Il nudo maschile

Speranza

The problem photography posed was that it threatened to divorce art from a whole realm of feeling to which it was allied at levels too deep to be affected by merely intellectual decisions.

The fact is that the impulse to MAKE ART of whatever sort seems to be closely linked to the SEXUAL drive.

Disguised to some extent by the anti-sexual bias of Christianity (but unconsciously expressed none the less in many scenes from Christian mythology), the impulse survived the Middle Ages and returned to art undisguised at the Italian Renaissance.

It remained something which the two parties -- the conservaitve and the revolutionary -- still held in common throughout the artistic turmoils of the 19th century.

Manet and Boungereau, different form one another in almost every other respect, can both be still described as EROTIC painters.

Some masters of modernism -- Mondrian, for example -- surrended this territory enitrely to popular art.

Others were profoundly unwilling to do so.

Picasso's "Les demoiselles d'Avignon', a key word in the history of the Modern Movement, is a case in point. Not only are the chief figures FEMALE nudes, but the very title of the painting (admittedly not supplied by the artist himself, but accepted by him when the poet Andre Salmon proposed it) tells us that they are PROSTITUTES, WHORES from a low-class brothel in Barcelona's Calle d'Avignon.

The title is a defensive joke. It acknowledges the fact that these women are so repulsive that only the most desperate or degraded would think of desiring them.

But beneath the witticism, as with so many other jokes, there lies an ironic truth: one of the chief characteristics of "Les demoiselles d'Avignon", the motor which provides the energy for all its stylistic innovations, is a RAW AND RAUNCHY SEXUALITY.

This sexuality reappears in Piccaso's art throughout his long life, and is one of the chief features of the final phase which critics are now hastening to re-assess.

"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" calls our attention to a phenomenon which has recurred thoughout the history of modern art, and which in fact surfaced at least as early as Manet, who has strong cliams to be described as the first modern painter.

The SEXUAL CONTENT of Manet's "Olympia" and of his "Le dejeneur sur l'herbe" has caused some embarrassment to commentators in our own day.

So much so that they tend to avoid discussion of it, recording merely that the scandalised reaction to these paintings when they were first shown was aroused by their subject-matter as well as by their technique.

There is at least a tendency to hint that Manet must have been oblivious to what he was showing.

To say this is to deprive these masterpieces of an IRONY which is no small part of their appeal.

Both are 'learned' works, heavily dependent for their effect on the spectator's knowledge of the art of the past.

"Olympia" depends on Tiziano's "Venus of Urbino".

"Le dejeneur sur l'herbe" depends on an engraving by Marcantonio which was extremely well known to 19th century artists.

What Manet did was to transpose thise hallowed icons into the context of his own thime.

The result was to call attention to aspects of the Old Masters which his burgeois contemporaries had learned to ignore.

The brutality of the reminder was the thing which most aroused their anger.

Manet's consciousness of the historical context was clear, as compoarison with his sources shows, and this indicates as a corollary that the affront to the public was a calculated one, though perhaps the reaction was more violent than the painter anticipated.