Said Mary Beard, in "Mary Beard sits for naked portrait in new BBC programme/The academic’s latest TV show investigates the line between art and pornography" (The Guardian). Beard is a serious academic, and the TV show is "Shock of the Nude" — a play on "Shock of the New" — about art history. She called the nude "soft porn for the elite" and got some strong pushback:
“It’s quite a shock to think a slightly academic point about the difference between art and porn, produces that real sense of a violent reaction... If you’re look[ing] at the nude you can’t avoid that question of where is the line between art and porn?”...And here's a second Guardian article on the subject, "Is Mary Beard right to say classical nudes are ‘soft porn for the elite’?/The academic is not the first to suggest that nudes in art were about titillation as much as aesthetics – but is there a difference between nakedness and nudity?"
[She] said the process of posing for her own nude portrait was “very relaxing”... “I could have walked away, for a lot of female models they’re doing it because that’s how they’re going to get their next meal and whatever the male artist is like they’re going to stick it out.”
Having your desire recognised and recognising your desire is important. To take Beard’s description of art as “soft porn for the elite” as criticism per se is to assume that honesty about our enjoyment of the revealed body somehow lessens the art; that art should be above that. This is naive....The perspective of the model is important, and I commend Mary Beard — who is 65 — for taking on the role of the model in a short experience (even though that experience is necessarily different from that of a model who doesn't have the perspective of an academic with a TV audience watching her bold experimentation).
But I don't think nudes — even in photographs — are pornography. Pornography is a graphic sexual depiction, and nakedness is not even a necessary element. You can feel sexual looking at a nude, but the nude per se is not sexual. The sex is in the mind of the beholder (even if the artist was hoping to inspire it). Or do you think that in saying that I'm a propagandist for the elite?
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Another repetition of the tiresome lecture from women of my generation;
Damned if I’ll do anything to be pleasant and agreeable to men.
Thanks, but I’ll take porn over the schoolmarm lecture.
I’m assuming Beard grew up in upper middle class wealth like all the other female scolds. I bet she never missed a meal in her life or ever did work that dirtied her hands.
Well, speaking as a physician, seeing an older woman nude reminds me of
Work
Ann:
You got me to click through. Definitely not porn. Not even close; not that I’m a porn expert.
it's rare that you ruin a day immediately Althouse.
If nudity is automatically sexual, what do we do at the doctor's office, or the mammogram machine?
Context. Michelle Pfieffer wasn't naked in her catwoman costume, but it was very sexual. Some claim that Mona Lisa's smile is pure sex, I don't see it, but you're right about the mind of the beholder.
Personally, I don't find nudity to be all that arousing. And in paintings, the colors and shadows and expressions make a nude more, or less, arousing.
Nothing is porn for long. No matter how pretty she is, it's just your wife with no clothes on. If you're going to have a gas station calendar up though, it might as well be breasts as mountains.
That woman is crazy and gross I'm not looking at her old lady porn. I'm sure there's a fetish out there
Our Beloved Professor Althouse asks...
. Or do you think that in saying that I'm a propagandist for the elite?
Yep!
Are cherubs pedophilia porn?
What does it take to get two stars who have absolutely no need to do anything so potentially desperate to take their clothes off for a magazine? First, the magazine has to be Vanity Fair, which persuaded Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson to be photographed naked in bed on its cover. Second, tell them they're not naked, but nude.
My wife died 16 years ago.
She was totally individual. No bullshit ideology of any kind.
She loved being a woman and loved being pleasant and serviceable to a man.
[And to satisfy the feminist BS, she was a professional and she made a great living. In fact, she possessed the toughest, most penetrating intellect I’ve ever known, and I worked with the intellectual, legal, musical and tech giants of my generation.]
I’ve given up entirely on women. To one degree or another, every woman is poisoned with the vicious, stupid cant of Marxist feminism.
It’s better to be alone and focus my attention on my grandchildren than to put up with this evil shit.
