{"id":235,"date":"2008-02-15T12:56:44","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T12:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=235"},"modified":"2008-02-15T18:01:07","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T18:01:07","slug":"censorship-of-condescension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=235","title":{"rendered":"Censorship of condescension"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Venus\"<\/a>London Underground’s ban of an exhibition advert is elitist, writes Edward Lucie-Smith<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Exhibition organisers at the Royal Academy are expressing bewilderment and outrage, at least in public, because the people who run advertising for the London Underground have decided to ban a poster featuring a nude Venus by the German 16th century artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. In private, they must be hugging themselves. At the time of writing three major newspapers have picked up the story \u2013 the Guardian<\/em>, the Daily Mail<\/em> and the Evening Standard<\/em>, and it is out on the Press Association wire service. Doubtless other newspapers will follow. It\u2019s the kind of publicity you couldn\u2019t buy, for an exhibition that many people might think of as being a bit esoteric and scholarly \u2013 in a phrase, above their heads. The RA have even got an influential MP on their side. John Whittingdale, chair of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, is quoted as saying: “The decision is absolutely bonkers. This was painted around 500 years ago.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an accepted fact that major contemporary art exhibitions tend to run on scandal \u2013 usually sexual in one way or another. The immensely successful Sensation!<\/em> show of then-new BritPop artists, held at the Royal Academy just over ten years ago, owed much of its initial impact to a portrait of the Moors murderess Myra Hindley, painted with the aid of stamps made in the shape of children\u2019s hands. When the exhibition moved to the Brooklyn Museum in New York the scandalous star of the show was a painting of the Virgin by Chris Ofili, where one of her breasts was a lump of elephant dung. Rudy Giuliani, then mayor of New York, attempted to court the Catholic vote by withdrawing funding from the museum.<\/p>\n

What we forget is that it was ever thus where contemporary art is concerned. In 1847 Jean-Baptiste Cl\u00e9singer\u2019s Woman Bitten by a Snake<\/em> caused a sensation at the Paris Salon \u2013 allegedly because the sculptor was thought to have cast the model from life. The real reason was that she appeared to be in the throes of orgasm. In 1865, the scandal was repeated when Manet\u2019s Olympia<\/em> was shown. Though the nude figure was modeled on Titian\u2019s Venus of Urbino<\/em>, the picture was read as a comment on the contemporary culture of prostitution.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, what\u2019s new about the present imbroglio is that it is, as Mr Whittingdale points out, a scandal about old, rather than new, art. Cranach\u2019s nudes are a familiar feature of the world\u2019s great museums. One of the best-known paintings in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool is his Nymph of the Fountain<\/em>, which has not been lent to the RA because Liverpool needs to keep its best treasures at home during its year-long celebration as European City of Culture. The Walker is a populist museum, and hordes of school children are dragged past the Nymph<\/em> every month, as part of their artistic and, no doubt, sexual education.<\/p>\n

The thing that makes a rather shameful episode even funnier is that Cranach was closely associated with the first throes of the Protestant Reformation. He was a friend of Luther, and painted a number of portraits of him. A major patron was John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, chief champion in Germany of the Protestant cause. Militant Protestantism and censorship, especially sexual censorship, have often tended to go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

To understand why he painted so many nudes we have to think ourselves back into the political, social and cultural framework of the early 16th century. Nudes were associated with the humanist enthusiasm for Greek and Roman antiquity. Cranach\u2019s nudes, like the Venus<\/em> now in contention, invariably refer to classical legends. The willingness to commission paintings of the nude, and to put them on public display, was also associated with the increasing tendency of secular rulers to loosen their bonds with the Church, even in cases where they did not reject them. The many nudes painted by Italian artists for Fran\u00e7ois I\u2019s new palace at Fontainebleau were subtly emblematic of that monarch\u2019s wish to free the French ecclesiastical hierarchy from the domination of the papacy. In addition, paintings of the nude had a clear significance in terms of social class. Works of art in churches \u2013 altarpieces, statues and stained glass windows \u2013 addressed themselves to everyone. Exquisite paintings of the nude, with references to classical literature, addressed themselves to a wealthy, well-educated elite.<\/p>\n

It is exactly here that things come full circle. What London Transport is telling us, by attempting to ban the Cranach poster, is that some things remain too special for popular consumption. One of the most common excuses given for cultural, as opposed to political, censorship is that \u201cpeople might be upset\u201d. The censor seldom admits to being personally troubled by what he or she wants to ban. His or her actions are altruistic \u2013 an attempt to spare other people distress. In this case the message is \u201cLet\u2019s narrow and dumb down the cultural heritage, to the point where it becomes safely innocuous.\u201d In fact, most censorship of this sort is an attempt to allay anxiety \u2013 an anxiety that is externalised by being projected into the minds of others. \u201cHe or she or they are not quite like us \u2013 they don\u2019t have the same background. It\u2019s kinder not to confront them with this or that or the other.\u201d One can perhaps sum the situation up by describing it as the censorship of condescension.<\/p>\n

One can draw two conclusions from this comic but nevertheless troubling affair. The first is that things have in some ways changed very little from Cranach\u2019s day. Some images are only for posh people, with the money to pay the Royal Academy\u2019s exhibition entrance fee.<\/p>\n

The other, in stark contrast to the first, is that our cultural horizons are getting narrower and narrower. The only way most of us can interpret a Cranach in the tube \u2013 or so the relevant authority believes \u2013 is to see it in terms of a picture in a soft-core pornographic magazine. Meanwhile, one hopes that the RA are truly grateful for the bonus just handed to them by London Transport\u2019s stupidity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London Underground’s ban of an exhibition advert is elitist, writes Edward Lucie-Smith Exhibition organisers at the Royal Academy are expressing bewilderment and outrage, at least in public, because the people who run advertising for the London Underground have decided to ban a poster featuring a nude Venus by the German 16th century artist Lucas Cranach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[102,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}