What are your opinions on nudity within art? Is nude art acceptable or not? Where is the line drawn? As an artist facing ambivalence regarding selling my drawings, I look for some opinions.
This is just my own opinion and personal walk with God -- I don't condemn anyone with differing opinions, but this is what I've settled on for myself.
I'm no artist but I love art in many forms, and am friends with many highly artistic people across several mediums (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
When Adam and Eve fell into sin in the Garden of Eden, the Bible says they immediately "realized they were naked" -- and hid from God. When God came looking for them, they told him they hid because they were naked -- and afraid. And God asked them, "Who told you that you were naked?"
Up until sin entered the world, there were apparently no ill effects of nudity. But sin changed everything.
When all was said and done, God didn't tell them to celebrate their nudity. He didn't draw, paint, or sculpt pictures of them as He had made them to hang them around the garden as art. Rather, God Himself made fig leaf clothes for them to COVER their nudity, because sin distorted what was once public and beautiful. (I know I'm being a little sarcastic here, but I promise it's for a reason.)
Today's world has so many problems with porn addiction, I cannot bring myself to call any nude piece "art," but that's just me. And it's not because I feel any particular pull to porn, nor am I some kind of saint. But my calling IS often to people who have been sexually abused and/or are addicted to sexual things, so for myself, I don't want, nor could I endorse, anyone having a nude image around them.
This forum has had hundreds, if not thousands of posts from people, some of them very sincere Christians, some married, who are struggling terribly with pornography. It's destroying their lives and their marriages. I can't see how "nude art" would be of any positive contribution to anyone, especially with these challenges. But again, this is just me and I believe part of my calling to those with troubled sexual experiences.
I am, however, a firm believer in medical representation, which can be very tricky. I grew up during the scare of the AIDS epidemic, and was part of a college program that taught about "safe" sexual behaviors that cut down risk for STD's and unplanned pregnancy. This was a public program and not Christian-based, and while abstinence was always taught as the "safest" option, the program had to be realistic that most of the students listening were not practicing abstinence. We had to memorize a 2-hour program and demonstrate various things like how a diaphragm and condom worked on medical models.
We had various pamphlets, literature, models, and products depicting drawings and representations of bare human sexual organs for the purpose of teaching.
One thing I will never forget -- my professor once called me to come in to talk to a female student, because she had been date raped. She was a foreign exchange student, had seen me at one of these presentations, and specifically asked for me because she was Asian. I was the only person on the approximately 12-member team who was also Asian, and she told my professor she would feel most comfortable talking to me.
She was from a culture that didn't talk about sex, especially to young women, and if you did, you would be severely punished. People will claim she was a liar, but she literally didn't know what had been done to her because no one had ever explained sex to her (and this was long before smart phones, and even before the internet was so widely accessible.) My professor and I had to explain what had happened because she truly didn't understand, and we used the medical models of the parts of the body to try to teach her as compassionately as possible.
I very strongly believe that some kinds of representations are necessary for educational and medical purposes -- another example was when working with differently-abled students -- for instance, you can't really explain sex to those who have been blind from birth, and therefore need to use 3-D models. (I didn't participate in this but had another professor who specialized in sex education for the differently abled.)
However, I also believe there is a very thin line between what can be considered "educational/medical" vs. "artistic" vs. "pornographic," as some could look at a image or model and say it qualifies as all 3 -- and I know this kind of argument has been going on forever.
Again, I am by no means perfect, but I know I have to be careful because surrounding myself with the wrong things is not only a sin against God, but a sin against the people that God calls me to listen to and pray for.
I don't know where God will lead you in your own journey, but I'd love to get to know more about you in the forums and hear how it's going.
What made you decide to become an artist? How long have you been trying to see your work?
May God bless your art career and I hope you will keep us posted!