.8 million




Willem de Kooning - $ 154.0 million






Gustav Klimt - $ 150.2 million





Pablo Picasso - $ 124.3 million






Jasper Johns - $ 89.5 million