On Photography
Immoral Nudes and Naked Christs
Over the past dozen or so years there has
been a lot of talk of the offense
of pictoral nudity in art by a new morally empowered religious
zealotry. Old man Comstock has come back to sour life with scrooge like
vengeance. Savronola has been reborn, only now he tows the Republican
party line, wearing a suit, shirt, and tie of red white and blue. Well
intentioned but misguided fanatics have confused politics and religion
and feel incumbent and preach a new brand of morality to the faithless
heathen, and politically sweep the cesspool they feel art has become,
charging art is dragging society into destruction and decadence.
I sympathize. Almost. With all the trash out there there is much warranted offense.
However, its pretty obvious to reasonable
people there is nothing more moral than anatomy, and nothing more
virtuous than art which the adornment of all creation and every action.
The whole history of art makes this pretty clear in both theory and
practice, by both the authentically religious and irreligious alike.
Such art possesses itself a civilizing quality, one Tolstoy calls "one
of the indispensable means of communication without which mankind could
not exist." It is this very aesthetic history the new censors would
rewrite and overthrow. He calls "such people wrong in repudiating all
art." For art stands on principle, not every manifestation whether good
or bad. The new moralists however oppose art on principle. To them it
should not be.
There is nothing more morally offensive than
immorality, and nothing more repugnant right and virtuous actions than
corrupted ones. Here, I must with the moralist agree. He has however,
forgotten the languge true morality speaks, indeed, that which made
morality and upon which it exists.
Authentic religious conviction informs both
right actions and right feeling. On this I venture, most people both
religious and ireligious alike agree. It is however, utter nonsense to
demand moral behavior of art. Art is not behavior, however repudiating
art is.
How does such rejection serve human art, the
voice of morality? How can murder of artist, or brush be justifed in
any moral grounds at all? How does it morally benefit any, if all the
Mozarts, all the Michelangelos, all the Praxiteles were erased on fear
of offending what? Precisely what?
It is true, morality is the bedrock of
society and root of all virtue. It is also true, that the moral act is the right to being,
to speech, to liberty, to making art, in short all things human that
every true moralist ought defend with his life. Anything that would
oppose this, the greatest virtue, is not moral, and any such religion
that opposes such humanity an unjustifiable lie and sham.
In a free and pluralist society certain moral
actions are open to disussions, but discussion itself never. Where there is no discussion
there is no moralty.
And the whole world has become insufferably
silent.
© 2006 Timothy Martin Gillan
Photography
