Olivia S. Anastasiadis schrieb:
> Yes, we believe God created the human body but he sure kicked Adam and
> Eve out of paradise when they told him they were naked.
>

Dear list-ners,

yes - this seems to be an issue. But mostly in a puritanical or some catholic or
greek orthodox surroundings. I just want to come back to the above idea of
Olivia which really might be used against nudity in art.

1) The paradise is a good old story of symbolic character, not more. It
explains, why we naked persons use clothes at all. The paradise was the time of
the dawn im Mankind, when Men lived like animals among animals. As God and Devil
(good and bad, + and - : the archeotypical asia-european/Persian) contrast was
already existing, there h a d to come a day when Men realized the might of the
devil. It was this moment, when they realized that they were naked like apes!
This does not mean, that they realized, that nudity is bad, but that nudity is
proper for privateness, and not for the eye of the public. And this means that
nudity for centuries was reserved for certain situations in life (saunas, baths,
sports, swimming, sexual activities and art) as an exemption from the rule.

2) Artist were allowed to depict nude bodies from earliest Greek days up to the
present - only during the Middle Ages artists they had lost the ability to draw
a body "after nature". Thanks to the church, art historians for these centuries
became more or less specialists in drapery and many a times we have to ask
ourselves "Are these ladies all pregnant?"

3) It is mass media and pornography as business for sexual neurotics which
drives nudity from the harmless private situation into the public field.
Cultural anthropologists researching the 2nd half of this century have to find
out whats happening to us getting oversexed day and night.

3) Using the Paradise argument by Olivia, I am sorry to say, is quite funny in
its consequences.
3a) Install a law which forbids artists to produce works of art showing nude
bodies.
3b) Confiscate such works in museums and galleries and burn them (maybe sell
them to the Hustler group?)
4c) Get a handfull of youngsters, provide them with hammers etc. and let them
search the parks, monuments for the small differences. Depending on the kind of
honouring this work to clean your town and country, you will see, in a short
time you will feel much better...

Greetings


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