With the autumn, the exhibition season starts again. There are many exhibitions not to be missed (according to the organizers). There is only the embarrassment of the choice, combined with that other embarrassment that usually precedes every public appearance: what do I wear?
To get the right dress code of a show, when not indicated in the invitation, is not a small matter, frivolous, or that concerns only vanity. Deeper components come into play, which have to do with identity, social role, personal decorum and dignity, respect for those who host us and the others involved. Forgotten, now, the grandmothers’ directions, it is out of place to go to a grand gala with casual clothes, as in evening dress and black tie to an exhibition in a basement of underground artists.
A matter of sensitivity, before education, out of fashion. In the world of art, then, in the name of a claimed freedom from conventions, we see all colors, each one is dressed up according to his own inspiration, or calculation to amaze better. There is the painter with studied shabbiness who arrives in checked trousers and cross-over cap, the critic in undertaker or clown clothes, flanked by colleagues with wrinkled skirts, dangling to their feet and wooden shoes.
How much sloppiness from those who should, instead, show us the ways of beauty. Nor are there any lack of young girls in bloom and abundantly dried matrons: social climbers for the majority. You can recognize at first glance: super tattooed *comme il faut*, wrapped in short dresses, in a riot of cleavages, transparencies, inguinal slits and vertiginous stiletto heels, to distribute charming smiles to famous people and, presumably, rich.
Nauseated by such not-so-uplifting performances? The nudist associations have come to take out of the way and, for the sane, to create another one. All in the gallery in adamitic costume (but it is also necessary to add evitic not to bump LGBTQ+ followers).
In recent years, several institutions have organized tours for fans of the genre: the Maillol Museum and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Mucem in Marseille, the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon, the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Cerdanyola Museum in Barcelona and Pac in Milan. Just book, pay, stick to the rules: abolished lustful gazes, erections, even the slightest sign of sexual excitement. Innocence must reign supreme.
Will be. Meanwhile, there are 20 million nudists in Europe, 500 thousand in Italy: a business not to be underestimated, even for public institutions in constant struggle with disappointing budgets. Just provide this unique category of potential visitors with reasons in line with their beliefs.
To dismiss the modesty, wandering around the halls in a nudity from earthly paradise before original sin would be an extraordinary experience, enlightening, we would feel part of the same contemplated artworks, even artworks in our turn. It would even have a positive impact on physical and mental well-being.
Who perseveres in shame – *vergogna* in Italian from the Latin word *verecŭndia*, which means turmoil for indecent acts – who insists with the fig leaf of Adam and Eve on the pudenda does not know what he is missing. Maybe, yes. Maybe, also no.
