THE NUDE IN ART.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 70, 23 March 1907, Page 14

THE NUDE IN ART.

Comstockery "is tho world's standing joke at the expense of the United States." So said Mr. Bernard Shaw not long ago. Mr. Shaw's toes (says Current Literature) had jus,t been tramped on in New York City by the action of tho librarian, Mr. Bostwick, in placing one of his books on the "restricted list." Mr. Comstock had nothing to do with that, but ihe word "Comstockery" has come to have a widely inclusive meaning, and Mr. Comstock's recent action in raiding tho Art Students' League, in New York, has given to the word, especially in art circles, a *new and additional potency not dissimilar from that which a red flag exerts upon a herd of long-horned bovincs. Mr. Anthony Comstock, now sixtytwo years of age, has been for thirtyfour years the secretary and special agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, as well as a postoffice inspector — a position held by him through Democratic and Republican administrations alike. It is his boast that he has brought 2800 criminals to justice and destroyed ninety tons of obscene literature. His recent raid on tho Art Students' League was for the purpose of seizing and suppressing an edition of The American Student of Art, its official magazine, because it contained alleged indecent pictures. 'He also placed under arrest the young lady in charge of the league headquarters, to answer to the charge of aiding in the violation of the law. As the league is a genuine, not a "fake" art association, its magazine one that has undoubted claims to art interest, and the young lady arrested is, to all appearances, a wholly innocent employee of the establishment, the subject has excited considerable editorial comment and much heated newspaper correspondence. Mr. Comstock's character and motives are, as usual upon such occasions, assailed by indignant and usually irresponsible writers, and any number of "smart" suggestions are made as to what he should at once proceed to do, .in order to be consistent. The assumption is generally made that the pictures were suppressed simply because they were pictures of the nude, and poets as well as orators have been growing eloquent on the beauty of the human body as God created it. Mr. Comstock,- however, characterises the pictures as "worse than naked," and some of the editorial writers who have seen them sustain him in this view. The New York' Times, though it considers Mr. Comstock's action as rt harsh, rude, and, considering who was his immediate victim, as cruel," thinks that in several instances the choice of illustrations was '"extremely ill-advised." Its conclusion is that there was a lamentablo lack of common sense on both sides. The New York Evening Journal, in an editorial entitled "Mr. Comstock Was Right," expresses itself as follows :—: — "It is not to be denied that Mr. Comstock has made mistakes — everybody makes mistakes who tries to do anything worth while in this world. In this instance Mr. Comstock has not made a mistake. He has acted properly to prevent the publication of a magazine which might well have served as the introductory feature of a mass of indecent periodical literature such as is circulated freely in Germany and France under the name of 'Art.' This country has got common sense. It prefers common sense and self-respect to any sort of indecency, no matter how large the word 'art' may be written upon it. "It is well for artists, art students or others "who may contemplate the sale of a maga'ziric by illustrating 'it with badly drawn nude figures to be made to realise that there is a Mr. Comstock and a Mr. Policeman ready to interfere with their plans. We should like 'to ask which one of the artists endorsing the particular indecency that Comstock prevented would be willing to peddle that magazine up and, down Fifth Avenue ? There isn't one of them, if he has any reputation to lose, that would be seen exhibiting and offering for sale the pictures which Comstock seized. And there isn't a man of sense who can help knowing that to spread such a magazine — even if its intentions were good, which w<s don't think they were — among young people would do very great harm, produce great demoralisation." Dr James M. Buckley, editor of The Christian Advocate, who has had an extended acquaintance with Mr. Comstock and his work, defends his general record and asserts that Mr. Camstock secures more convictions in proportion to tho number of cases which he prosecutes than are secured by any other specialist in running down criminals in the United States. On tho otner nand The Sun, The World, The Press, and The Evening Post condom* the action taken in this case in varying degrees of fervency. "A Venus "by Praxiteles," says The World, .looks as sinful to his (Comstock's) eager eyes as the vilest pornographic print ever peddled." The Press has an editorial entitled "The Indecency of \nthony Comstock." and asks why he doesn't also suppress the medical schools, the Metropolitan Museum, and vaiious works of literature, such as Rabelais and Balzac. "There is," it says finally, "nothing more indecent in New York than Anthony Comstock. Of moro weight is tho editorial condemnation of The Evening Post. It says: — "Tho circulation of such periodicals is practically limited to art students and those concerned with their instruction. In an indi\idual case, a wrong use might conceivably be made of these nudities, but to pounce upon such publications is, as a teacher at our league justly remarked, as absurd as to halo the publishers of Gray's 'Anatomy' to court for intentiona' pornography. All this is Greek to Mr. jComstock, but it is not Greek to some of the directors of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who owe it to themselves and their work to restrain his more dire vagaries." Professor Charles Henry Smith, who holds the chair of American., History at Yale, uses the incident as a text for a plea on behalf of a chango in the general attitude of tho public towards the whole subject of nudity in art. Such a change, ho belioves, is urgently demanded as necessary to our ethical as well as our physical health' as a race. He says, as quoted in The Sun : — "A change in the attitude of the public toward pictorial and sculptured representations of the human body would at once roinovo occasion for a questionable part of Comstock's activity, while leaving the useful part of it intact. "Familiarity with the appearance of tho healthy human body should be encouraged, instead of practically forbidden, as now. No material structure is more worthy of general study and admiration. If well sclcctod pictures and statues of tho best human hgures could ba put in our school-houses and children be led by their teachers to look upon and think of them in , the right way, contaminating influences would havo much less chance of doing harm than is now the case. "I firmly believe mat the successful moral reform of tho future will come along that line. For llu present wo havo a general system of indiscriminate) repression and suppression, which is occasionally brought to public notice by some sensational performance of Comstock's. "This system is professedly for tho protection of ehildien and the purity of tho homo ; but its natural and common rosult is to poison the very fountains of lifo. Competent physicians

tell us thst there is widespread physical and moral suffering resulting -from the present policy of preventing sex knowledge from being acquired in a legitimate and healthful way. To say that people can go to the doctor does not meet the case. They will not go until after the harm has been done. "The modern way of getting information is from the printed and pictured page. The use of this *or the benefit of the general public is now debarred in the very field of all others correct and. timely information, widely diffused, is of transcendent importance. How long will a sensible people allow this to continue ?"