Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-07-13
A DEFENSE OF THE NnnR
Something for the Male and Femal
Prudes to Ponder On

Dy the artist, Is not essentially Offensive &c
any pure mind, says writer in the Phila-
delphia Telegraph. Whether it invokes
censure or admiration depends on the men,
tai spectacles through which it is seen
The spiritual, like the physical eye, if dis
eased, distorts all visible objects. 1t is the
minds eye" that perceives what is good
or bad, chaste or unehaste. When Adam
and Eve dwelt in Paradise, before they ate
The fruit
OF that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into world and all our woe,
they beheld their nakedness without shame.
1t was only when their sight had been per-
verted by sin that they clothed themselves
with fig leaves. The moral of that fact is
now, as it was then, that only depraved
mind can see anything revolving in that
nudity which our first parents, when limo
cent, regarded without ablush. 1t is true
that all their offspring are sinful by in
heritance, but not equally so. Great in
number as may be those who are grossly
impure, there are many who are compare
lively pure They behold nothing in a
picture of nude human form but its
beauty and the skill of the artist.
There are women who daily observe
their naked figures in mirror with SUI
preme satisfaction, and delight themselves
with that amusement. When dirty street
crossing affords them an apparent excuse
for it, they lift their skirts to show their
feet and legs, if they are exceptionally
handsome. Worse than that, they go to
fashionable balls and receptions with their
backs and breasts so bare as to disgust even
the most immodest men. They make
themselves likewise equally conspicuous at
our seaside resorts during the bathing
hour. Yet, when they behold painting
of woman just as Eve appeared in Eden
before the fall they scream with affected
horror. There are also hypocrites of the
masculine gender, secretly guilty of shame
less lewdness, who, to gain reputation for
uncommon virtue, pretend to be revolted
by even the most delicately drawn and ex-
quisiteiy colored portrait of astrological
myth or goddess. Furthermore, this pre-
posterous scrupulosity as to nudity on an
artists canvas is ridiculed by the fact that
our so-called best society, men and women
go TO the theaters night after night, where
| young ballet dancers show their legs in
tights up to their thighs, and even crowd
| thither to behold Mrs. james Brown Pot
ter, in the role of Cleopatra expose her
limbs in a diaphanous drapery that does
not hide her nakedness from head to foot
| Hence, of course, our prudish preaching is
quite inconsistent with our practice.
The ancients were not afraid of the nude
in art. 1t caused none of them to go into
| hysterical commissions. They saw it in oil
and stone and bowed down before it with
their characteristic alteration of whatever
was artistically beautiful. They loved art
for itself, seeing nothing in it that sug-
gested vulgar ideas, and did not fear that
it would degrade, but rather elevate them,
morally and intellectually.
For example, the model for the statue of
the Chidian Venus of Praxiteles, preserved
at Florence, and now known as the Venus
de Medici, was famous courtesan named
Phryne. 1t is related of Zeuxis, one of
the greatest of the Hellenic painters, who
excelled in painting female beauty, that
the people of Cretona, wanting him to
paint naked Helen, showed him great
number of the most beautiful boys, saying
that from them he might easily guess the
beauty of their sisters. No." said he,
"send me the young women" Uniting
their separate projections in his picture,
he is said to have produced ga miracle of
beauty"
1t is needless to recount the many mar
velously superb representations of the I'M
clad human figure by those great artists
who anteceded and succeeded the Christian
era, the "Dying Gladiator" by Crecilus
the Antinous and Apollo, the Helen Of
Zeuxis, the Venus of Praxiteles, and many
others. Even in our own Academy of
Fine Arts we see a most charming ex-
preston, in stone, of "Hero and Leander,"
OF "Adam and Eve" and the "Greek
Slave" They were then, and are yet, uni
versally admired.
Keats tells US that:
"a thing of beauty is joy forever"
Is there anything more beautiful than
the image of God in which man was made?
Yet there is just now an insane puritanical
sentiment which rejects all that divine
semblance as indecent, and, therefore, as
demoralizing. But is it so? Even st.
Paul, in his Epistle to Titus, thus wrote:
Unto the pure all things are pure; unto
them that are de6led is nothing
pure, but even their mind and conscience
are de6ledr
Vice, like virtue, may be the result of
education. Any human soul, originally
chaste, by habitually making itself con-
versant with what is unchaste, may be-
come SO corrupted that it can see nothing
but unchasteness in anything, Hence
Pope says:
Vice is q monster of so frightfll mien
As, to be hated, needs but TO be seen
But seen too oft, familiar with her face
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
This is the fate of Mr.. Comstock, of
New York, the poor devil who supposes he
has been divinely commissioned as a pro-
pagandist of purity in fine art. His iudg-
ment in that respect is so debased that he
might even hale an angel to New York
Alderman should he ever be fortunate
enough to behold one without either
earthly or celestial raiment Outside of
the limit of positive decency he is quite
right. But beyond that he is foolishly
fanatical. Pictures of nearly naked women
in the windows of cigar stores may be
fairly Objectionable, because they possess
no artistic merit; but Venus by the
greatest of the ancient masters should
not be so condemned. The perfect
beauty of work Of art ought to arrest
the eye and interest the mind outside
of its subject. Art in its supreme ex-
preston should exclude all ideas of i'm
purity. 1t alone should be observed, and,
therefore, provoke no unnecessary CEN
serious criticism.
The conclusion of the whole matter is
obvious. 1t was most happily expressed
by that English King, the Third Edward,
who, when raising from the floor of a ball
room garter accidentally dropped there
by the Countess of Salisbury, handed it to
her in the presence of all that royal assem-
blage, saying most calamity and with
superb deferential modesty, Honi soft gtti
mai y penSe"
Alas! for those who cannot, like the
banished Duke in the forest of Arden, as
told by Shakespeare, in "As You Like it"
see
Tongues in trees hooks in the running h-noLs