Pornography vs. The Nude in Art: The Catholic-Christian Perspective

Many colleges and universities offer art classes which necessarily involve the viewing of the nude male or female human body. There are two extreme and wrong-headed responses or approaches to this kind of situation:

1. It is always and absolutely wrong to look at the naked human body merely for artistic reproduction or training. It is also always and absolutely wrong to publicly display such artistic reproductions of the nude body. Anybody who engages in such things is engaging in the deadly sin of lust.
2. Looking at the naked human body, whether in person or through art, is no big deal and shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. Anybody who wants limits upon or has any concerns about the morality of looking at the naked human body are prudes who hate the human body or don’t sufficiently value its beauty and dignity.

The correct, prudent, and temperant approach is the Catholic Christian approach outlined by Blessed Pope John Paul II (JP2) in his Theology of the Body. Artistic representation of nude forms is a very complex issue because it combines very objective truths with very subjective experiences.

Let’s look at JP2’s own words:

We cannot consider the body an objective reality outside the personal subjectivity of man, of human beings, male and female….

By its very nature, this looking is aesthetic. It cannot be completely isolated, in man’s subjective conscience, from that looking of which Christ speaks in the Sermon on the Mount: warning against lust….

In each of these dimensions—and in a different way in each one—the human body loses that deeply subjective meaning of the gift. It becomes an object destined for the knowledge of many. This happens in such a way that those who look at the body, assimilate or even, in a way, take possession of what evidently exists, of what in fact should exist essentially at the level of a gift, made by the person to the person, not just in the image but in the living man. Actually, that “taking possession” already happens at another level—that is, at the level of the object of the transfiguration or artistic reproduction. However it is impossible not to perceive that from the point of view of the ethos of the body, deeply understood, a problem arises here. This is a very delicate problem, which has its levels of intensity according to various motives and circumstances both as regards artistic activity and as regards knowledge of the work of art or of its reproduction. The fact that this problem is raised does not mean that the human body, in its nakedness, cannot become a subject of works of art—but only that this problem is not purely aesthetic, nor morally indifferent….

JP2 clearly acknowledges that the nude human body as a subject of a work of art does create a moral problem or dilemma. Thus the approach #2 mentioned above is NOT acceptable; such a situation must be taken seriously. However, JP2 also clearly states that the problems and dilemmas involved do not mean there is an absolute moral prohibition against artistically reproducing the naked body. Yet again, just because the human body can validly be the subject of art does not mean that there are no moral considerations to take into account in whether a specific instance of such supposed art is morally acceptable.

In that [fallen] state there arose between man and woman, together with shame, the specific necessity of privacy with regard to their own bodies. In the heart of man, subject to lust, this necessity serves, even indirectly, to ensure the gift and the possibility of mutual donation. This necessity also forms man’s way of acting as “an object of culture,” in the widest meaning of the term. If culture shows an explicit tendency to cover the nakedness of the human body, it certainly does so not only for climatic reasons, but also in relation to the process of growth of man’s personal sensitivity. The anonymous nakedness of the man-object contrasts with the progress of the truly human culture of morals. It is probably possible to confirm this also in the life of so-called primitive populations. The process of refining personal human sensitivity is certainly a factor and fruit of culture….

That original shame, known already from the first chapters of the Bible, is a permanent element of culture and morals. It belongs to the genesis of the ethos of the human body.

The person of developed sensitivity overcomes the limit of that shame with difficulty and interior resistance. This is seen clearly even in situations which justify the necessity of undressing the body, such as in the case of medical examinations or operations. Mention should also be made especially of other circumstances, such as those of concentration camps or places of extermination, where the violation of bodily shame is a method used deliberately to destroy personal sensitivity and the sense of human dignity.

The same rule is confirmed everywhere—though in different ways. Following personal sensitivity, man does not wish to become an object for others through his own anonymous nakedness. Nor does he wish the other to become an object for him in a similar way. Evidently he does not wish this to the extent to which he lets himself be guided by the sense of the dignity of the human body. Various motives can induce, incite and even press man to act in a way contrary to the requirements of the dignity of the human body, a dignity connected with personal sensitivity.

