Nudity doesn't equal obscenity

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 11, 2006 7:46 PM PST ∞

Is Michelangelo pornographic?

It's a fair question after an Escondido art gallery on Grand Avenue removed paintings from a display window because one person complained about their nude subject matter. (Although to its credit, the gallery has since restored the paintings to their rightful place.)

So let's consider the implications of this latest moral panic for a minute.

Angelica Vignali described an anatomically correct (although more impressionistic than realistic) portrait of a male hanging in the window of Distinction Art Gallery thus: "They may say it's not pornography, but how much closer in definition can you get when you see a nude body?"

To argue that mere nudity is inherently sexual, much less pornographic, is to say that it is impossible to have a healthy appreciation for nature. It is to reject the entire history of Western art, from the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Renaissance to the present.

Yes, worship of sex can become an unhealthy obsession. We have a nice example of that in F Street Bookstore, a mere block away from the gallery where Ms. Vignali became so upset. When we sexually objectify each other, reduce each other to a "thing" to be desired or coveted, yes, then we have crossed over into some questionable territory.

But the human form in and of itself is not about sex.

At least for most of us.

It's less than a year since Escondido Councilwoman Marie Waldron sicced the cops on a naturist group that was having private nude swims at the Iceoplex, saying, "We really don't want this type of thing in our city."

Now it's an art gallery in a citizen's cross hairs.

And the rest of us are left to wonder, what is this crazy hang-up in Escondido over nakedness?

Are we going to clothe Michelangelo's "David"? It, too, is of a nude male form ---- fully realistic in its depictions, right down to the loins. It is also widely considered one of the great masterpieces of our civilization. Huge swaths of the Louvre, Madrid's El Prado and even the Vatican collections are of the human form ---- even the celebrated Sistine Chapel has anatomically detailed nudes.

Just how much great art should we destroy so as not to offend those whose sexual imaginations run wild? Should we ban Renoir, Cezanne and Gauguin in addition to Michelangelo?

To look at a simple nude figure in a platonic setting and see sex where there is none is more a reflection of the person seeing the sex than it is of the art in question.

And so, if we are to ban "nudity," how are we to define it?

Someone who thinks the mere sight of a man's genitals is cause for alarm has a pretty active imagination; it's hard telling where such a standard may end up. People have sex with all kinds of body parts ---- which ones should we put off-limits?

Just the genitals? Nipples? Breasts?

Or maybe our art galleries should simply follow F Street's example and block their windows with foil blinds.

Contact staff writer Jim Trageser at (760) 740-5424 or jtrageser@nctimes.com. To comment, go to nctimes.com.

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