It suddenly occurred to me, while watching some old paintings, that nudity in art has been in decline over the last number of decades.Why do I think so? Look at this painting by Rubens:
Many nude people in it, and most people will appreciate this as art. In the time that this painting was made (1606/1608 –source-) no one made any fuss about it.
Then there is this painting, made in 1915 (-source-) by Adolf Heinrich Hansen:
No one, except for the obvious, will have a problem with this scene where a mother and her child are at the beach. These days, when a photograph appears somewhere that shows the same basic image, many people will try to beat each other in shouting ‘child porn’. That’s wrong, as there is no porn in this picture. Just a nude child having a good time at the beach. I’m in Europe. When you go to a beach here you’ll see lots of small children running around naked, and nobody makes a fuss about it.
I’m glad that at least in paintings no censorship is used. Please, look at this and tell me if you think this option is brilliant:
I’m quite convinced that it’s not. So why is harmless nudity (yes, nudity is harmless!) then so often censored in our modern age?
(Indeed, this is not a painting, but photography is a modern art-form.)
It’s all down to the excesses that the porn industry bestowed upon us, and the manners of extreme people that take things much too far. Because of them, the knights of morality put a stamp on anything that shows parts of a body that we ‘should be ashamed of’. Not only the sexually extreme are responsible for this, however. Overall hypocrisy which is often fuelled by religion and other factions also plays a part in it. It’s sad that the world desires so much ‘guidance’ in what’s acceptable in nudity. What happened to the common sense in morals?
