From Athens to Advertising

There was a semi-interesting article in the Guardian linked to by RogueClassicism the other day about male nudity in art from Greece and Rome through the present.

There are a few aspersions cast at "Christian guilt" which I think are both incorrect and cliched in their analysis, but the central point of the article is interesting. The author suggests that although elite classical Greek culture was shot through with homosexuality (and the cult of the male body in Greek art may have had something to do with that) Greek statues themselves tended to be extremely idealized (tying in with the theme of seeking the ideals found in the Platonic philosophy). Renaissance statues, on the other hand, while taking the nude male subject matter from antiquity, were often clearly based on specific individuals (Donatello's David is one of the examples given) and thus brought a sexual tension to the genre not found in classical art.