@matrix @setunai @artemirl have you read on Berger's analysis of classical painting? Paintings of nature and paintings of the nude woman are two themes he takes up and relates to their historical situation, for example, nature as a vast and beautiful resource (the ideology of the nature/human dichotomy) and the female nude a sign of purity - to be solely an object of desire. You a always need to go further; *why* was the painting made? Why did the artist find it beautiful? Artists are not morons, they don't merely paint what's pleasing on the surface, they want to convey emotion. That's what aesthetics is all about researching.
@setunai @artemirl @matrix That's pretty much the point I was making, it's not an alternative hypothesis. By the painting being an image of a nude woman and a creation of horny men, the painter's idea of beauty is realized, and this standard of beauty is surprisingly consistent in Western art, in which a woman has no agency of her own and she exists to be taken and conquered, she is an object of desire that does no desiring. Just as horniness is socially constructed (what appealed to men then isn't necessarily what appeals to men in all times and cultures) so is the ideology behind the painting, and the ideologies it supports.
@setunai @artemirl @matrix Out of interest, what part of the argument doesn't hold up here? Do you deny that men in different cultures appreciate different standards of female beauty? That they find different things attractive? What about different time periods? Surely you're familiar with the trope of a Victorian man being turned on by the sight of the lower leg or an ankle or whatever. Is it peculiar to horniness? For example it's well known that different cultures appreciate different kinds of food, and that even in Europe history shows tastes have changed. Yet seeking food is just as much as a primal instinct as seeking sex.