Above, JP2 explains why clothing and veiling the body in privacy are necessary to preserve the dignity of the body and its nuptial meaning, its meaning as a gift of love to another person. Such clothing and veiling is necessary to protect the dignity of the body from objectification by those who would look upon the body abusively in lust. Implicitly, JP2 states that there should be a natural difficulty and interior resistance to undressing or viewing naked someone other than one’s spouse or a very young son or daughter. There is something wrong with an adult who shows no difficulty or interior resistance to viewing the nudity of a complete stranger, even when it is necessary in extraordinary circumstances (e.g. medical practice).

It cannot be forgotten that the fundamental interior situation of historical man is the state of threefold lust (cf. 1 Jn 2:16). This state—and, in particular, the lust of the flesh—makes itself felt in various ways, both in the interior impulses of the human heart and in the whole climate of interhuman relations and social morals.

We cannot forget this, not even when it is a question of the broad sphere of artistic culture, particularly that of visual and spectacular character, as also when it is a question of mass culture. This is so significant for our times and connected with the use of the media of audiovisual communication.

Again, JP2 reaffirms and reiterates that mere appeals to art and artistic sensibility can never warrant the banishment of ethical concern and analysis, for concupiscience is a fundamental interior fact about human nature.

A question arises: when and in what case is this sphere of man’s activity—from the point of view of the ethos of the body—regarded as pornovision, just as in literature some writings were and are often regarded as pornography (this second term is an older one).

Both take place when the limit of shame is overstepped, that is, of personal sensitivity with regard to what is connected with the human body with its nakedness. They take place when in the work of art or by means of the media of audiovisual reproduction the right to the privacy of the body in its masculinity or femininity is violated—and in the last analysis—when those deep governing rules of the gift and of mutual donation, which are inscribed in this femininity and masculinity through the whole structure of the human being, are violated. This deep inscription—or rather incision—decides the nuptial meaning of the human body, that is, of the fundamental call it receives to form the “communion of persons” and take part in it….

However, if the sense of shame and personal sensitivity is offended in these cases, that happens because of their transfer to the dimension of social communication, therefore owing to the fact that what, in man’s rightful feeling, belongs and must belong strictly to the interpersonal relationship—which is linked, as has already been pointed out, with the communion of persons itself, and in its sphere corresponds to the interior truth of man, and so also to the complete truth about man—becomes, so to speak, public property….

Here above, JP2 tries to explain when visual representation or reproduction of the human body should be regarded as immoral pornovision (he distinguishes this from pornography, which is obscene writing only and not images). He explains that pornovision occurs when the right to privacy of the body and, more crucially, when the truths and realities of the meaning and dignity of the body as a mutual and loving gift of self are violated.

The human body in its nakedness—as we stated in the preceding analyses (in which we referred to Genesis 2:25)—understood as a manifestation of the person and as his gift, that is, a sign of trust and donation to the other person, who is conscious of the gift, and who is chosen and resolved to respond to it in an equally personal way, becomes the source of a particular interpersonal communication….

Precisely because of the great value of the body in this system of interpersonal communion, to make the body in its nakedness—which expresses precisely “the element” of the gift—the object-subject of the work of art or of the audiovisual reproduction, is a problem which is not only aesthetic, but also ethical. That “element of the gift” is, so to speak, suspended in the dimension of an unknown reception and an unforeseen response. Thereby it is in a way threatened in the order of intention, in the sense that it may become an anonymous object of appropriation, an object of abuse. Precisely for this reason the integral truth about man constitutes in this case the foundation of the norm according to which the good or evil of determined actions, of behavior, of morals and situations, is modeled. The truth about man, about what is particularly personal and interior in him—precisely because of his body and his sex (femininity-masculinity)—creates here precise limits which it is unlawful to exceed.

