The NYT this morning reports about a Florence museum's exhibit of mythology and erotica. It's full of classical art. That classical art has a lot of nudity and even some erotica (the two aren't identical) isn't news, but in the middle of the article was this:
Dr. Graziella Magherini, a top psychiatrist in Florence, urges caution . . . The nude, she warns, can be dangerous to one's mental health.
"The nude, the nude body, masculine and feminine, above all those done by the great artists," she said, "is very provocative on the mind of a person."
She is Italy's expert on strong reactions to art: 30 years ago, she began studying what she later called the "Stendhal syndrome," named after the French writer who collapsed, as he wrote after a visit to Florence in 1817, from "a pitch of excitement wherein the celestial sensations of the fine arts meet the passions."
Over 10 years, she studied some 100 cases of visitors to Florence suffering similar breakdowns after their encounters with Italy's art, architecture and history, experiencing panic, euphoria, depression, even hallucinations.
These days, her studies have zeroed in on sex, and specifically how Caravaggio's sexually ambiguous young boys have caused similar mental episodes especially in men - more broadly, how the charge of sex in great art can also overwhelm.
In a recent paper, she wrote about a young American, called Henry, who suffered from disorientation and dizziness at a Caravaggio exhibit. But it was the sight of a bare knee in a painting of Narcissus that sent him into full psychological terror.
I'd never heard of such a thing. It's fascinating. The article is concentrating on the naked body in great art, but the same mental phenomenon exists with the nude body in general. It is, quite frankly, similar to what any honest porn lover would admit if he wasn't so mentally-addled: It's almost impossible to get the image of a naked woman out of your head, and even harder to get the images of erotic activity out. Nudity has a provocative effect on your head. And just as great works of art depicting nudity can have sudden effects on one's mental equilibrium, I believe the long-term exposure to pornography warps the mind, turning it to perversion and violence, as evidenced by the love of pornography we find among our criminals.
