The Nude in Art

Dying Slave (1513-1516) by Michelangelo

 

 

 

  THE NUDE IN ART

All visual art is objectification because the artist creates a visual object for aesthetic contemplation. Therefore, objectification is not in itself objectionable. The nude in art treats the human body as an object—not a pornographic object but an intentionally aesthetic object. The dividing line between the two types of objectification is hotly debated. It is a gray area ambiguously demarcated. 

Merriam-Webster defines pornography as “the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement.”

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pornography

—“pornography,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2022

Here’s a stab at a definition—pornography is the gratuitous production and exploitation of prurient or sexually explicit imagery. Gratuitousness indicates intention, which is always at least somewhat implicit. 

Depending on where you locate yourself, the depiction of the nude in art is either pornographic or it isn’t. 

In 1986, the US Attorney General Commission Report on Pornography declared that “not all pornography is legally obscene.” 

What is not protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which sanctions freedom of speech and freedom of the press, is obscenity and child pornography.  

In 1973 the US Supreme Court in Miller v. California ruled that material is not legally obscene if it fails to satisfy all of the following criteria taken together: 

- Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest 

- Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law 

- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value 

Notably, in 1974 the court in Jenkins v. Georgia ruled that “nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene under the Miller standards.” 

In 1982 the court in New York v. Ferber declared that states could ban child pornography even if somehow the material did not satisfy the Miller obscenity criteria. 

See: 

https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/adult-entertainment/pornography-obscenity/ 

—David L. Hudson Jr., First Amendment Center, “Pornography & Obscenity,” Freedom Forum Institute, July 2009 

The US Supreme Court may have come to a laborious series of decisions on the question of what constitutes illegal and in this respect socially unacceptable sexual content, but in a place like the Roman Catholic Church, the issue of what isn’t socially acceptable isn’t all that settled. 

All the genitalia in the nudes of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment by Michelangelo, for example, have been painted over. Untouched, however, are the genitalia of Adam, Noah’s three sons, and at least several ignudi.  

Where do we draw the line? You won’t get a consistent answer in the Roman Catholic Church. Sparks fly.  

Among Roman Catholics we will encounter vehement, impassioned condemnations of practically all nude art.  

Yet exceptions will be made for Michelangelo, so that the inconsistency comes across as hypocritical. Why are you going to exempt Michelangelo yet condemn everyone else? Is it because he is acknowledged as one of the towering geniuses of the Renaissance who painted the interior of the Sistine Chapel?  

The long tradition of the nude in art originates with the Greeks and rises to common depiction in the art of the West. You won’t find the same tradition in Chinese art, for example, which in modern times has assumed the Western custom of depicting the nude.  

Ancient Christian doctrine teaches us that because of original sin humanity has lost mastery over their passions. We are susceptible to the enticements of sin, not only the sins of the flesh but also of every sort.  

It’s not surprising therefore that Christian art treads gingerly about depictions of the nude, shying away from the practice.  

I am concerned that Roman Catholicism lacks a consistent and coherent position on this question. It should be addressed by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to the satisfaction of the faithful.  

Is the depiction of the nude in art immoral or not? Under what conditions is it morally licit, if at all? 

They have their work cut out for them.