If nudity is automatically sexual, what do we do at the doctor's office, or the mammogram machine?
Behavior in Private Spaces: Situational Definitions of Reality in Gynecological Examinations (Joan P. Emerson) - the ways that a situation what threatens to become defined as sexual is kept defined as medical.
Precarious Situations in a Strip Club: Exotic Dancers and the Problem of Reality Maintenance (Kari Lerum) - the ways that a situation that is overtly defined as sexual is kept defined as actually a business arrangement.
That porn quickly expires is how men's magazines got subscribers, until the internet.
Any art that would be porn (take late Picasso 347 suite) expires just as quickly. So you don't have time to decide it's porn before it's not.
Are bodybuilders exploited when they're asked to flex their biceps? When a young, beautiful woman is asked to take her clothes off and to pose with soft lighting is that hard core exploitation? Vanity is such that many people enjoy showing off their most attractive features in the most flattering way possible. ...The nudity of Stormy Daniels, what with the silicone and peroxide, can more properly be described as her work uniform than a vulnerable condition. At any event, Stormy Daniels and Mary Beard experience their nudity differently as does the viewer of their nudity. Nudity is in the body of the presenter as well as the eye of the beholder.
Leading Western Civilization thinkers taking on the Big Problems of our era.
There was some Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that got undisplayed more quickly than usual, displaying the foothills of the mons veneris, as Derbyshire put it.
Too suggestive for the public. It draws eyes.
There's the oughta be porn trick, body painting but you can't detect what you expect to be able to detect. Looks like clothes.
Of course you can go this way, which is better:the real new pornographers are good.Great really and from Canada
This is very silly.
Nude nubile women (or not nude) generate sexual responses in men as an almost mechanical switch, a reflex of the human male visual orientation. This is very much like how in other species males respond to female pheromones. Human males are turned on by what they see, among other things.
Its instinct. It is not something terribly deep. Women who complain about this might as well be whinging about pain response. We are still animals, still physical things, not philosophical concepts.
Old women (who aren't sexually attractive) aren't good at this business of turning men on , because of that male programming, which is sophisticated enough to quite accurately distinguish potentially fit, fertile females.
Ballet started out as soft porn for the elite. Husbands hated opera.
The human body can be very beautiful. I think of all the Renaissance art I saw first hand in Florence. It celebrates the beauty of creation and the human body. That is not pornography. When the point is exploitation and degradation - that is pornography.
This is the Guardian, right? A british newspaper? So why are they so America-centric with their ‘America faces an epic choice...these are perilous times...’. Epic! Perilous! Give me a dollar!
Now of course, they know the web page hit comes from the US, but why is Britain interfering in our election?
Oh, to the interesting, but fluff, piece. Not porn, and I was expecting something more along the art of Rubens, not a (spoiler alert) a sketch by a first year art student.
Isn’t it a sign of psychological disturbance to take your clothes off?
Modern intellectual fashion does not tolerate the general concept of the physical, animal nature of human beings. It simply cannot be.
Nude Descending a Staircase was sort of like the old days when they scrambled the dirty channels, but you could still make them out... sort of.
The rest of it is soft porn. There are lots of kinds of porn that don’t excite everybody, there are people who like to look at people wearing latex wet suits, at insects being crushed under stiletto heels, etc, etc, etc. Just because it doesn’t appear arousing to you doesn’t make it not porn.
I think Mary Beard is being a bit insincere. I've seen some of her shows and she's comes across as as plucky extrovert. I think posing nude is good for her image and perhaps ratings.
Pornography is direct and vulgar. Fine art is refined. Elites not only think that they are above the animal urges/mentality of the common folk but they have a duty to elevate those who are not as enlightened as themselves. Thus, it is admirable to use public money for erotic nude paintings if it has aesthetic value or the proper message. And it is OK to use public funds to close down strip joints.
