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The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and Sexuality Author(S): Lynda Nead Source: Signs, Vol

The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and Sexuality Author(S): Lynda Nead Source: Signs, Vol

The Female : , Art, and Sexuality Author(s): Lynda Nead Source: Signs, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Winter, 1990), pp. 323-335 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174488 . Accessed: 05/04/2014 10:06

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This content downloaded from 128.175.13.10 on Sat, 5 Apr 2014 10:06:37 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE FEMALE NUDE: PORNOGRAPHY, ART,AND SEXUALITY

LYNDA NEAD

To my mind art exists in the realm of contemplation,and is bound by some sort of imaginative transposition.The mo- ment art becomes an incentive to action it loses its true character.This is my objection to with a communist programme,and it would also apply to pornography.[KEN- NETH CLARK, testimonyto the Lord Longford committee on pornography]

The evidence given by , one of the world's leading art historians, to Lord Longford's committee on pornography in Britain,in 1972 is just one fragmentof a vast body of discourses that has been produced on the subject of pornographyover the last few decades.' The Longford committee was a privately sponsored investigation that claimed to represent public opinion. Its report, published in the formof a mass-marketpaperback and launched in a blaze of publicity,fueled the pornographydebate in Britainin the 1970s. From the seventies onward, feminists, moral crusaders, governments,and various other pressure groups have presented their views on the issue, with the result that pornography has become one of the most fiercely and publicly contested areas within contemporarycultural production.2

1 Quoted in Lord Longford,Pornography: The Longford Report (London: Coro- net, 1972), 99-100. 2 The publishedmaterial on pornographyis extensiveso it is difficultto extracta handfulof texts that accurately represent the debate. A veryuseful selection of British

[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1990, vol. 15, no. 2] ? 1990by The Universityof Chicago. All rightsreserved. 0097-9740/90/1502-0008$01.00

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Perhaps one of the mostdisabling limitations of much of this public debate has been the attemptto look at pornography-asa discreterealm of representation,cut offand clearlydistinct from otherforms of culturalproduction. This perspectiveis frequently attendedby the view thatthe pornographicresides in the image, thatit is a questionof content rather than form, of production rather thanconsumption. Even when pornographyis definedin termsof its circulation,as a matterof audience expectations,markets, and institutions,it is still separatedoff as thoughit existsin isolation and can be understoodoutside of its points of contactwith the widerdomain of culturalrepresentation. To suggestthat pornography needs to be examinedin relation to other formsof culturalproduction, however, is not to move towardthe positionthat claims that all of patriarchalculture is thereforepornographic. It is simplyto argue that we need to specifythe ways in which pornographyis definedand held in place. We need to get behind the commonsense notions of pornographyin orderto uncoverthe processesby whichthe term has been definedand thehistorical changes in theterm's meaning. At any particularmoment there is no one unifiedcategory of the pornographicbut rathera strugglebetween several competing definitionsof decency and indecency.As JohnEllis has written, "These definitionswill workwithin a contextdefined by several forces,the currentform of the pornographyindustry and its particularattempts at legitimisation;the particularforms of the laws relating to and censorship; and the general mobilisationof various moral and philosophical positions and themes that characterisea particularsocial moment."3Ellis's commentsbegin to move the debate toward a of the discursiveformation of pornography;a formationthat includes its operationsas an industry,its formsof distributionand consump- tion,its visual codings,and its verystatus as the illicit. One of the most significantways in which pornographyis historicallydefined is in relationto otherforms of cultural produc- tion;we knowthe pornographicin termsof its difference, in terms ofwhat it is not.The mostcommonplace opposition to pornography is art. If art is a reflectionof the highest social values, then pornographyis a symptomof a rottensociety; if art stands for

feministwritings is reprinted in Rosemary Betterton,ed., Looking On: Images of Femininity in the and Media (London and New York: Pandora, 1987), 143-202. 3 John Ellis, "/Pornography/Art/Pornography,"Screen 21, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 81-108, quote on 83.