JP2 explains the deeply profound, inherent meaning of human nakedness: the revelation of the person and his or her natural calling to be a gift to one other trusted person of the opposite sex (though some have a de facto or supernatural calling to celibacy). It is precisely because the human body has such great value and dignity that one must recognize the inherent ethical concerns and limits involved in artistic reproduction of the naked human body.

These limits must be recognized and observed by the artist who makes the human body the object, model or subject of the work of art or of the audiovisual reproduction. Neither he nor others who are responsible in this field have the right to demand, propose or bring it about that other people, invited, exhorted or admitted to see, to contemplate the image, should violate those limits together with them, or because of them. It is a question of the image, in which that which in itself constitutes the content and the deeply personal value, that which belongs to the order of the gift and of the mutual donation of person to person, is, as a subject, uprooted from its own authentic substratum. It becomes, through social communication, an object and what is more, in a way, an anonymous object.

As can be seen from what is said above, the whole problem of pornovision and pornography is not the effect of a puritanical mentality or of a narrow moralism, just as it is not the product of a thought imbued with Manichaeism. It is a question of an extremely important, fundamental sphere of values. Before it, man cannot remain indifferent because of the dignity of humanity, the personal character and the eloquence of the human body. By means of works of art and the activity of the audiovisual media, all those contents and values can be modeled and studied. But they can also be distorted and destroyed in the heart of man. As can be seen, we find ourselves continually within the orbit of the words Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. Also the problems which we are dealing with here must be examined in the light of those words, which consider a look that springs from lust as “adultery committed in the heart”….

Having explained the dignity of the body and why ethical concerns are inherently involved, JP2 continues by specifically telling us what these ethical limits demand of those involved in artistic representation of nudity. The artist may not demand, propose, or create a situation in which other people are invited, encouraged, or allowed to violate the ethical limits discussed above that violate human dignity. JP2 openly and explicitly acknowledges that the human body can indeed be fruitfully and morally modeled and studied, if due reverence for the body is present. But he is also very explicit in his declaration that art can be perverted into a means to distort and destroy, in the mind of the viewer of the “art,” the meaning and dignity of the human body.

Here we return once more to the problem already mentioned: whether and to what extent can the human body, in the whole visible truth of its masculinity and femininity, be a subject of works of art and thereby a subject of that specific social communication for which these works are intended? This question referred even more to modern mass culture, connected with the audiovisual media. Can the human body be such a model-subject, since we know that with this is connected that objectivity “without choice” which we first called anonymity, and which seems to bring with it a serious potential threat to the whole sphere of meanings, peculiar to the body of man and woman because of the personal character of the human subject and the character of communion of interpersonal relations?…

Our preceding reflections did not intend to question the right to this subject. They aim merely at proving that its treatment is connected with a special responsibility which is not only artistic, but also ethical in nature. The artist who undertakes that theme in any sphere of art or through audiovisual media, must be aware of the full truth of the object, of the whole scale of values connected with it. He must not only take them into account in abstracto, but also live them correctly himself. This corresponds also to that principle of purity of heart, which in determined cases must be transferred from the existential sphere of attitudes and ways of behavior to the intentional sphere of creation or artistic reproduction….

Here again, JP2 reaffirms and reiterates that his previous ethical analyses and exhortations are not meant to suggest that the human body should never be the subject of a work of art. He merely wishes to affirm that there are moral responsibilities involved on the part of the artist and not merely abstract responsibilities but responsibilities that must be performed and lived out.

In the course of the various eras, beginning from antiquity—and above all in the great period of Greek classical art—there are works of art whose subject is the human body in its nakedness. The contemplation of this makes it possible to concentrate, in a way, on the whole truth of man, on the dignity and the beauty—also the “suprasensual” beauty—of his masculinity and femininity. These works bear within them, almost hidden, an element of sublimation. This leads the viewer, through the body, to the whole personal mystery of man. In contact with these works, where we do not feel drawn by their content to “looking lustfully,” which the Sermon on the Mount speaks about, we learn in a way that nuptial meaning of the body which corresponds to, and is the measure of, “purity of heart.”

