These brightly colored paintings can make even us moderns think pure thoughts because most of them are kitsch. Not necessarily bad kitsch, as art critic Hilton Kramer claimed recently in the New York Observer: "One field of high human endeavor, in which the Victorians proved to be a failure ... was in the art of painting." He then compares a 2002 appreciation of Victorian nudes to digging "schlock-meisters like Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons." Wait. There is a wide gulf between Warhol and Koons -- Warhol paradoxically has depth and was striving to be nothing but surface, while Koons is just wet Kleenex. In kitsch terms, these Victorian nudes are the noble grandmothers of the Vargas girls -- those curvy 1930s pinups. The Victorians had their paintings of Venus taking her bath while the G.I.s of Iwo Jima had pinups of hourglass-figure babes shampooing their hair. Both are good "low art."

Not that the Brooklyn show is all kitsch. After all, there's a highbrow painting of a naked boy painted by John Singer Sargent in the show. One of the most beautiful paintings is a nude by New England impressionist Theodore Roussel (1847-1926) simply titled "The Reading Girl." This is no Greek maiden reading a scroll. Instead, a contemporary lass slumps naked in an elegant folding chair reading a magazine, her discarded kimono draped behind her. The girl's body is long and lean, her hair is pulled up and she is beautiful in a real-life way instead of some Arthurian comic-book way.

The painting was done in 1887 and no one liked it. One criticism went: "[This is a] picture ... of which we feel inclined to speak in terms of severe depreciation, if only because of its wantonness in taking a beautiful subject and making it all at once odious and ugly."

"Nowadays, the Victorian distancing of nude sounds quite ridiculous," says Gay, defending the Victorian "nude in history" aesthetics. "In a sense of 19th century, this was a very intelligent way of handling it. This explains why [French impressionist] Manet's 'Olympia,' painted in 1863, aroused so much controversy. She was not an idealized nude. She was clearly some sort of courtesan. She had a black servant bringing a bouquet of flowers. And her face is that of a recognizable person, not an idealized one. We even know the name of the model, Victorine Meurent. Anyway, the point is that what you have is a culture that makes room for -- if you wish -- sanitized nudes. In any case, I think what the exhibition shows is what I had been saying all along, which is this is not to be regarded from our point of view as hypocritical. I looked at the pictures and enjoyed them, but they didn't surprise me."

Gay goes on to explain that although Victorian women were not necessarily sexually savvy, they were well versed in most other biological aspects of the human body. Women gave birth at home. Relatives died at home, their dying bodies often cared for by female family members. The Victorian equivalent of Martha Stewart, "Mrs. Beaton's Book of Household Management," had a chapter on how to strip a wet nurse to her waist in order to inspect her nipples to make sure that she was healthy. Too bad Ruskin wasn't in on this.

"Ruskin is a wonderful story," says Gay. "I would have to say it's probably true. I know the event because I followed it through his wife's letters to her parents. They were married for, I believe, six years and he never touched her. She indicates something like that so it was probably true." Then he adds, "Ruskin was not your average Victorian."

Most Victorian men knew women had pubic hair?

"Oh dear! I wasn't there, but I would think so," says Gay. "Even in the Renaissance -- even Titian, for example -- you get some strategic way to cover up the genitals. Put a hand over it or a curtain. By the way, even Olympia put her hand over 'it.' That is a convention, and you might call it self-protective. It has its limits -- that's all I mean to say."