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lasting,universal values, thenpornography represents disposabil- ity,trash. Art is a sign of cleanliness and licit morality,whereas pornographysymbolizes filth and theillicit. In thiscultural system, aestheticvalues readilycommunicate sexual and moralvalues. This is the basis ofKenneth Clark's testimony in whichart and pornog- raphyare definedin termsof theireffects on the spectator.Art is pacifyingand contemplative,whereas communistpainting and pornographyincite the viewer to action and thereforecannot belong to the realmof high artistic culture.4 Althoughconventionally art and pornographyare set up in this oppositionalrelationship, they can be seen insteadas two terms withina greatersignifying system that is continuallybeing rede- finedand that includes othercategories, such as obscenity,the erotic,and the sensual.All ofthese terms occupy particular sexual and culturalspaces; none of themcan be understoodin isolation since each depends on theother for its meaning. From this position we can begin to examine the changinghistorical relationships betweenthe terms and theways in whichthe boundaries between these categorieshave been and continueto be policed in orderto maintainthe aestheticand the pornographicas a necessaryideo- logicalpolarity in patriarchalsociety.

The femalenude: Policingthe boundaries It is oftenat the veryedge of social categoriesthat the workof definitiontakes place most energeticallyand that meaning is anchoredmost forcefully. For arthistory, the female nude is bothat the centerand at the marginsof high culture.It is at the center because withinart historical discourse of the nude are seen as thevisual culmination of idealism and human- ism. This authorityis neverthelessalways under threat,for the nude also standsat theedge ofthe art category, where it risks losing itsrespectability and spillingout and overinto the pornographic. It is the vagueness and instabilityof such culturaldefinitions that make these marginalareas so open and precarious.Since pornog- raphymay be definedas anyrepresentation that achieves a certain degree of sexual explicitness,art has to be protectedfrom being engulfedby pornographyin orderto maintainits positionas the

4 It is Kant's theoryof the self-containedaesthetic experience thatis at the bottom of all this,but in Clark's usage it becomes simplifiedand popularized, an accessible formula for cultural definition(see Immanuel Kant, Critique of Aesthetic Judge- ment, trans. J. C. Meredith [Oxford: Clarendon, 1911]).

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This content downloaded from 128.175.13.10 on Sat, 5 Apr 2014 10:06:37 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Nead / THE FEMALENUDE oppositionto pornography. In other words, through a process of mutual definition,the two categories keep each otherand the whole system in place. Categoriessuch as theerotic and thesensual play an important role as middleterms in the system-definingwhat can or cannotbe seen,differentiating allowable and illicit representations ofthe female body,and categorizingrespectable and nonrespectableforms of cul- turalconsumption. Withinthe history of art, the female nude is notsimply one subject amongothers, one formamong many, it is thesubject, the form. It is a paradigmof Western high culture with its network of contingent val- ues: civilization,edification, and aestheticpleasure. The femalenude is also a sign of thoseother, more hidden properties of patriarchal culture,that is, possession, power, and subordination. The femalenude worksboth as a sexualand a culturalcategory, but this is notsimply a matterof content or some intrinsicmeaning. The significationof the femalenude cannotbe separatedfrom the historicaldiscourses of culture,that is, the representationof the nude by criticsand arthis- torians.These textsdo notsimply analyze an alreadyconstituted area ofcultural knowledge, rather, they actively define cultural knowledge. The nude is alwaysorganized into a particularcultural industry and thuscirculates new definitionsof class,gender, and morality.More- over,representations ofthe female nude created by male artists testify notonly to patriarchalunderstandings of femalesexuality and femi- ninity,but they also endorsecertain definitions of male sexualityand masculinity. In Britainin the 1970s,the discourse of critics and arthistorians was implicatedin a radical redefinitionof sexuality.In the art world,there were renewedefforts to pin down the femalenude in highart so as to freeit fromdebasing associations with the sexual. These effortswere counteredby otherattempts to implicatethe images of high culturein the pornographic.In the 1980s context createdby AIDS, politicalconservatism, and religiousrevivalism, thedebate regardingsexuality and representationthat took place in the 1970s has taken on a renewed significance.The boundaries betweenart and pornographycontinue to shiftand to raisecomplex issues forfeminist cultural and sexual politics. The decade ofthe sixties in Britainwas characterizedby a series of legislativereforms in the sphereof moraland sexual conduct. StuartHall has describedthe generaltendency of Britishnational legislationin the 1960s as the shifttoward "increased regulation coupled withselective privatisation through contract or consent."5

