translated by Barbara P. Fulks

For us, the image of the nude is a sweet, almost soothing representation. It participates in a very ordinary transgression that, as a consequence, transgresses nothing. In reality, it confirms rather the pleasure of the presentiment of a caress, already ready, on the skin that is offered to us, done up in silk or in velour in the play of the grain and the light. The nude, pictorial or photographed, even cinematographic, assures us of a certain trembling intimacy, moving, but with a motion completely admissible and at heart peaceful, a discrete voyeurism that is consecrated to respond to a nudism whose difference from the other kind determines the product of the image. All crudeness in it is usually toned down, any approach of spasm or of tension is resolved in coquetry, or even in tenderness. [...]