Denudation

“ The ages were as an aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before the noble nakedness of the elder gods: not the infamous nudity that sex has preserved in this modern world, but the clean pagan nude,—a love of life and beauty, the broad fair breast of a boy, the long flanks, the head thrown back ”

“ She approaches us with easy grace, wholly unconscious of her nudity. Though she wears no covering whatever, she is clothed, for the dignity with which she moves and her utter lack of self-consciousness form a garment that drapes her pleasingly. ”

“ Flesh, when it attains a certain degree of beauty, has almost a claim to the right of nudity; it conceals itself in its own dazzling charms as in a veil. He who might have looked upon Josiana nude would have perceived her outlines only through a surrounding glory. She would have shown herself without hesitation to a satyr or a eunuch. She had the self-possession of a goddess. To have made her nudity a torment, ever eluding a pursuing Tantalus, would have been an amusement to her. ”

“ The young girl whom I have noticed made herself more and more conspicuous every instant, by the softness of her looks, and their affectionate and sparkling expression. Ourâ Ourâ, like her parents, was perfectly naked, and appeared little to suspect that one should find in that absolute nudity anything immodest or indecent. ”

“ One may study the proportions and grace with pure pleasure, because the subject is pure, also the spirit of the painter, whose object was to paint pure beauty.
The question is often asked, "What shall we do with the nude in art?" "As a community we inherited prudery from our English forebears. More than that we have surpassed them in fastidiousness. Those who have studied the matter know that the nude, painted purely for the sake of its beauty, as most of it is, demoralizes nobody's mind. It is the straining to conceal the nude which injures morals. ”

“ The perfume of that over-heated atmosphere, the sound of smothered sighs, the groans of pleasure, the smack of eager kisses expressing the never-satiated lust of youth, made my brain reel, whilst my blood was parched by the sight of those ever-changing lascivious attitudes, expressing the most maddening paroxysm of debauchery, which tried to soothe itself or to invent a more thrilling and intenser sensuality, or sickening and fainting away under their excess of feeling, whilst milky sperm and ruby drops of blood dappled their naked thighs. ”

“ Even in the tale of a poet in love with beauty, the nudity of a chaste body calls out the judgment of hypocrites and the rage of people with perverted imaginations, as if it were the arrogant nudity of a prostitute. ”

“ It is only owing to the custom of wearing clothes that nudity provokes the sexual appetite. This custom develops artificially a sentiment of modesty with regard to nudity, which increases progressively in intensity and is especially marked in aged women. It is not so much habit, as to the feeling of progressive deterioration of their charms, which leads the latter to cover themselves as they grow older, and is part of the instinctive æsthetic sentiment of woman. ”

“ In a society where every one goes naked, nudity seems quite natural, and provokes neither shame nor eroticism. The custom of adorning the sexual organs then serves as a means of attraction, both in men and women. The short transparent skirts of a ballet dancer are in reality much more immodest than the nudity of the female savages. A great naturalist has said that veiled forms provoke the sexual appetite more than nudity. Snow remarks that association with naked savages excites much less sensuality than the society of fashionably dressed women in our salons. ”

“ His masterly drawing follows the most delicate inflexion of the muscles and suggests the nervous system under the skin. He observes with extraordinary subtlety the awkwardness of the nude being at a time when nudity is no longer accustomed to show itself, and this true nudity is in strong contrast to that of the academicians. One might say of Degas that he has the disease of truth, if the necessity of truth were not health itself! These bodies are still marked with the impressions of the garments; the movements remain those of a clothed being which is only nude as an exception. ”

“ I began a slow withdrawal and return, frigging her clitoris at the same time, for I was standing between her legs. She soon grew wild with excitement, nature prompting her, her arse rose and fell almost as well as if she was mistress of the art. The novel combination of prick and finger quickly brought on the ecstatic crisis. I, too, was wild with lust, and we spent together, ending in an annihilation of all our senses by the extreme ecstasy of the final overpowering crisis. We lay panting for some time in all the after-joys. ”

“ Read also remarks "Nothing is more moral or less calculated to excite the passions than nudity." It is needless to say that this statement is only correct when nudity is a matter [158] of custom, for in sexual matters it is always novelty which attracts. Pious persons have tried to make savages modest by clothing them, but have only produced the contrary effect. Savage women regard it as shameful to cover their sexual organs. ”

“ Honi soit qui mal y pense, and “to the pure all things are pure” are as true to-day as when they were first spoken and written, and while I am as opposed as is any one living to nude pictures and statues that have nothing to commend them but their nudity; while I am strongly opposed to promiscuous nudity either in whole or in part, I am equally opposed to the mental attitude that nudity in itself is wrong, and that the Creator did not know His business when he created us both nude and of different sexes. ”

“ No sooner did the spokesman of the newcomers, who was evidently the superior of the three, perceive the beautiful nudity now presented to his passionate glances, without any hesitation, he opened his dress, and giving liberty to a large and long member, caught the beautiful girl in his arms, bore her back to the couch, and then, spreading open her pretty thighs, he planted himself between, and hastily bringing the head of his raging champion to the soft orifice, thrust forward, and at one bound buried himself to his balls. ”

“ Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which thou didst give unto them;
37 Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness. ”

“ But the spirit of purism has so perverted the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of nudity, forcing us to hide the natural form under the plea of chastity. Yet chastity itself is but an artificial imposition upon nature, expressive of a false shame of the human form. The modern idea of chastity, especially in reference to woman, its greatest victim, is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural impulses. ”