5 StuartHall, "Reformismand the Legislation of Consent," in Permissivenessand Control: The Fate of the Sixties Legislation, ed. National Deviancy Conference (London: Macmillan, 1980), 1-43, quote on 18. 326

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The Sexual OffencesAct of 1967 changed the laws on male homosexuality,decriminalizing private sexual relationsbetween adult males. In the same year,the AbortionAct extended the groundsfor a lawfultermination of pregnancy,and the Family PlanningAct introduced wider provision of contraceptives by local authorities.Other legislation made divorcemore accessible (1969) and introducedthe defense of literarymerit into trialscharging publicationswith obscenity(1959 and 1964). At the same time, modificationof cinema and theatercensorship allowed more ex- plicitportrayals of sexuality in filmand on the stage.This seriesof legislativereforms represents a shiftin the styleof moralregula- tion.Although collectively the British legislation shifted toward the general directionof a more relaxed,permissive moral code, the reformsof the sixties should be recognizedas a revisionof an older conservativemoralism and an attemptto create a liberal formof moralityat a momentwhen the main political and economic tendencieswere also in the directionof a morelibertarian form of capitalism. Beginningin the late 1960s,the notion of permissiveness began to take on a particularsymbolic importance.With signs of a breakdownin the old order,a growingsense of social crisisgave way,by the early 1970s, to a generalizedmoral panic-a moral backlash againstthe permissivelegislation of the 1960s. On the Left,the women's movementand the emerginggay liberation movementchallenged the extentof the liberalismof the reforms, while on theRight, there was a revivalof moral traditionalism, led, with evangelical fervor,by individuals such as Malcolm Mug- geridge,Mary Whitehouse, and Lord Longford.According to this new authoritarianmorality, the sixties legislation had been thefinal nail in the coffinof traditionalvalues and Christianmorality. The faction'sleaders called fora returnto familyvalues and retrench- mentbehind the institutionsof law and order. The focusfor this moralpanic was the issue of pornography.Obscene and blasphe- mousmaterial was seen to be the sourceof social and moraldecay, underminingthe familyand corruptingboth the public and the privatespheres. As JeffreyWeeks has commented,pornography became forthe moralcrusaders of the 1970s whatprostitution had been forthe social puritansof the 1880s-a symbolof decay and social breakdown.7 The new moralismof the 1970s focusedon the image and the word. In the early 1970s therewas a clusterof prosecutionsfor

6 See JeffreyWeeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (London and New York: Longman, 1981), 273-88, on which this discussion of seventies moralism is based. 7 Ibid., 280.

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obscenity:the NationalViewers and ListenersAssociation orga- nized a popularcampaign against immorality in broadcasting,and in 1972 Lord Longfordpublished his reporton pornography.The Longfordreport concluded that exposure to pornographyadversely affectedsocial behaviorand morality.The state,it seemed, could notbe relied on to maintainsexual standards,and the reportcited the Danish and Americansituations as examplesof the stateeither failingto cohereand reflectpublic attitudesor adoptinga radically libertarianposition.8 The mostimportant point to be made aboutall these tacticsis thatmoral regulation in the 1970s tookthe formof the regulationof representationsof sexualityas opposed to regu- lationof sexual behavior.Indeed, representationwas at the center of discourseson sexualityduring the period. In the contextof this public debate, cultural classification became particularlysignificant, and the differentiationof terms such as the eroticand the obscene took on a heightenedimpor- tance.The aesthetichad to be distinguishedfrom the titillating; art had to be sealed offfrom pornography. Historically,high culture has provideda space fora viable form ofsexual representation: that which is aestheticized,contained, and allowed. In the 1970s thissite had to be reinforcedand shoredup. The differencesbetween paintingsof the femalenude and "pin- ups," glamourphotography, soft- and hard-coreporn had to be redefined.During this period the BritishLibrary cataloged the 1976 editionof KennethClark's high art survey, The Nude, in the general stacks but relegated ArthurGoldsmith's The Nude in Photographyand Michael Busselle's Nude and GlamourPhotog- raphyto the special locked cases.9The special cases are reserved for books that are prone to theftor damage and that include commercialor titillatingrepresentations of sex, in otherwords, books that are regardedas an incitementto action ratherthan contemplativereading. In the 1970s, photographsof the female nude clearlywere seen to fall withinthese guidelines; but the images included in Clark'stext escaped the contaminatingassoci- ations of pornographyand could be consulted withoutfearful 8 See Longford, pt. 1, chap. 7. Longford discusses the American congressional "Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, September 1970" (Washington,D.C.: Government Printing Office, September 30, 1970), which re- jected any clear correlationbetween pornographyand acts of sexual violence and advocated a liberalizing of in order to foster "healthy" sexual development. The report resulted in a split between members of the commission and was rejected by the Senate and president. 9 Kenneth Clark, The Nude (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1976); ArthurGoldsmith, The Nude in Photography (London: Octopus, 1976); Michael Busselle, Nude and (London: Macdonald, 1981).

