{A trip to Oxford [continued(5)]}[17th November 1969]

[Redbook1:99-100][19691117:0000]{A trip to Oxford [continued(5)]}[17th November 1969]

MONDAY 17th Nov.

The particular Holman Hunt picture was not perfect, especially as far as expressions went; but it did include a small boy -- the one holding a container for grape-juice (?) -- whose expression haunts me yet.  He is quite incidental to the main subject of the picture; but if my memory serves me right, he is the only character in the picture who is looking out of the picture at the person looking in, and he thus lives on a completely different plane from the rest of them.  He is also very beautifully drawn.  How awful -- I am still inhibited enough to feel guilty whenever I think of a male body as being beautiful.  And yet it's not a question of male or female -- the human body is beautiful.  Why?  Because of the psychological urges which motivates us?  If that is so, it is the social urge which counts for more than the sexual urge in our appreciation of art involving characters.  This must be so, because the sight of any person awakens the social urge -- which is always present, positively or negatively -- whereas more significant titillatory triggers are required to arouse sexual feelings, which are not always with most of us.  Unfortunately the two are very much mingled -- I say “unfortunately” from the point of view of art alone -- and even the artists are often uncertain as to why they paint a particular character in a particular way.

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