The Lake Charles echo. [volume] (Lake Charles, Parish of Calcasieu, La.) 1876-1898, 1879-02-22
THE NUDE IN ART.


Bc1emCe OOH&rebss
4 THE London Standard gives the follow
ing report of a paper read before th
Social Science Congress, at Oheltenham
and the discussion thereon:
/ l'In the Art Department, under thu
4 Presidency of Mr. Gambler Parry, Mr.
! Fl II. Iaathbone, of Liverpool, read .
paper before large audience on Tn.
Uhdraped Figure in Art He said the
subject was not of his own choosing, but
hal been forced on him by q series of at
tadzs in Liverpool newspapers, in con
seq1enceof the exhibition in that town
of 3 picture which had been shown IN
Loidon without creating controversy
When coward Europe suffered the un-
clesn Turk TO soil the sacred shores OF
Greece by his polluting presence, civiliza
tioI and morality received q blow from
whfh they have never entirely re-
eovtred, and the trail of the serpent has
beet over European art and European
scielce ever since. The Turk regarded
andtegards woman as animals without
soul TOYS to be played with or broken at
pleasure, and to be hidden, partly from
shane, but chiefly for the purpose of
stinH lating exhausted passion. Such is
the lpiholy origin of the objection to the
nudsas fit subject for art; it is purely
Asiaic, and, I'll ough not introduced for
the fist time in the Fifteenth century,
veto be traced to the source of all
imprhity--the Fast. Unhappily, there
is nl country in which Asiatic ideas
havehken deeper root than in certain
classd of the less educated portion OF
the lnglish nation. They consider
WOMB as chattels. and treat them with
morelrutality than they do their dogs
and hFses, Nor would it be possible to
find iany European capital 80 revolving
and &graceful a scene as the top of the
Haynirket at midnight. These facts
explai why in England it is necessary
to undrtaae the humiliating task of
edefenbg the nude human 6gure-male
or femle--as not only q fit subject for
art, bus the noblest and most eleva- |
ting o all subjects that art can treat. |
To sai that the crown and glory of
Creatid is an improper subject for art
is to achse the Creator of obscenity. In
the eaiest Christian art known--the
painting of the aCatacombs--J Jonah is
represeled under his gourd perfectly
nude; sb in Greek art only the Asiatic
niana Ss represented otherwise than
as q simae human form. In those days
true reNence was shown by the COM
plete relesentation, not by the conceal
ment, oEhe human form. As art de-
clined, he power of representing the
nude defined also, until it was revived
in clrch at Florence. When an
Asiatic sitor complained that Michael
Angelo ldrepresented men and women
in the ikedness in which they were
born thlnswer of Michael Angelo may
beread 1.-THE right-hand lowest corner
of the piure, where he has placed the
portraitf the objector, in the lowest
depths hell, with ass ears, and
the SCRIPT, the type and symbol of
sensual eruption, crawled around his
unseeml carcass. Although the source
of the piudice against the nude is tho
roughly healthy and impure, yet it is
now shar by many pure-minded and
honest, ifmewhat uneducated, people
But j amfepared to maintain that it is ,
necessarily the future of English art
and Of EHish morality that the right of J
the nude Ia place in ourgalleries should
be boldlyFerted; it must, however, be
the nude represented by thoroughly
trained arts The human form. male
and femalfs the type and standard of
beauty, oipm and proportion, and it is !
necessary be thoroughly familiar with
it in sordeafely to Judge Of all beauty
which confs of form and proportion.
10 womenlis most necessary that they |
lahould becle thoroughly imbued with
the knowla of the ideal female form,
in order thIthey should recognize the
x,arsfpntino n ~ OF <,r,oo ord x~<skf. 80 4 I