“ Although at present its blossom was a painful one, the sweetness of her kisses, the voluptuous heaving of her breasts, that indescribable look which true modesty surely shows at the moment it has received its irreparable shock from powerful man, all tended quickly to renew the vigour I had lost in unloosening her virgin zone. The burning blushes which with rapidity covered her neck and shoulders, the increasing heaving of her breasts, the trembling of her limbs and body, all proclaimed the distention she internally felt, caused by her external beauties. ”

“ She would rise betimes, lock herself into her dressing-room, and there for some hours remain, without her clothes, reading and writing, naively assuring her friends afterwards that she 'felt so much the better for it, so innocent during the rest of the day.' Strange dénoûments have happened to other believers in the high physical, moral, and æsthetic advantages of nudity. ”

“ She continued this exquisite movement for some time, to our delicious mutual enjoyment, then falling down on my belly, and telling me to pass my arm round her bottom and finger her as before, she glued herself to my lips, our tongues interlaced, and shot in and out of our luxurious mouths; our movement grew fast and furious, until we again sank in all the luxury of the last grand crisis. It was the very act of voluptuous rapture, and we lay lost to every sense but that of erotic ecstasy and satisfied lust. ”

“ MOLL.
That’s not I yet!
PYE. And with most impudent prostitution show your naked bodies to the view of all beholders.
WIDDOW.
Our naked bodies? fie, for shame!
PYE.
Attend me: and your younger daughter be strocken dumb.
MOLL. Dumb? out, alas: tis the worst pain of all for a Woman. I’d rather be mad, or run naked, or any thing: dumb? ”

“ One may be a Godiva and be far more modest than another who veils not only her whole body but even her face. And for myself, I wish to record my conviction that it would be far better for the morals of civilized man if he would bring up his children of both sexes to recognize and know the sanctity of nudity, rather than to cover the body as he does and to affirm by his words and suggest by his demeanor that he regards an exposed body as indecent. ”

“ There are other famous nude figures of men and women which appear conscious of their nudity. Such have a bad influence. There are some ignorant or evil-minded people who would be injured as much by one of these classes of art as by the other.
Are there reliable tests of the virginity of a girl?—The only test which a man has a right to{274} make before or after marriage is a modest demeanor, absence of familiarity, a pure state of mind and an innocent expression in the face and look of the eye. ”

“ Just because the child is so often taught that nakedness is in itself immoral, we are apt also to teach it to experience sexual excitement at the sight of a nude statue; whereas if the child had simply been taught that nakedness at unsuitable times and places was wrong, no such reaction would ensue. I remember the time in which the strong agitation took place which led to the passing of the Lex Heinze;132 and I was acquainted with a gentleman—he was a patient of mine—who was a member of the party by which the new law was so strongly demanded. ”

“ Any stimuli which cause an unpleasant reaction, such as obnoxious odors, a disagreeable tone of voice, an ugly feature of the face or figure, an awkward appearance, bad taste in dress, etc., are apt to adversely affect eroticism. Therefore, when one of the opposite sex by any of these means arouses disgust, the anti-fetich paralyzes the sexual appetite, and even a symbol of the objectionable object may cool love. ”

“ We have seen that erotic fixation on parents constitutes a stage in the growth process. Whatever it may be in other societies, primitive or otherwise, nudity in our society is associated with lustful feelings. ”

“ Photography and all the perfected methods of reproduction of pictures, the increasing means of travel which facilitate clandestine sexual relations, the industrial art which ornaments our apartments, the increasing luxury and comfort of dwellings, beds, etc., are, at the present day, so many factors in the science of erotic voluptuousness. Prostitution itself has become adapted to all the pathological excrescences of vice. In a word, the artificial culture of the human sexual appetite has given rise to a veritable high school of debauchery. ”

“ If the training of the individual has not been such as to render conscious the manifestation of the sex desire, it then does not appear as a tumescence in the genital region, in many cases, but as a swelling or a pain, or a hardness somewhere else, or as an emotion of disappointment, disgust or hate. Some deeply religious people seem to prefer these emotions, in spite of their destructive nature, to the constructive emotions of truly erotic love. ”

“ I regard a woman's person as displeasing, the formation of her hips as ugly and unæsthetic. Dancing is therefore an abomination to me. I loathe the odour which the so-called fair sex exhales when heated by the dance." The disgust inspired in these three Urnings by the smell of the female is highly significant; since we know that the sense of smell acts powerfully upon the sexual appetite of normal individuals. ”

“ COMMITTING ADULTERY IN THE HEART.—A young man who allows his mind to dwell upon the vision of nude women will soon become a victim of ruinous passion, and either fall under the influence of lewd women or resort to self-abuse. ”

“ Sometimes we are told that the sight of the nude in art may awaken the child's sexual impulse, sometimes that morality forbids such representations of the nude. These two reasons must not be confused; for even if well-developed moral ideas may repress sexual acts, it does not follow that everything which is immoral is also sexually exciting. A great many pictures are immoral, and yet do not tend in the very least to induce sexual excitement—it suffices to mention illustrations of scatological scenes. ”

“ To love the nude, and first of all femininity with its graces and insolences, is traditional in those races which hard reform has not altogether terrorized. The idea of the nude being admitted, costume can be modified to take in floating loose robe, manners can be softened, and something of splendor illume the gloom of our hypocricies. ”

“ To this day I have no patience with persons who cannot view the nude in art without low-minded comments (or thoughts) on what seems to fill their entire field of vision to the exclusion of the work as a whole. I once showed a vulgar-minded woman a picture of a beautiful, three-year old child, nude—a thing so lovely I thought it must appeal even to her ”