sexuality. As Pascin's biographer, Brodzky (1946), has noted: "Pascin worshipped women, as did Renoir, unashamed."

It is often assumed that there is some kind of a significant and integral relationship of sex to art and between sex and the artist; but exactly what these relationships are has been the subject for considerable unresolved debate. We shall now consider some of the most important theories relating sex to art and try to assess their validity.

Beauty and Art

It is sometimes held that all artistic productions, particularly paintings and sculpture, arise from human concepts of beauty; and that these, in turn, stem from ideas of what is sexually beautiful or exciting. If this is so, then art originates in sexuality and is a major product of the libido. Thus, Freud (1930, 1938), whose views on sexual sublimation and art we shall later discuss in detail, believed that the perception of beauty is at bottom a sensual process and that it becomes esthetic in quality when the sensual aim is inhibited.

The notion that art stems from appreciation of beauty, which in turn originates in sexual desire, has been partly endorsed by several authorities but has also been partly denounced (de Beauvoir, 1953; Bloch, 1908). As Garland (1957) notes in her study of female beauty, art is usually in advance of nature and again and again artists conceive of new types of women which later generations then endorse. Art, Flugel (1945) insists, in a sense achieves a deeper insight into reality than does the mere perception of physical beauty, inasmuch as it abstracts from the uninteresting and irrelevant details of reality more effectually than perception does. Art therefore presents us a sort of quintessence of the aspect of reality that is relevant to the artist's theme and purpose; and if the artist merely followed his biologically inculcated feelings about what is beautiful (or sexually desirable), art in this sense could hardly exist.

André Gide (1949) is even more vociferous on this point: "As the convinced Mohammedan cries 'God is god,' I should like to shout: 'Art is

art.' Reality is always there, not to dominate it, but on the other hand, to serve it." Beigel (1952) also holds that though ideas of physical beauty influence art, these ideas themselves, especially ideas of what is beautiful in the female body, are greatly influenced by the concept of esthetic beauty in art.

In regard to beauty and art, then, it would seem wiser to take a middle rather than any extreme road. Sex desires would appear to have some influence on evaluations of human beauty; and these evaluations to scine extent are important artistic considerations. But by the same token, artistic judgments, which depend on many biological and cultural factors of nonsexual origin and which tend to change considerably from one era to another, also importantly affect sexual desire and notions of beauty.

It is most unlikely, then, that the concept of what is beautiful is related entirely to sex. It is partly based on the way in which we perceive things (which itself is both sexually and nonsexually motivated) and the form and proportions of the things themselves. The concept of beauty is intimately related to existing perceptions of time, spatial relations, proportion, texture, and other aspects of external reality as well as to our personal and culturally influenced interpretations of these modes of existence. Sex plays a distinct part in our notions of what is beautiful; but this part hardly equals the whole

of those notions.

Sex desire undoubtedly plays an important role in human ideals of personal beauty, particularly of female beauty. Schopenhauer (1898) hotly contended that sex is practically the only influential factor in inducing a male to admire the female form. "It is only," he said, "the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulses that could give the name of the fair sex to that under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race; for the whole beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful, there would be more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex." II. L. Mencken (1919) echoed this view; and Havelock Ellis (1936) also presented evidence that women are universally admired by men because they satisfy the male's sensual and sexual impulses.

Nonetheless, a cursory glance at the changing styles in female beauty in the last several, decades in the United States would indicate that biological impulses often take a secondary or subsidiary place to social-esthetic standards in the evaluation of feminine beauty. Even in the case of sex attraction, we may still note that our sex "instincts" importantly prejudice our notions of beauty, but at the same time our esthetic ideas significantly influence these very "instincts."

Nudity and Art

It is sometimes held that artists frequently portray nude figures, particularly those of the female, because they are consciously or uncon sciously interested, by reason of their basic sexual proclivities, in such figures. Thus, Guyon (1934, p. 310) states that "the truth is that nudity in art delights us because we find, to our surprise, that the flesh is here presented to us without obstacle or hindrance, recalling to our mind pleasant memories and possibilities." Therefore, he contends, the nude is not really chaste, as many artists and critics have held that it is; and when it is supposedly used for esthetic effect, its employment actually has sexual undertones.

Other writers on art differ with this sexualized interpretation of nudity. De Beauvoir (1953) feels that the nude is chaste; and Northcote (1916) holds that "the nude in any given production is not necessarily erotic." Nudity, Wall (1932) insists, is in itself sexual or asexual, decent or indecent, depending on one's attitude toward it-and that attitude tends to be very different at one time and place from what it is at another.

Kinsey and his associates (1953) found some evidence that artistic portrayals of nude figures often do stem from sexual motives. In a study that is still continuing they reported that if professional artists are given a series of nudes drawn by other artists they can predict quite accurately whether the draughtsmen are heter osexually or homosexually inclined. The Kinsey research team has also found that although 54 per cent of their male subjects have been aroused by seeing photographs, drawings, or paintings of nudes only 12 per cent of females

have been similarly aroused. As would be expected under these circumstances, it has also been found that although female artists frequently produce highly romantic drawings and paintings, they rarely excel in pornographic works of art. By the same token, Dingwall (1957) notes that, as might very well be ex pected, sex-obsessed countries such as the United States produce better erotic art of the pin-up variety than do other countries. A. Ellis (1960a) also reports that just because nudity in the United States is officially and socially enjoined, it tends to be the more enjoyed. Contemporary mass media are increasingly full of "artistic" nudes that obviously appeal to masculine lasciviousness.

A good case can certainly be made, therefore, for the theory that both artists and their public are sexually motivated when they find "esthetic" satisfaction in the depiction of the nude female form. Artists are, after all, human beings with human desires; and the nude form obviously has connotations, at least to those of the Western world, of sensual activities and delights. To believe that a fine painter or sculptor of female nudes has no sexual interest in or excitement about his work is to be rather naïve. At the same time, it would be equally naïve to assume that graphic portrayals of the nude form are executed only because of the conscious or unconscious sexual urges of the artist. The nude body has the kind of form, coloring, and texture that would give it esthetic value even were its representors and their audiences completely sexless. It is these additional nonsexual aspects of nudity that give it such a widespread esthetic appeal.

Sexual Sublimation and Art

Sigmund Freud has been responsible for the most widely discussed and debated theory of sex and art of all time-the theory that art essentially springs from the individual's repressed unconscious thoughts and wishes and is largely a sublimation of his aim-inhibited sex drives. In his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1920), Freud noted that the artist is constitutionally endowed with a powerful capacity for sublimation as well as with a certain flexibility in the repression determining his inner conflicts.

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