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Nudity has always remained an enigma for the human
being. Yet the question remains: should we be so enthralled by nudity? What is
the charm in a nude being that so holds us entranced and engrossed in debate
endlessly? These thoughts are not in any way an attempt to answer these and
other related questions. I am only penning my limited experience with art and
its discourse with nudity.
The first time I heard the expression nuditas
virtualis and nuditas criminalis mentioned was in my undergraduate class. My Modern
African Poetry Lecturer, The late Teyie – a great teacher and poet – made
reference to these terms in connection to western African totems and other
symbolic elements in West African poetry. Little did I know that the words
would have such a big influence in my interaction with writers such as David
Maillu, D.H. Lawrence, Jackie Collins, Gustave Flaubert, and Charles Mangua
amongst others.
Nuditas virtualis refers to art that aspires for the
divine, the pure and the uncorrupted whereas nuditas criminalis connotes art
that is corrupted, laced with shame or tainted with thoughts of sin. These
statements are not absolute in any way and there are of course academic
definitions to shed light further on what the terms stand for. But hey, am only
blogging here.
How then do we read/interpret statues, photos,
graffiti and other texts that provide us with infinite opportunities for
knowledge regeneration? Umberto Eco argues that “A text is a device conceived in order to
produce its Model Reader. This Reader is not the one who makes the 'only/
right' conjecture. A text can foresee a Model Reader entitled to try infinite
conjectures.” Let me run away from the academia and simply state that we are
all entitled to make observations and draw conclusions based on our views of
any text but such interpretations are guided and guarded by the very text
itself.
Therefore, any statements a
reader makes in relation to a text are inherently supposed to be based within
the confines of the text’s context, that is, the text being coherent as a
whole. This is what makes it possible for us to conclude that a text is
interesting, boring, intuitive, philosophical, religious, or even immoral if
you like. As Umberto Eco surmises, “the internal textual coherence controls the otherwise uncontrollable
drives of the reader”.
There used to be a statue
outside Uchumi Aga Khan Walk. I don’t know whether it is still there. What I
liked the most about it were the words inscribed on the roughly hewn out figure
of a man that was supposed to be a prototype for the urban labourer I imagine. The
wording was something like “He lives in the city but his heart is at home”. The
phrase has always resonated with my alienation as a Nairobian.
I have often felt that the
city is no place for the likes of me. I look back to my rural home and life
with a lot of nostalgia. I don’t know whether it is culture shock or the
inability to integrate well into the urban life but I always feel out of place
whilst in Nairobi. Perhaps it is my romantic nature that feels starved and
denied the fragrance of fresh oxygen and cold mountain breezes that are a
preserve of rural/country life. I may never know where the discrepancy lies.
But I digress too much. I
was penning this write up as a tribute to the statue at the High Court
compound. I remember the kind of furore it raised when it was propped up. If
memory serves me right there were even some attempts by certain Christians to
have it brought down. Their argument was that it was immoral to have the statue
of a young boy urinating in public with full view of his genitalia glaring to
the masses. Remember? I am not even sure that the statue of the boy is peeing!!
On this note can someone
please tell me if the human sized statues at the entrance of the Museum of
Kenya are still there? When I first saw them in the 90s I could not help it but
focalise on their nudity too. In fact I still remember thinking out loud that
the sculptor had been generous with their genitalia and taboo parts in terms of
sizing et al.
Then there is the sculpture
of the woman at the entry of Maendeleo House with her breasts. I wonder whether
this has also been a subject of bitter altercations. I am sure that there are
many other forms of art not just in Kenya but the world over that have given
many sleepless nights. For example there is the painting by Leonardo da Vinci
of the last supper which Dan Brown drew from in The Da Vinci Code and which became a source of controversy. In
addition, there are numerous novels that have been castigated as amoral.
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| Image courtesy of Google |
I guess then what is
important is our ability to determine between what is nuditas virtualis and
nuditas criminalis. If a young person were to take a peek at a nude adult, then
that would be considered unethical; hence morally criminal. The same would
apply to posting nude photos online, watching pornography, dirty magazines etc.
But how do we judge and arrive at the conclusion that such a process entails
nuditas criminalis?
The Neoplatonic thinking
argues that nuditas criminalis encapsulates all art forms that lead to moral
decay – that is the degenerative process of our physical beings to succumb to
immorality. For example, we can argue that in Kenya we have politically,
socially or even economically degenerated. Hence our sense of innocence is lost
and our yearning for that which is pure becomes curtailed. Consequently, our
thinking is clouded by evil thoughts/intentions and the perspective of
religious piety is essentially lost.
On the contrary, nuditas
virtualis is indicative of purity or that which is in the state of innocence –
unblemished. It is in essence based on the Neoplatonic concept of divinity.
This is pegged on the identification of that which is beautiful, good and true.
Hence, good texts or sculptures for that matter aim at portraying a sense of
the externalisation of the spirituality of the human soul in their art. If we
were to hold true the belief that man is the image of God then clothing the
human body can be perceived as corrupting it literally.
Thus, this might explain
why in the traditional African setting most body parts were left uncovered. I
wish I could glean some information from our ancestors whether they found it
weird to walk around naked and if they ever found themselves mesmerised by each
other’s genitalia. On the same vein can anyone tell me whether in the northern
part of Kenya some communities still have some of their members walking around
semi nude? Is it a sense of cultural pride – nuditas virtualis or would anyone
consider it nuditas criminalis?
I will probably never
determine the line between that which is divine and pure and that which is ugly
and corrupting when it comes to art. This might be because of the subjective
nature of human conjectures. For instance, movies have a tendency to portray
more taboo body parts of women as opposed to those of men. Is it a case of
gender insensitivity? Last but not least, are nude statues immoral or is it us,
the humans, who are immoral? Is it our thinking that is corrupt and unable to
process beauty – divination – but instead succumbs to the degenerative process
hence resulting to criminalis?
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