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Letter to the Editor Hey, Amarillo, Victorian era has ended Editor: In the article last week about Amarillo artist Mardy Lemmons, you clearly wrote, "His primary focus is on expressive figurative art, including nudes. About his art Lemmons stated, 'I don't think of myself just doing nudes, though,' Lemmons said, '(But) you are able to come across with feelings of vulnerability and emotion with nudity.'" Yet I understand there have been some who have been protesting against his frontal nudity painting from being published on the Web site or on the pages of The Amarillo Independent. They are allowed to have their opinion, but here is mine: I realize that Amarillo was founded during Victorian times and had for many years been associated with agricultural economy, and embraced the conservative opinions of rural culture. However, it is time that Amarillo matures to become a metropolitan city and that our people become educated, sophisticated and open-minded. That should include viewing nudes in fine art differently than pornography used in low and insidious graphics. Otherwise we can regress to be a backwater provincial village shut away from the rest of the 21st-century world. The history of art shows us that the nude used for great art is most appropriate, if not necessary. In spite of the church, and even a few fig leaves added at a later date when the painter or sculptor Master was well out of the way, it was Michelangelo's nudes that blasted the monumental nude out into the world and the word Beauty was once again associated with the Nude. Even Pope Julius II stood up for Michelangelo's case for the nude even when bishops and cardinals wanted the nudes removed or covered up. Could the nude human body ever be painted more greatly as those wonderful in the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? But whilst Michelangelo's works were mainly of the monumental male nude, artists such as Giorgione, Titian and Correggio were quick to follow. It was actually 52 years after van Eyck's magnificent Adam and Eve that Botticelli finally painted his even more famous Birth of Venus. This painting became one of the two or three most famous icons in art, and part of the reason for that was that it was the first time in history that an almost life-sized standing nude had been seen in paint and with no pretended connection to religion, just the much more loose and mild one to mythology. As far as our Victorian moral values, consider that many women in Victorian times and well into the 20th century were not only modest, but so ashamed of their nude bodies, or afraid of some sexual arousal, that they would bathe with their clothes on. I think we have grown past these notions by now. I think we have become better educated and have found stronger wills and self-control that we can survive seeing good nude art, and accept such art as a contribution to our growth as human beings rather than evil temptations. Sure, the art forms of the 20th century, including expressionism, a form that Lemmons is exploring, pushed a little deeper into our sensibilities. Psychologically "pushed our buttons." But that is what art does. This work of Lemmons does not, and was never intended to be a sexual come-on or pornographic image. I am looking forward to the next painting by Mardy Lemmons, nude or not nude. And wouldn't it be great to see it on the cover of The Amarillo Independent or other local publication promoting the arts? Steven Cost Steven Cost: Tenured associate professor of art and graphic design at Amarillo College. He teaches drawing, design, art history and graphic design courses. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: February 14, 2008
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