---
title: '<cite class="book">Ways of Seeing</cite>'
date: 2020-07-11T12:13:12+00:00
---
> The real question is: to whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong? To those who can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialists?

Essay #2 &#8211; women and meat

> It is worth noticing that in other non-European traditions&mdash;in Indian art, Persian art, Pre-Columbian art&mdash;nakedness is never supine in this way. And if, in these traditions, the theme of the work is sexual attraction, it is likely to show active sexual love as between two people, the woman as active as the man, the actions of each absorbing the other.

> Their [the other&#8217;s] nakedness acts as a confirmation and provokes a very strong sense of relief. She is a woman like any other: or he is a man like any other: we are overwhelmed by the marvellous simplicity of the familiar sexual mechanism.