For the same reason, one can't use "fuck" and "shit" on government controlled airways or "proper" newspapers but can freely use copulate and intercourse or excrement and feces. The reason is that the former words were common Germanic based words used by the lower classes in England and the latter were foreign loan words used by those with an education.
Do I sense our host exploring her personal paths of creativity??? Time will tell.
stlcdr said...
This is the Guardian, right? A british newspaper?
That's a Good Point!
Is the Guardian one of those Brit newspapers, with the page3 girls?
Professor Althouse? are page3 girls porn? How about the Playboys your dad left laying around the house, so you could see how he wanted you to look?
Earlier I was reading about a person who has an interior monologue going on all day all the time and who was shocked to discover that there are people who do not. (I do not.) When I read this post on art and porn I wondered if that presence or absence of 24/7 monologue affected responses to art and porn. For instance, when I read the Althouse post I thought that this professor was probably locked in a 24/7 monologue of words dealing with various aspects of art and porn until she became unable to "see" the picture of her elderly body but only to hear words about it, her own aesthetic jargon. In the present aesthetic there is no difference between good and bad art - all is text and all text is an archaeological artifact on a timeline and so quantified, so considered there is no difference between art and porn or between old and young. However, this can't be visualized.
https://ryanandrewlangdon.wordpress.com/2020/01/28/today-i-learned-that-not-everyone-has-an-internal-monologue-and-it-has-ruined-my-day/
I'm a porn expert. That's not porn, except that there is a small group of fetishists who are into the GILF scene. It's like MILF but G for Granny.
"Relaxed" is not what comes through in the sketches. Especially the sketch done from the side. The way she is clutching and covering her chest is more like a prisoner denied clothing desperately trying to cover herself.
YouTube is my favorite porn site.
I don't know if it's art, but it's definitely not porn.
Two thoughts: Lucian Freud and the Naked vs. Nekkid dichotomy...
..too elitist?
I thought it was all about "taking back the power."
And I wonder if our leader Althouse is preparing us for a big announcement of her own by posting this.
Not all nakedness is porn. Art can you nakedness to make a point. A naked Adam and Eve in the Garden, for example. The movie Schindler's List is a good example. There is some nudity in it that is soft porn, when the camera lovingly lingers on a nake woman's breast as she lays in bed. There is no reason for those scenes other than to titillate viewers. It's almost as if Hollywood requires some soft core porn in movies, especially back then. There is other nudity that is clearly not porn - mostly involving the prisoners of the concentration camp.
I think you can view the nudity and sex scenes in The Sopranos the same way. I can't think of any of them that were porn. They all portrayed women being used and abused by the men around them, or once in a while a loving moment between two spouses.
OK. I clicked through and looked at the drawings. Definitely not porn. Porn would have her legs spread open invitingly and her breasts and nipples open for display.
"She called the nude "soft porn for the elite".....
I'm game! But let's not bring the Davos crowd into the mix...
I have a knife that belonged to my mother and with it she made thousands of meals, including Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for nine children and her husband, all sitting around a long table and, then later, she made Thanksgiving and Christmas meals with it for even longer tables filled with children and husband and in-laws and grandchildren. The knife is dull because she didn't want her children or grandchildren to cut themselves and when it was occasionally taken away and sharpened for her she dulled it down at once on purpose. I kept that knife and was going to sharpen and use it but I've just kept it as it was when she last used it. I see it when I look for a knife but I don't use it or talk to myself about it. When the Bernie Bros sweep in and hang me from a lamppost and steal my property and send that knife to Goodwill and there it sits on a shelf, just the bare knife, the dull, old, bare knife, what will it be to anybody? How can we picture or what moment holds the plain, bare truth about either our bodies or our selves when we live in time?
I love when people refer to themselves as “academic”.
I can choose which definition most applies.
"It was impossible to remain an elderly academic woman fully clothed. I felt like that was insincere..."
One wonders why it was impossible. It seems as though most women in her situation have found it possible to remain fully clothed. Perhaps she has less willpower, or a greater narcissistic streak, than most women.
