Maybe they were concerned it glamorized pipe smoking.
Interesting that it’s a portrait, so there’s an actual person whose sexuality they’re saying is unfit for public consumption.
The restrictions on movement during public erotic display are fairly old. There were generally laws allowing a fair bit of erotic content as long as everyone stood still. In England, erotic shows were often done as a series of tableaus, that is, still scenes, often with a dimming of the lights or drawing of a curtain in between. In the US, this was a guiding principle in burlesque with show girls, more highly paid than dancers, arranged in static displays.
For all I know, the Middle Ages required depictions of Jesus and his apostles to be static lest they approach blasphemy.
It’s the bare ankles!
It also kind of amazes me that the group displaying the art was renting the gallery space and the gallery took it down without informing them.
Rob’s thesis made me think of Alias Olympia, the book about the search Manet’s model for Olympia.
Also, Current Events.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/07/09/3458058/new-study-hobby-lobby-birth-control/
Weird. I really like that painting, actually.
Francisco DeGoya’s La Maja Desnuda was the first major work depicting a real naked, and sexual, woman - hair and all. Just a naked woman looking at you looking at her and smiling about it. Shocking! It was done around 1800 for the Spanish prime minister, and when he received it, he kept it locked in a private viewing room. Only very special guests got to see it. For his artistic efforts, Goya was later called before the Spanish Inquisition.
Prior to that painting, women were all painted clean of hair, and even Manet’s 1863 painting of Olympia (a prostitute) has her hand covering herself and her eyes just slightly askance.
I’m guessing it’s the combination of natural hair, and being directly addressed by the gaze of the portrait’s lusty subject that bothered the Mall. Oh dear, women are sexual creatures.
Art can’t be disgusting? When did this happen?
What’s the fuss about? In 100 years it’ll be a classic.
I like it. But then i’m a heterosexual male so it’s hard for me to be objective.
Maybe her pubes are just showing because the model couldn’t figure out how to fasten those crazy double-fly pants, and the gallery wanted to spare her further embarrassment.
Goya was prescient; he saw the forthcoming wave of breast implants.
Also: Did I time travel last night? Is this really happening in an “art” museum in 2014?
Gallery != Museum. Still, disappointingly prudish.
He liked things “just so”. Along with her bubbly frontage, her head is basically “shopped on” so it’ll be positioned to really stare you down.
pubes not prudes
And where is she and how can I meet here?
I’m willing to bet that there wasn’t a single artist among the critics.
