The best book probably ever written on the subject of the nude in Art must be Kenneth’s Clark authoritative study simply titled “The Nude: A Study In Ideal Form.” Regarding the incredibly sublime late-life works of Michelangelo, he wrote: “In these drawings, as in certain passages of Dante or St. John of the Cross, we reach a realm of spirit where analysis is inappropriate and critical language inadequate…For a second those great mysteries of our faith, the Incarnation and the Redemption, are made clear to us by the image of the naked human body. Has Michelangelo finally achieved the aim that had haunted him since the Sistine ceiling, and before: to grasp physical beauty so firmly that he marry carry it with him to the realm of the spirit?” Yes, he did. For Michelangelo, the greatest Christian artist to ever live, refashioned Man into the perfect mirror of the Creator; a form that encapsulated the beauty of a pre-fallen human race. He envisioned the body before it was corrupted by temptation, disobedience, and lust. His paintings and sculptures were images of the possibility that Man could achieve in his perfect union with the Godhead: best envisioned by the glorified body of the young “David” – when he was still pure and unsullied by the world.
In contrast, what porn has done is to subvert all the capacities within the body and debase its potential beauty to the lowest form possible – which oftentimes borders on the bestial. This is reflected in much early-20th century modern art movements, such as Cubism and Abstract Expressionism, that anticipated the ugly fleshiness which so typified all contemporary pornography; look specifically at the figural works of women by Pablo Picasso, and many of the paintings by Willem de Kooning and Francis Bacon. It’s all raw, meaty, and bizarre – completely bordering on the sado-masochistic. Here, we see the mix of body parts: eyes, breasts, mouth, feet, and arms – in a great jumble of oversaturated colors that always reminds me of the 1980s porn magazine racks which were awash with sickening hues of pink and yellow. Yet, in its ugliness, these images still have power: they shock, and oftentimes you cannot turn away. And, porn is the ultimate in the grotesque transmuting into the glamorous. Porn takes the body and revels in its degraded Nature; it celebrates its brokenness and propensity for decay. When I think back, and my mind is cleared of many of those old images, the reality of porn was bloody and soaked in stink; yet, I couldn’t stop. Strangely, it reminds of a poem by Charles Baudelaire:
“The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.”