Category talk:Nude boys in art

Boys only?

Why is there a subcategory for nude boys in art, and not nude girls in art? It seems a bit biased to only have one. Tyciol (talk) 02:33, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• Why Boys? Simply because in the world of Art History up until the first part of the 20th Century the male figure was considered to embody every aspect of the Greek Ideal of beauty. The Nude Male Figure was the basis from which any artist who studied in the Academy learned to draw and paint. Although female nudes were drawn and painted they did not represent the greater proportion of studies in the Academy. The male figure embodies all the Classical proportions that the Greek Ideal demanded of artist and sculptor. The male nude in particular became an important element of the visual vocabulary. It symbolized "heroic virtue". As far as the use of the boy as subject matter we have to go back to the Renaissance Period and the use of classical mythology, especially in the depiction of Ganymede. Ganymede becomes the archetype of ideal, youthful beauty. Jupiter transformed him into the constellation Aquarius, the water carrier. Ganymede served as both symbol of the androgynous ideal of male beauty and in his triumph over Hebe, of the superiority of that ideal over feminine beauty and character. The nude boy was considered to be the ideal representation of innocence and the embodiment of future portent, the global awareness of beauty and how time corrupts it. During the last part of the 19th and Early 20th Century a subculture within the Symbolist movement developed called the "Cult of the Ephebe" which used the nude boy as metaphor. budding , power figures.. The Symbolist Movement began with the idea or ideal first and then sought to find in nature some "correspondence" or "equivalence" that might be used in such a way as to announce that this art object was not a replication of that object in nature but rather a vehicle for recognition and contemplation of a higher reality. Artists like Ferdinand Hodler, Joaquin Sorolla, Lovis Corinth,Verner Thome, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Max Beckmann, Hans Thoma, Magnus Enckell, Alexandr Ivanov, Arthur Volkmann, Conrad Felixmuller, Thomas Eakins, Ludwig von Hoffmann, Nikolaus Friedrich, Franz von Stuck, Max Klinger, Karl Hoffer and Eugene Jansson have used the nude male youth in their distinguished works. The use of the nude boy in painting, drawing and sculpture has a long time honored history in the Art World. Mores and morality have changed over the years and it is a good idea not to interpret the past in terms of our own modern morality. Today none of these emotional and intellectual structures exist and the male nude has been reduced to the level of a purely genre subject. The male nude used to excite the viewer not to religious contemplation but to heroic virtue. User:67.142.130.13 18:19, 26 October 2008

A person who collects a category called "nude boys in art" is likely a pedophile. It was no part of the "honored history" of "the Art World" to put on exhibitions of male child nudity for its own sake. That's a modern invention of pedophiles. If the Wikimedia Foundation had any decency, this category would be deleted, but since it doesn't, it won't. Instead, this comment will probably be deleted, or at least viciously attacked, because its incitement to "censorship" is far more offensive to "our own modern morality," which has become deeply twisted and perverse, than the category itself. --69.69.173.72 16:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

• This seems like speculation. Tyciol (talk) 14:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• • • Nothing like viewing Art, especially art of the nude (boys or not) with an open mind, stupid. Your blathering makes no sense and you are judging the past based upon modern mores. You need to do some more research before you go shooting off your mouth before engaging your brain!