WOMAN IN ART
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 writer has lived long enough to know intimately a generation of boys and men, girls and women, who have spent years in the life classes, and have gone out into the world to do their work. Are these not the salt of the earth?" "Artists sometimes sin; so do preachers, doctors, and merchants, but the vast majority are as well behaved as anybody. Let good nudes be hung on the walls of every schoolroom, from infant classes to high school rooms, so that children may grow up with them."
A case that illustrates the point is, a little two and a half year old boy in his crib by his mother's bed, awoke as mother stepped from her morning bath into her room, thinking he had not yet awakened. Rubbing sleep from his eyes as she entered, the baby voice saluted her—"Hello, mama Venus." A Venus d'Milo had long stood in her room, nor had she given it a thought. If you would have your children grow up happy and normal, and as near perfect as is possible for them to be, teach them the beauty of their bodies with the best undraped art.
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