Althouse is correct that nudity in art is not pornography. While it's true that one of prurient ideation is inclined to see sexual material even in a Rorschach test, most are not titillated by a statue of Venus. Or David.
Shouting Thomas declares. I’ve given up entirely on women.
And women are grateful.
"Well, I guess I just had my first taste of the filthy side of this business."
"People look for tits and finches across the UK for the Big Garden Birdwatch"
Oh my God mockturtle you just made me spit a whole mouthful of coffee through my nose.
She is a very handsome woman little bit too rubenesque for my taste but you have to love her confidence. I think that's why I enjoy her documentary series so much. Also you can tell that she was probably quite the looker in her day and she has become very comfortable as an older woman which I have a shirt ton of respect for.
ST, with that attitude about women I’m sure you’re a lovely caregiver and role
model for your grandchildren. Especially the future women. And future lovers of women.
This post made me think of a Rowlandson print - The Connoisseurs.
Reducing people... persons to the sum of their parts and other purposes.
“I could have walked away, for a lot of female models they’re doing it because that’s how they’re going to get their next meal and whatever the male artist is like they’re going to stick it out.”
Does she care how the male artist gets his next meal, or whether or not he gets it?
"There are lots of kinds of porn that don’t excite everybody, there are people who like to look at people wearing latex wet suits, at insects being crushed under stiletto heels, etc, etc, etc. Just because it doesn’t appear arousing to you doesn’t make it not porn."
See Rule 34.
I thought the first 2 lines were about Warren because she’s getting desperate.
She should have done a calendar.
Bor-r-ring. I thought we'd get a photo of the sitting.
Embarrassing. Women can't do anything anymore without getting naked or semi-naked.
Instagram, Twitter, feminism, etc has gifted us The Banality of Nudity. Getting naked to make some hoity-toity BS political point has become boring and predictable.
Oh, boring, predictable and horrifying, as in the case of the morbidly, obese land whale who took pictures of herself flopped over some rocks out in the desert.
"whatever the male artist is like they’re going to stick it out."
Truth.
Nothing common can be porn, although things common in one context may be uncommon in others.
That is bad naked.
As for me, I'm just idly imagining the conversation at the Meadehouse.
Good for her, for putting her "naughty bits" where her mouth is (so to speak). There's an attractive, fortyish woman named Kristin Vermilyea on YouTube giving a TED talk called "It's Okay to Look." It's about breasts. Although she appears to have a good pair, she never displays them. I feel that's a bit cowardly.
This is the point at which Phidippus says "Ye gods".
Needless to say, I'm not clicking through to that article.
There is nothing pornographic, and rarely even faintly sexual, in appraising nude bodies in a life-drawing class. It has to do with purpose and context: a lone artist with a nude model in a private studio can be sexual--and can and has led to sex between the two parties--as opposed to a room crowded with drawers and painters trying to produce something on paper or canvas that will do the model justice.
"Isn’t it a sign of psychological disturbance to take your clothes off?"
No. Yes. Maybe. It depends.
There is nothing pornographic, and rarely even faintly sexual, in appraising nude bodies in a life-drawing class.
That depends entirely on whether the model is sexy.
Beard is a serious academic, and the TV show is "Shock of the Nude" — a play on "Shock of the New" — about art history.
She's no Robert Hughes.
Sydney,
"It's almost as if Hollywood requires some soft core porn in movies"
Can you explain what the phrase "almost as if" is doing in there? When you see the gratuitous softcore scene in film after film after film... Of course it's some kind of requirement, explicitly stated or not.
And if you didn't have enough reasons to abominate Mary Beard, her phrasing this in such a way as to absolve herself of any agency in the matter provides another reason.
I lost respect for Mary Beard after her twitter war with Nassim Taleb. He showed her dishonesty clearly and brutally.
Yep.
She is old enough to know better.
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