by Jan Preisler. My mother had an encyclopedia with artists listed by the alphabet and I would often go back to the P, not for Picasso but for the nude, slim body of Preislers boy. Or, do I say this right? There were more male nudes in the book. Was it mainly the body, as a sexual object, or was the atmosphere created by the horse and the black lake just as important for me? I started to make drawings of boys myself, and usually there was an artistic element in the drawing. Either a landscape, some draperies around the body, or something in the lines and the pose that would express more than just sexual desire. However, what was art and what was erotic I couldn't clearly distinguish. The landscape, for instance, could symbolise loneliness but also function as a story to create an erotic situation. This ambiguity didn't bother me back then, and also not when I decided to take up art more seriously. I assumed that sexuality was a natural part of art, and that in art everything is confused. Power and beauty, ugliness and loneliness, power and ugliness, beauty and loneliness, endless combinations of concepts in different combinations with different implications  could be suggested by a picture. This was the wonderful world of art.

After some years however, I felt a pressure to paint less beautiful bodies, and I was not sure where this pressure came from. It may have come from the modern art world. Modern art finds beauty suspiscious and the beautiful body must therefore be suspicious too.

But the pressure may also have comes from society in general. From conservatives, who think all nudity is indecent, and from liberals, who think nudity exploits the body (conservatives and liberals may occasionally use eachothers arguments).The liberal political and artistic movements that try to change the culture around sexuality have to deal with a paradox: they abolish the taboo around nudity, but create a new taboo on the beautiful nude, or our preference for beautiful people in general, because it is incompatible with ideals of equality.

This poster, from the Pacifist Socialist Party in Holland shows that in this political party, in 1971, the joy over the newly discovered sexual freedom was stronger than the fear of exploitation of the beautiful (female) body. However, just replace the cow with an expensive car and you have a more suspicious poster, that may be liked by (hypocritical) conservatives. In the end the combined power of feminists and conservatives makes that there is a new taboo on beautiful nudes.

This new embarracement about nudity has an interesting resonance in art. Look at these two pictures by Courbet:

Which one would you consider more offending? The strange thing is that for many conservatives the first picture is more pornographic, explicit, and therefore offending, while many intellectuals and art lovers dislike the second one, because the women look to much ideal, and even the vase with flowers would remind them of cheap pornography. They would consider the first to be honest, real, original and they will know it has a philosophical title, ''the origin of the world''.

So it seems the pressure I feel to change my way of painting nudes has partly to do with political ideology and moral values. What are these values exactly?

Now here is a graph, after research of Jonathan Haidt, of fundamental values as appreciated by liberals  (progressive) en republicans (conservative) in the US:

The biggest difference we see, is in the appreciation of ''purity''. We know that conservatives like their country to be pure, their women to be pure, and their streets to be clean. Liberals like that too, but to a lesser extend. So if you clearly want to show that you are a liberal, you have to show that you don't have much respect for authority and you don't care so much about purity. I think it is fair to say that the leadings artist nowadays show this exaggerated liberal behaviour and that it does influence their art.

So how does it influence the depiction of nudity? We have already seen examples. The origin du monde by Courbet seems to symbolize fairness. The nude of the PSP probably symbolizes purity, which shows that also liberals care for 'conservative' values, only they rate other values higher. A classical nude sculpted by the greeks may be appreciated by conservatives just because it has the ''authority'' of tradition.

I feel that my own paintings are a lot about harmony and purity and therefore a bit conservative. They are also not 'fair' because I often (not always) ignore the people with less beautiful bodies. The style is quite realistic and for me this seems to be not free, not accepting invention, more like accepting authority. I don't use this realism to depict an uncomfortable truth, I concentrate to often on beautiful details. Because leading artists nowadays are liberals, and my personal ideology is also liberal, it is no wonder I feel the pressure to make my nudes look less conservative. However, I don't want to make some chaotic paintings about less attractive people just to affirm the authority of the modern art world, or to be an ideological painter. Can there nothing be said in favor of my conservative style?

Jonathan Haidt gives a hint. He says that the difference between conservatives and librals is a universal cultural phenomenon. He proposes that there is a constant struggle between those who defend stabilty, order, harmony, and those who favor chaos, creativity, progress. Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer are complimentary, comparable to Apollo (order, perfection and harmony) and Dionysos (chaos, surprise and creativity) as seen by Nietzsche. Conservatives want art that speaks of harmony and stability, while liberals want dissonants and surprises, but one is not better than the other, they are both needed.

If this argument is true, it seems that I don't have to give up my personal conservative taste, but I will have to balance it with my liberal values. Luckily we live in post-modern times where ideology is not so rigid anymore. Still the danger of a forced liberal ideology in my work scares me. One way to stay authentic could be by trying to discover the personal roots of my conservatism: what are my hopes and fears? And then, this may lead me in a completely new direction, that has nothing to do with the schematic argument of this essay.

Part 2.

How do other artists deal with their conservative and modern values, beauty and reality, harmony and surprise, selfish sexual desire and fairness?

Wolfgang Tilmans

It seems to me that Tilmans finds a precarious balance. His models are young and not very ugly, but not too perfect. The pictures can be sexually exciting, but there is usually an element that disturbs the viewer or surprises him. The photo's seem snapshots but still the composition is often classical: the pissing boy and the chair are nicely in the middle of the photograph; the turned away faces of the copple create a symmetrie, just like the upper shirt and lower skirt create a diagonal symmetry in dressing.

Lucian Freud

Freud balances the colours, cold and warm hues, carefully, and the positions of the model and the brushstrokes lead the eye comfortably around the painting. In this sense he is very conservative. The surprising and shocking aspect is in the realistic ugliness of the bodies, the original viewpoints, and sometimes in the rough treatment of the paint.

Muntean/Rosenblum

Beautiful young people in beautiful poses. These young people seem to be trapped by a jealous pornographic eye that doesn't just want their bodies but also their youth culture. They show pride but they never laugh. The texts usually suggest detachment or disillusion.

Lachian dances