The Ethics of Aesthetics

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - February 22, 2008

"The art and the gallery's decision to show it need no defense." So declared a haughty Valentine's Day editorial entitled, 'X hits the spot," in the New Bedford Standard Times.

Despite its disavowal, the editorial was penned precisely in order to defend the decision of New Bedford's Gallery X to hold a pornographic exhibit entitled "Sex at the X: The Erotic Art Show" against growing community reaction triggered by local radio talk-show hosts.

The editors of Whaling City's daily newspaper appealed first to relativism to exonerate the directors of Gallery X: "The show is no more edgy than any other exhibit of erotic art — almost tame, in fact, by big city standards. No Robert Maplethorpe here." It shows just how far standards have fallen that a major newspaper will consider "tame" any display that does not sink to Maplethorpe's level of deeming explicit sadomasochistic bondage scenes photographic art.

Sensing perhaps that such logic might not be satisfactory, the editorial board then sought to defend Gallery X by positing its own theory of aesthetics: "Art takes us to the realm of the forbidden and makes us think." Such a definition would likely bring a measure of glee to the sordid purveyors of child pornography and snuff films whose work in their own minds would doubtless be embraced by it.

Art, rather, is meant to take us to the realm of the beautiful, the true and the good. It should make us better, by provoking good thoughts — not just any thoughts — and by stimulating the highest parts of us instead of primarily our libido. To call pornography art is tantamount to pretending four-letters qualify as eloquence.

In its press coverage, the Standard Times recycled common euphemisms so as further to distort what the display was really all about. One article stressed that "the exhibit is for a mature audience" and another mentioned that it had "adult content." It is certainly good that parents were so warned that "Sex at the X" was not fit for children. To label the display "mature" and "adult," however, is simply false-advertising. One of the pieces of "art" the Standard Times describes is entitled "Ring-a-Ding," which encourages viewers to toss wooden rings onto a multicolored phallus. Another is called "Penis Puppet," which is, well, self-explanatory. Is this the type of artistic creativity associated with mature, cultured adults or sophomoric, crude juveniles?

Not every work in the exhibit, it must be admitted, merely "takes us to the realm of the forbidden" inanity and makes us think of Freudian infantility. One also transports us to the border of blasphemy, comparing Christ's resurrection to a mummy's erection, and several others remain at the "tame" level of what people today call soft-core pornography.

To criticize such an exhibit for these things is not to be prudish. It's simply to have class, a little bit of culture and high standards rather than low or no standards. It's to recognize that a puerile figurine doesn't become "mature" or "sophisticated" simply because it depicts a penis, and that pornography doesn't become art merely because it's in an art gallery. When an art gallery engages, as Gallery X did, in a form of outright visual prostitution, it is important that those with the responsibility to uphold culture, like the editorial board of the southcoast's largest daily newspaper, not debase themselves by succumbing to such seduction.

Pope John Paul II, in his famous catecheses on the theology of the body, gave four talks on the ethical presentation of the human body in art. His main point was that aesthetics must always be guided by ethics, especially when it comes to "a perennial object of culture," like the human body. What he wrote may come as a huge surprise to those who stereotype Catholic leaders as a bunch of prudes phobic of human sexuality and nudity.

"We realize," he said, "that in the course of whole periods of human culture and artistic activity, the human body has been and is such a model-subject of visual works of art, just as the whole sphere of love between man and woman, and, connected with it, also the 'mutual donation' of masculinity and femininity in their corporeal expression, has been, is and will be a subject of literary narrative. Such narration found its place even in the Bible, especially in the text of the 'Song of Songs.' In fact, it should be noted that in the history of literature or art, in the history of human culture, this subject seems particularly frequent and is particularly important."

He also praised the ancient visual depictions of the human body: "In the course of the various eras, beginning from antiquity and above all in the great period of Greek classical art, there are works of art whose subject is the human body in its nakedness. The contemplation of these makes it possible to concentrate, in a way, on the whole truth of man, on the dignity and the beauty — also the 'supra-sensual' beauty — of his masculinity and femininity. These works bear within them, almost hidden, an element of sublimation, which leads the viewer, through the body, to the whole personal mystery of man. In contact with these works, where we do not feel drawn by their content to 'looking lustfully,' we learn in a way that nuptial meaning of the body that corresponds to, and is the measure of, 'purity of heart.'"

But he contrasted these with what he called "porno-vision," which lustfully abstracts the sexual values of the human body from its relation to the human person and thereby offends the dignity both of the body and of the person. When this happens, the human body, which is meant to be given in a "mutual donation" of love with another, is reduced to an "anonymous object of appropriation," "consumerism," and "abuse," which damages both the viewer and the one seen. This conclusion is not, he continued, "an effect of a puritanical mentality or of a narrow moralism, just as it is not the product of a thought imbued with Manichaeism [thinking the body and its activities evil]. It is a question of an extremely important fundamental sphere of values, before which man cannot remain indifferent because of the dignity of humanity, the personal character and the eloquence of the human body."

In short, since the human body is a sign of the dignity of the human person, those who care about human dignity cannot remain unconcerned when parts destined for interpersonal communion are reduced to poles for games of ring-toss or other forms of representational denigration. Not only is such deprecation not art; it's iconoclasm.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.