We accomplished more when everybody was naked (in art)

The real issue is the death of the highbrow. The problem isn’t that we have lowbrow popular culture; it’s that we have nothing else. It’s not that we have Beyonce; it’s that we don’t have Beethoven. It’s not that we have Kim Kardashian; it’s that we don’t have the Three Graces, or their modern equivalent.

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Our culture still offers the same old low end of popular culture, the same dirty postcards, only more and (arguably) more extreme. But what has really changed is that there is no high culture.

In the high culture of previous eras, the nude body is not exactly de-sexualized; even when the theme was not sexual, there is a palpable sensuality to it. But it is elevated and given esthetic significance. It is used as the expression of an ideal.

The way we view the naked human body reflects our view of human nature itself. We portray our bodies in ways that are crude or refined depending on whether we view our souls as crude or refined. We do the same with the sensuality and the sexual capacity of our bodies. We can view sex and the nude body as a dangerous temptation that draws us away from higher ideals and down into the muck—or we can make it part of those higher ideals. We can make it an expression of a wider lust for life, an expression of the same spirit of aspiration that drives all of our other achievements.

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