: www.dace.co.uk :
strange but beautiful paintings, and thoughts about art
This page is in printer-friendly format: printout will omit the background images and menu.
A theory of sex and art
Should I burn my paintings?
Below is the unedited text of a criticism I received from a viewer of this web site. She says I should burn my paintings because sometimes they have naked women in them.
My reply, below, explains my theory of why sex can neither be separated from true art nor from the spiritual. On the contrary, the problem with much modern art is that it is not sexy enough, and this lack is intimately connected with its vapid godlessness.
- message from C.D begins -
I saw your collection of paintings, but I was a bit put off by them because I thought they were rather obscene, i.e. the depictions of naked women. I am just writing to advise you on it, if you would let me. I don't think it is appropriate to have such images alongside the painting of the great mystic St Catherine of Siena. She would not approve of that or be pleased with it, nor would the Lord Himself. Also, the full length painting of St Catherine is a little detrimental to her sanctity, because her dress is clinging to her body, so that you can easily make out the shape of her body. But this is not in keeping with the modesty and purity of the saint, because she was a virgin and of course because she was a saint, and as such modelled herself on her Lord, the lover of modesty and chastity.
Please think about what I am saying and ask yourself deep down in prayer, is this what God really wants of you. In your heart of hearts, you know it is wrong. Just because they are not actual photographs doesn't make it more acceptable or less serious. I am aware that a lot of religious paintings are obscene and blasphemous in the way they depict saints. But that doesn't make it okay. The painters have to go by their own consciences, and in the end they have to face God, as we all do. And just because some painters abuse their gift, it doesn't mean it's okay. Go by your own conscience, rather than going with the flow. Please don't be offended. I am only telling you this for your own good. I'm not condemning you at all. But if you love God, you won't want to offend Him, and immodesty in all its forms does offend Him. The devil presents this kind of sin as good and pleasurable. Ask God honestly about this and you will receive light. If you open your heart, you will see the Truth, because God is Truth and will always give It to those who genuinely seek it. He will never deceive you. It is the devil who seeks to confuse and deceive so many people in this matter. That's why there are so many obscene religious pictures, i.e. artists let themselves be misled and blinded.
I end by telling you a true story. A painter who had died and gone to Purgatory, was permitted by God to go to a certain monk. At God's command, he commissioned this monk to go to a man, who kept an obscene painting in his house, which this very painter now dead had painted, but which he had repented of. The man immediately threw it into the fire, but as punishment for displaying it, his two children died. You see in the end Martin, what others might think or say doesn't matter. God has the last say. He alone judges everything that we do according to His Law and Justice.
You would give great joy and glory to God if you got rid of your paintings for love of Him and His commandments. Jesus said 'if you love Me, you will keep My commandments'. In the story, this painter's artwork had also caused a lot of other people to sin by looking at it. So you too could be affecting others who view your website, without you even knowing it. But you could give great example if you remove these images. You seem very genuine, and I hope you will take on board what I have said and that you will change. I will ask St Catherine of Siena to help you do just that. I am not disclosing my email address because that is not important. What is important is that you get the message, and think very carefully about what you are doing.
God love you.
- message from C.D ends -
My reply
What does chastity mean?
Chastity means abstaining from harmful thoughts. It means living in the present. The devil's name is legion - the legion of thoughts that keep us from the presence of God.
Why is the human body beautiful?
The human body is beautiful because that is the way God made it. Doctrines holding that the body is inherently sinful were rightly outlawed as heresy in the Middle Ages, and fortunately there is no need to revive these wrong ideas now. What God has made beautiful we can take as an occasion for gratitude.
Why true artists like to show beautiful bodies
In a previous essay Towards a new art I criticised art that merely displays the conceit of the artist. Mercifully there exists another kind of art, which aims to bring the viewer to an experience of beauty. The experience of beauty I hold to be essentially spiritual.
It is a fact that there exist higher states of awareness which are characterised by a particular energy. This is a matter for personal observation and verification, because you cannot get it in a test-tube. However most people can remember moments of particular clarity, of clear presence, of perhaps very occasionally even a numinous quality in what is otherwise the everyday.
These moments are rare. The closest we commonly get to this kind of energy is sexual feelings. Sexual energy is not spiritual exactly, but it shares something of the same intensity. Therefore, one of the means that artists have used down the millennia to evoke the recognition of the spiritual is images which have a sexual quality. This is true particularly of Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Hindu sacred art and the Italian Renaissance, although it has been present in other times and places as well.
Undeniably there have been cultures where the love of God has been expressed in abstract forms and rich calligraphy, such as in some parts of the Islamic world, or in highly formalised images of the body, as in Byzantine icons. Nevertheless all great art is a struggle to express the beauty of creation, and the idea that that creation and its beauty are somehow profane is simply illogical and anti-spiritual. Even a flower evokes the same response in us to something beautiful, and a flower is a sexual organ par excellence.
Where is the sin?
It is strange that anyone should be confused about this. Perhaps C.D has a case, but if so then she has not made it. If C.D would like to respond I shall post her further comments here.