Here above, JP2 explains what a morally valid work of art that depicts human nakedness does. It leads the viewer to contemplate the whole truth of man, the dignity and beauty of masculinity and femininity, and not merely in a sensual sense. Such art has an element of the sublime that transcends the senses. It reveals the whole personal mystery of man. It doesn’t push the viewer to look with lust.

But there are also works of art, and perhaps even more often reproductions, which arouse objection in the sphere of man’s personal sensitivity—not because of their object, since the human body in itself always has its inalienable dignity—but because of the quality or way of its reproduction, portrayal or artistic representation. The various coefficients of the work or the reproduction can be decisive with regard to that way and that quality, as well as multiple circumstances, often more of a technical nature than an artistic one.

It is well known that through all these elements the fundamental intentionality of the work of art or of the product of the respective media becomes, in a way, accessible to the viewer, as to the listener or the reader. If our personal sensitivity reacts with objection and disapproval, it is because in that fundamental intentionality, together with the concretizing of man and his body, we discover as indispensable for the work of art or its reproduction, his simultaneous reduction to the level of an object. He becomes an object of “enjoyment,” intended for the satisfaction of concupiscence itself. This is contrary to the dignity of man also in the intentional order of art and reproduction….

JP2 explicitly says here that there are some works of “art” that naturally and rightfully arouse objection and disapproval in the sensible man or woman. Such works are abhorrent not because of the form of the human body itself but because of a certain quality of the reproduction of the image (perhaps too explicit as in photography or video) or because of the way the nude body is portrayed in the image (e.g. masturbating or positioned provocatively so as to provoke lust).

Paul VI’s Encyclical Humanae Vitae emphasizes the “need to create an atmosphere favorable to education in chastity” (n. 22). With this he intends to affirm that the way of living the human body in the whole truth of its masculinity and femininity must correspond to the dignity of this body and to its significance in building the communion of persons. It can be said that this is one of the fundamental dimensions of human culture, understood as an affirmation which ennobles everything that is human…. So what we have called the ethos of the image cannot be considered apart from the correlative element, which we would have to call the ethos of seeing….

The creation of the atmosphere favorable to education in chastity contains these two elements. It concerns a reciprocal circuit which takes place between the image and the seeing, between the ethos of the image and the ethos of seeing. The creation of the image, in the broad and differentiated sense of the term, imposes on the author, artist or reproducer, obligations not only of an aesthetic, but also of an ethical nature. In the same way, “looking,” understood according to the same broad analogy, imposes obligations on the one who is the recipient of the work.

True and responsible artistic activity aims at overcoming the anonymity of the human body as an object “without choice.” As has already been said, it seeks through creative effort such an artistic expression of the truth about man in his feminine and masculine corporeity, which is, so to speak, assigned as a task to the viewer and, in the wider range, to every recipient of the work. It depends on him, in his turn, to decide whether to make his own effort to approach this truth, or to remain merely a superficial consumer of impressions, that is, one who exploits the meeting with the anonymous body-subject only at the level of sensuality which, by itself, reacts to its object precisely without choice….

These words are valid for the man of all times, for the historical man, and for each one of us.

JP2 ends his examination of this important topic of artistic representation of the human nakedness by reaffirming previous calls for a culture, including an artistic culture, that is favorable to education in chastity and by reemphasizing the obligations upon both artists and viewers of art to respect ethical limits of art in relation to nudity. Assuming that the artist has done due diligence in fulfilling his responsibilities, it is then incumbent upon the viewer accept the broader transcendent vision of the artist rather than crudely and immorally reduce the work of art to an object of self-indulgent sensuality.