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This content downloaded from 128.175.13.10 on Sat, 5 Apr 2014 10:06:37 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winter1990 / SIGNS consequences to eitherthe book or the reader.In this way the classificationsof the BritishLibrary map on to the conventional oppositionof highand low culture,of fineart versus mass media. Withintraditional aesthetics, the paintinghas a peculiarstatus. Valuedas an authenticand unique object,the singularproduct of a special act of creativity,the paintingis, as VictorBurgin writes, "partholy relic, part gilt-edged security."'? In contrast,the material and culturalvalue ofthe photograph is reducedby itsreproducibil- ity,and the photographcarries none of the connotationsof human agencyand culturaldignity. Unlike the connoisseur of high art, the consumerof photographic art does notpossess a unique object,and withinthe polarityof high and low art,the photograph is devalued as the productof mass technology,popular and vulgar. Thus, paintingsof the femalenude such as those illustratedin Clark'sbook were set apartphysically as well as symbolicallyfrom photographicimages of the female nude. With obscenityas the focus of sexual regulation,high art had to be maintainedas an edifying,moral, and privileged formof cultural consumption. Emphasiswas placed on the nude as an ideal formthat embodies perfection,universality, and unity.These conventionswere in opposition to the codes and functions of pornography- fragmentation,particularity, titillation. Above all else, paintingsof the femalenude had to be closed offfrom any associationswith commercialismor . Refusingthe connotationof commodity,the discourseof high art retreated into a vocabularyof contemplationand aestheticresponse. As KennethClark explained to the Longfordcommittee:

In a picturelike Correggio'sDanae the sexual feelingshave been transformed,and althoughwe undoubtedlyenjoy it all themore because ofits sensuality, we are stillin therealm of contemplation.The pornographicwall-paintings in Pompeii are documentariesand havenothing to do withart. There are one or two doubtfulcases-a smallpicture of copulationby Gericaultand a Rodinbronze of the same subject.Although each of these is a truework of art,I personallyfeel thatthe subject comes between me and completeaesthetic enjoy- ment.It is like too stronga flavouradded to a dish. There remainsthe extraordinary example of 's etching of a couple on a bed, where I do not findthe subject at all disturbingbecause it is seen entirelyin humanterms and is

10 Victor Burgin, The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity(London: Macmillan, 1986), 42.

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not intended to promote action. But it is, I believe, unique, and only Rembrandt could have done it.1

In the end, Clark comes up with an extremely personal and idiosyncratic set of distinctions.Indeed, it is the very obscurity of his criteriathat is most striking.His definitionrests on a precarious differentiationbetween a sensuality that can be incorporated within aesthetic contemplation and a sexuality that disrupts this response and becomes an incitement to behavior. Sensuality thus performsan essential role, signifyinga formof sexual representa- tion that remains within the permissible limits of art. But other art historians during the 1970s did not seek to keep high art as a discrete, desexualized category.In fact,they deliber- ately sought to break open and redefine the category's boundaries and to address directly the representation of the sexual within paintings of the female nude. Far frombeing a separate plane of activity,art, they claimed, participates in the social definition of male and female sexuality.Three of these texts,all of which were produced outside of the mainstream of art history,reveal the competing definitionsthat were thrownup by the issue of cultural representationand sexuality during this period. 's , firstpublished in 1972, estab- lished a fundamental distinction between female nakedness and .Whereas the nude is always subjected to pictorial conven- tions, "To be naked," he writes, "is to be oneself."'2 In this framework,Berger juxtaposes European oil paintings with photo- graphs from soft porn magazines, identifyingthe same range of poses, gestures,and looks in both mediums. The particularityof the medium and cultural formis not important.What matters is the repertoire of conventions that all nudes are believed to deploy, irrespective of historical or cultural specificity.But according to Berger there are a few valuable exceptions to the voyeurismthat is constructedthrough the European high art tradition.

