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The statue of David, Florence
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Message
Posted
There's something more than a little disturbing with opinions today in that you can broadcast a completely controversial view, even half baked one (a certain woman in Florida for example) and publish it on the internet secure in the knowledge it will be read (and possible supported) by multi-thousands who wouldn't normally give it a thought.). " I know, I'll post something outrageous, well I'm allowed to aren't I" , free speech innit . Somebody will insult me and I'll sue em for a few million. I'll be famous!"
This is a rather worrying thought what direction our modern world is going in.
Posted
The internet is simultaneously a blessing and a curse - I'm not quite sure which might predominate. Michaelangelo's fabuluous sculpture of David, now - was it intended, in part, to be a sexual image? It might have been - I doubt that was his first intention, though again - it might have been. Who can know, and why on earth should we care? Who can know, and why should anyone care about, what an artist's primary intention may have been? In every case, I suspect it would be very complicated - does even the artist really know? Why must we insist on inserting our vulgar twenty third century intrusiveness into any ancient artwork? We cannot know their inspiration - we might be surprised at some of them; we might also be astonished by their moral and religious purity - we were not there at the time, we did not live in the era of their world-view, and how appallingly arrogant of us it is to assume that we can interpret them in our own, far more vulgar, terms!
Modern interpretative art criticism offers us virtually nothing of value; academic interpretation so often fails to take account of the moral views of the time, because modern academics don't share or understand them, though of course I know there are worthy exceptions. Or in short - don't trust professional critics or academics: their judgemental criteria may be merely cynical, their aesthetic judgement subjective, their opinion of no more value than that of the meanest or less well educated of us.
There are objective judgements to be made - but the kind of Tennessee mom who judges artworks to be pornographic is, among other judgements, as ignorant and harmful as could possibly be conceived, and is actively pernicious. This is a point we have continually to stress, in the interests of everyone and to the damnation of the religiously or culturally bone-headed: or we're just doomed as a civilization.
Posted
Robert wrote: This is a point we have continually to stress, in the interests of everyone and to the damnation of the religiously or culturally bone-headed: or we're just doomed as a civilization.
Quote
Being a Catholic and a Christian I'd prefer this topic to remain a cultural rather than religious issue. To include religion is a different set of beliefs that already has more than enough issues. There's enough historical evidence that nudity goes back much further in history and art than Florida or Texas. Perhaps Mrs objector never read the Illiad or Odyssey? She's certainly never visited museums and art galleries.
Posted
Jim - DID I say that? Possibly in another thread - it looks familiar: but not in this one, did I?
I was - not now - a Catholic too; I would not regard this statue as a religious image at all. I'm not a Christian now anyway - I'm slightly puzzled by your comment, but that may be my problem rather than yours.
Posted
I find Americans (taken en masse) to be a strange bunch when it comes to moral standards. On the one hand you get a woman objecting to the display of a penis in a very very old statue, and just down the road six people including three children are killed in another school shooting because the US has almost no gun control. Last time I checked no child ever died from looking at a marble willy.
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