***

A few other opinions I’d like to offer:

It is important to realize that in many cases the art medium itself, the very paint and canvass or paper and charcoal or stone, are all themselves partial veils over the human body whom they model and thus partially preserve the rightful privacy of the human body. Of course, the more accurate and graphic the reproduction becomes the less true this is. Because photography and video by their very nature lack too much veiling or lack all veiling whatsoever, I do not believe they can normally be used morally as artistic media for the reproduction of images of the naked human body. Only a couple of exceptions to this artistic norm come to mind: childhood photos that parents take of their children in the bathtub or in other innocent situations or the film Schindler’s List‘s graphic and grotesque portrayal of the Nazis’ heinous crimes against humanity at a death camp. But in the case of childhood photos, they are not publicly displayed and accessible.

Art classes that entail viewing a nude male or female body should not be mandatory to obtain a degree in art. A student should not be forced to expose themselves to temptation and lust in order to earn a degree in art. Moreover, instructors of such classes should not denigrate those students who choose to abstain from this risky genre of art. The instructors should also take pains at the beginning of the course to set and maintain the appropriate tone of reverence for the human body and the dignity of the person modeling. If only every student taking such a course understood well and embraced the Theology of the Body!

Also, I do wonder why the models always have to be completely nude in order to develop artistic talent or portray beauty. Is there no educational value in drawing underwear and/or a bra being worn by the model? Are flesh colored speedos and bikinis too much to ask? Is there something about the most private, intimate, and sexual parts of the body that are especially good for artistic training? I seriously doubt that, especially in the case of the male body. Though I guess they may be some very beautiful parts of the body, at least in the case of the female body. It still seems more prudent, if not more appropriate, for artists to use only persons of their same sex, their spouses, or perhaps immediate blood relatives as completely nude models.

While delving into the moral obligations of the artist in relation to others, Pope John Paul II doesn’t really seem to discuss explicitly or focus upon the moral obligations that artists have to themselves and to God in preserving their own chastity and purity of heart and mind while using a nude model to create art. (No mention seems to be made of the obligations upon the models either, which would be another interesting discussion.) I would caution every artist today who engages in or wishes to engage in such art to think carefully and seriously about whether they really have the discipline and character of mind to avoid lust. The artist must be truly honest with himself or herself. Holiness is more important than any worldly talent or skill we could possibly develop, artistic or otherwise. Even the value of the artistic depiction of beauty cannot become an absolute; it too must have ethical limits. The artist must not rationalize away concupiscience under the pretense of beauty. Perhaps female artists would naturally have more discipline and strength of mind to avoid lust, but I’m not so sure they have much of a greater immunity in such situations. And in today’s culture there may be almost just as many depraved young women as men. Moreover, even if an artist does have such discipline and character at present to beat back concupiscience or an immunity to it, he or she should not assume that such discipline, character, and immunity cannot possibly fade or fail. “Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12). Arrogance and pride precede the fall. Humility is always a must. Indeed, even the most innocent of pleasures require temperance and can sometimes lead us astray.

I think there is also a self-centered danger of some artists pridefully thinking that they must see naked beauty and share it with the world through art; otherwise, they cannot become great and everyone else will suffer too grieviously for lack of their artistic representations of it. It might be good to keep in mind that at the resurrection of the body all things will be revealed and all will truly, deeply, and chastely enjoy the physical beauty of everyone else in love forever (and enjoy something greater than physical beauty, however glorified).

As a matter of prudence, not principle, I would like to argue for erring on the side of caution and conservatism, especially in hard cases (of which there are many) where the correct moral conclusion is not certain or easy to discern. Our modern culture is sick; it doesn’t understand and/or accept the dignity of the human person and of human sexuality. Violation of the dignity of sexuality is the norm and commonplace. The artist must take this reality into account and act accordingly in deciding whether and how to display art depicting the nude form. Prudence would suggest erring on the side of caution and restricted access. Michaelangelo didn’t live and work in a sexually depraved cultural milieu. But even in the best human culture, some caution will be needed until Jesus comes again and fully redeems the body.