They are no longer nudes-they break the norms of the art-form;they are paintings of loved women, more or less naked. Among the hundreds of thousands of nudes which make up the traditionthere are perhaps a hundred of these exceptions. In each case the painter's personal vision of the particularwomen he is painting is so strongthat it makes no allowance for the spectator.... The spectator can witness

11Quoted in Longford (n. 1 above), 100. 12 John Berger,Ways of Seeing (London: BBC & Penguin, 1972), 54.

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theirrelationship-but he can do no more; he is forcedto recognisehimself as the outsiderhe is. He cannotdeceive himselfinto believing that she is naked forhim. He cannot turnher intoa nude.13

Berger's evocation of the hundred or so exceptions to the traditionof the female nude in European art assumes that the relationshipbetween the male artistand the female model, a heterosexualrelationship, is inherentlynatural and good. Power, forBerger, is constitutedas public.Private relationships lie outside thedomain of power; love transformsthe nude intoa nakedwoman and preventsthe male spectator,the outsider,from turning the femalefigure into a voyeuristicspectacle. This interpretation,of course,is entirelybased on a naive,humanist faith in the honesty and equalityof private heterosexual relationships. It also assumesa familiaritywith artistic biography; the spectatorneeds to knowthe natureof the relationship between a particularartist and his model in orderto make this readingof the picture.Significantly, both Bergerand Lord Clark,in his statementto theLongford committee, invokepaintings by Rembrandtas unique representationsof sex. Greatartists, apparently, produce exceptional images regardless of subject-matter,and culturalvalue is thus a safe index of moral worth. Linda Nochlin'sfeminist essay, " and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-CenturyArt," also publishedin 1972,represents one voice fromthe women's movement,which during this period addressedthe constructionof patriarchy in highculture.14 Nochlin sharesBerger's analysis of the femalenude as a patriarchalimage formale consumption,but she goes muchfurther, rejecting the idea ofthe personalerotic imagery of individual male artistsin favorof a social basis forthe sexual definitionsestablished in imagesof the femalenude. She also pointsto the absence ofany public imagery forwomen's desires and calls foran available languageto express women's eroticneeds. This call forfemale was part of a muchwider demand by members of the women's movement during the early 1970s. Unfortunately,Nochlin's argument was recastby the publisher'sdust jacket to once again presentfemale erotica

13 Ibid., 57. 14 Linda Nochlin, "Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-CenturyArt," in Woman as Sex Object: Studies in , 1730-1970, ed. Thomas B. Hess and Linda Nochlin (London and New York: Allen Lane, 1972), 8-15. For a detailed discussion of this collection of essays, see Lise Vogel, "Fine Artsand : The Awakening Conscience," Feminist Studies 2, no. 1 (1974): 3-37.

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froma male perspective."The book is superblyillustrated and combinesthe pleasuresof a richcatalogue of esoteric erotica, with the satisfactionof a penetratingand originalstudy." Anothereffort to redefinesexuality and sexual pleasure in relationto the visual artscan be seen in PeterWebb's The Erotic Arts,first published in 1975. The book is a paradigmof the sexual libertarianismthat emerged in the late 1960s and continuedinto the 1970s,particularly within certain sections of the movement.For Webb, sexual freedom was synonymouswith social freedom,and sexual liberationwas the firststep toward social revolution.Webb challenged directlythe antipornographylobby and obscenitytrials of the early 1970s,which set up liberationin oppositionto the authoritarianmorality of censorship. Webb, how- ever,was also keen to isolate a categoryof eroticart from that of pornography."Pornography is related to obscenityrather than eroticaand this is a vital distinction.Although some people may finda pornographicpicture erotic, most people associateeroticism withlove, rather than sex alone,and love has littleor no partto play in pornography.. .. Eroticism,therefore, has none of the pejorative associationsof pornography; it concernssomething vital to us, the passion of love. Eroticart is arton a sexual themerelated specifi- callyto emotionsrather than merely actions, and sexualdepictions which are justifiableon aestheticgrounds."'5 Webb assumes an essentialistmodel ofhuman sexuality, conceiving of it as a driving, instinctiveforce that must find expression through either legitimate or illegitimatechannels. In his attemptto distinguisherotic art and pornography,he relies on a familiarset ofoppositions: love versus sex, aestheticvalue versusbad art,and feelingor emotionversus action.Again, as withthe argumentsof Clark and Berger,there is a juggling of aesthetic and moral criteriain order to justifyone categoryof representationand to invalidateanother.'6

