The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-09-26
The Nude in Art.
(From the Ave Maria.l

(From the Ave Maria.)
Down in Argentine, there is to be
erected a monument to the Revolution
of 1910. 1t is to adorn the Plaza Vic
toria in Buenos Aires; and our vigorous
contemporary of that thriving city, the
Southern Cross, has something to say
of one of the plaster studies proffered
in competition by different sculptors.
The study contains an categorical group
of male and female figures in the s''ar-
tiStic nude" The Cross, apparently is
not bothered by the certainty of its be-
ing ridiculed as a Philistine for object
ing to the proposed work of art. After
stating that the group, no matter how
great its technical perfection, will be an
outrage on public decency, and instead
of being to the youthful mind a source
of patriotic inspiration, will, on the con-
trary, be immodestly suggestive, it con-
! tinues thus fOrcibly:
Upon national grounds, it has no
claim whatever to the popular admira-
ton. There is nothing national in it's
symbolism. 1t may be Grecian or Ro-
man, but it is not Argentine. The arch
itectural setting of the group is not sug-
gestive of anything national. AS for
the naked figures, in what sense can
they be said to be appropriately SYM
bOlical of the simple, strenuous, clean
minded heroes and heroines of 1S1025?
| What authority on art will have the
hardihood to state to us that such stat
uary reflects the manly strength of pur-
pose, the heroic constancy and the alb
negation of the leaders of the Revolu-
ton? The women who sold their jew
elry to buy arms deserve more respect
from posterity. The women who en-
broidered the flag of the Andes never
M II n clarified indie
cency. The generals who recited the
Rosary amidst their troops, and placed
their armies under the protection of
the Mother most Chaste," should not
be wronged in their graves by sCulp-
ture copied from the brothels of Pom
pei The clerics who, to their undying
honor. gave to the Revolution the SER
vice of their learning and influence,
were men of piety, and it is not by i'm
pious art their work is to receive the
homage of freemen. The patricians
who staked life and fortune on the is
sue of the Revolution were men of
Christian decorum and knightly purity
of mind, to whom lewdness was as for
eign as cowardice. The troops who suf-
fered and bled, and who in their rags
and misery, carried the cause to which
they fought to victory, were not as the
brothers of Adonis. They were I'M
couth perhaps, gnarled, weather-beat-
en-, war-worn. grizzly, haggard; but
brave and enduring. 1t is not by the
prostitution of art that such virtues
as theirs are to be commemorated.
All of which impresses us as being
admirably apropos. There is a great
deal of nonsense spoken and written
nowadays about the uplifting influence
Of the human form divine" One need
not deny that to the cultured artist,
or art critic. the nude is unobjection-
able; but it is tolerably safe to affirm
that to nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine
hundredths, of the general public, it
is, as the Cross says of the specific
group in Buenos Aires, "immodestly
suggestive" The dictum that "to the
pure all things are pure" is too fire.
quently overstrained-is Gifted quoted to
justify unspeakable nastiness.