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August 28, 2009
Was the model who undressed in the Met naked, or nude?
Hyman asked, "Why is this wrong? There were thousands of people in the Met today looking at nudes as art, but as soon as there is a real nude, it's a big problem."Neill had the same question, which she posed to the security guard who detained her.
"She told me there were naked statues everywhere," the guard said. "I said, 'Those statues are 400 years old. You're from the 21st century.'
I vote, with Robert Graves, for nude. This is sly. It's rhetorical.
The Naked and the Nude
Robert Graves
For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.
Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.
The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.
The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime nude!
Sorry - Canto X is taking me longer than usual - but take the Gorgons pursuing the nude as a reminder of IX.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 28, 2009 9:15 AM