The female nude and sexual metaphor In the three examples considered above, the authors directly addressthe issue ofsexual definition in culturalrepresentation, but theydo so fromdifferent political and moralstandpoints. In the

15Peter Webb, The Erotic Arts (London: Secker & Warburg,1975), 2. 16 Interestingly,both Webb and Berger argue that Oriental art offershonest and frankrepresentations of sex as opposed to the repressed and unhealthy sexuality of Western bourgeois art. In this way, they support the racist mythology of the unrestrained sexuality of non-European races and perpetuate the particular art historical version of the ideology of primitivism.

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mainstreamof arthistory, however, the approachis moreindirect; sex has to be implicitrather than explicitin orderto keep the art/contemplationcoupling intact and to maintainthe conventional polarityof artand pornography.Within traditional aesthetics, the language of connoisseurshiphas developed as an expressionof aestheticjudgment, taste, and value. The way language is mobi- lized in discussionsof paintingsof the femalenude allows us to assess the role of sexual metaphorin recentart criticism. As culturalcommodities, oil paintingshave been relished by criticsand art historians,and the practiceof applyingpaint to canvas has been chargedwith sexual connotations.Light caresses form,shapes become voluptuous,color is sensuous,and the paint itselfis luxuriouslyphysical. This representationof artistic produc- tionsupports the dominantstereotype of the male artistas produc- tive, active, controlling,a man whose sexualityis channeled throughhis brush,who findsexpression and satisfactionthrough the act of painting.'7The artisttransmutes matter into form.The canvas is the emptybut receptivesurface, empty of meaning- naked-until it is inscribedand given meaningby him. Surface textureis thuscharged with significance; the markson the canvas are essentialtraces of human agency, evidence of art, and also signs of sexual virility,a kindof masculine identity. These phallic and sexual metaphorstake on an astonishing resonance when the paintingis of a female nude. The artist transmutesmatter into the formof the female body-the nude, ideal, perfect,the objectof contemplationand delectation.Within thediscourse of art history, sex is writteninto descriptions of paint, surface,and form.The categoryof artdoes not permita sexuality thatis an obviousor provocative element, but such sexualitycan be articulatedin the discussionof a particularpainting's handling and style.The sexual,then, is distancedfrom the subjectrepresented on the canvas and is definedinstead throughthe metaphorical language of connoisseurship.Lawrence Gowing, for example, de- scribesa smallfemale figure in a Matisseinterior as "abandon(ing) herselfto the colour."'8In Nude Painting,Michael Jacobsrefers to 'sNymph and Shepherd,in which"the dynamicsof flesh and blood are revealed in theirrawest state, all distractingmovement, colourand meaningare strippedaway by the rigorousharshness of theartist's late style."'9And Malcolm Cormack describes a Veronese

17For an importantdiscussion of the metaphor of penis-as-paintbrush,see Carol Duncan, "The EstheticsofPowerin ModernErotic Art,"Heresies, no. 1 (January1977), 46-50. 18 Lawrence Gowing, Matisse (London: Thames & 63. 19 Hudson, 1979), Michael Jacobs, Nude Painting (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), 24.

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This content downloaded from 128.175.13.10 on Sat, 5 Apr 2014 10:06:37 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Nead / THE FEMALENUDE in which "the whole is a riot of the senses where the sensuous mode of expression emphasises the theme."20 However, the issue of the representationof the female nude is not simply a question of the male artistor viewer imposing order on and controlling the canvas or the female body. There is another relationship at stake. The mythologyof artisticgenius proposes a model of masculinity and male sexuality that is free-ranging, unbounded, needing to be contained within forms.21Woman and femininityprovide that cultural frame; woman controls and regu- lates the impetuous and individualistic brush. In a review of an exhibition of impressionist at the Ashmolean in Oxford, the art critic William Feaver considered the representation of the female nude. "A Renoir 'Nude Woman Seen from the Back, in red chalk with touches of white, illustrates more clearly than any painting the Impressionist concept of untrammelled instinct:Renoir's caress, Monet's spontaneity.But drawing was the basis. Withoutit Renoir would have been incoherent."22Just what is invoked by "the Impressionist concept of untrammelled instinct"? What are we to make of "Renoir's caress" and "Monet's spontane- ity"? Artistsand lovers, paintings and sex are collapsed into each other. Masculinity is defined as the site of unregulated instinct, potentially anarchic and incoherent. But the discipline of drawing and the formof the female nude-high culture and femininity- give order to this incoherence; togetherthey civilize and tame the wild expressiveness of male sexuality. Thus, pictures of the female nude are not about female sexuality in any simplistic way; they also testifyto a particular cultural definitionof male sexuality and are part of a wider debate around representation and cultural value. The female nude is both a cultural and a sexual category;it is part of a cultural industrywhose languages and institutionspropose specific definitions of gender and sexuality and particularforms of knowledge and pleasure. The relationship between art and pornographyas illustratedby the British discourse explored here begins to reveal the ways in which cultural and aesthetic designations are mapped onto the moral and sexual values ofWestern patriarchal culture generally.To date, the popular debate about pornography in both Britain and America has focused on a limited and rather too familiar set of issues. At the center is the issue of legal censorship. Debate about censorship has become polarized between those who advocate 20 Malcolm Cormack, The Nude in WesternArt (Oxford: Phaidon, 1976), 25. 21 On the mythology of male artistic genius, see G. Pollock, "Artists,Media, Mythologies: Genius, Madness and Art History,"Screen 21, no. 3 (1980): 57-96. 2 William Feaver, The Observer (March 25, 1986), 25.

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state interventionto ban pornographicmaterial and those who invokethe right of individual freedom of choice, particularly as it is reflectedby theprivate consumption of pornography as opposed to its public display.Supporters of state interventionargue thatat issue is the safetyof women,that pornographic representations inciteviolence againstwomen. Yet, social investigation,empirical research,statistics, and personaltestimony have been used bothto endorseand to refutethe linksbetween pornographyand acts of sexual violence.23Besides the ambiguitiesconcerning these inves- tigationsand theirconclusions, some of the social effectsof por- nography,such as women'sfear, embarrassment, and anger,cannot be measuredand accountedfor in any straightforwardway. The parallelsbetween the poles ofthis debate and the poles of the pornography/artdebate are striking.Both debates focuson the impetusto action as a criterionfor classification of images of the femalenude. Artcritics argue over the meritsof sensual or erotic images,and thosewho would eitherregulate or deregulatepornog- raphyargue over the implicationsof a patriarchalrepresentation of femaleand male sexuality.These parallels suggestthat the rela- tionshipbetween representationand reality,image and action,is not goingto be resolvedby tuggingempirical data backwardand forwardbetween positions. Rather, the meaningsof eroticismand obscenity,sensuality and sexuality,art and pornographychange overtime, their boundaries shaped by theforms and institutionsof cultureand society.Thus, censorshipis onlya provisionalstrategy by whichto "contain"patriarchal culture; it is a categorizationthat reflectspornography's present definition as outside the norm,as deviant,hidden culture.Only by continuingto examinethe com- plexitywith which such categorizations as pornographyand artmap out broad culturalnotions of the licit and the illicitand societal notionsof male and femalesexuality will we come to a moresubtle understandingof the implicationsof imagesof the femalenude. Departmentof Historyof Art BirkbeckCollege, Universityof London

23In the social sciences there have been many publications on the relationship between exposure to images and resulting action. Recently, the publication in Britain of the Minneapolis public hearings on pornography(1983) has endorsed the link between the use of pornographic material and acts of sexual violence; see Pornographyand Sexual Violence: Evidence of the Links: The Complete Transcript Public of Hearings on Ordinances to Add Pornography as Discrimination against Women: Minneapolis City Council, GovernmentOperations Committee,December 12 and 13, 1983 (London: Everywoman, 1988).

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