Who is afraid of risqué art?
The question of whether an artwork is offensive is now determined by the least generous interpretation of the most sensitive viewer.
Posts Tagged ‘censorship’
Smackdown 101
Quillette just published my article about Ben Sakoguchi’s spectacular smackdown of literalist curators. Sakoguchi was invited to participate in the revived California Biennial, to be held at the Orange County Museum of Art, which was reopening with great fanfare in a brand new $94 million Morphosis-designed building. The curators had selected a his 16-panel polyptych titled Comparative […]
Manchester Art Gallery “Challenging a Victorian fantasy” is a clumsy publicity stunt
In the latest tragical-comical episode linking the art world and the #MeToo movement, a group of artists and activists, with the help of the gallery’s curator, removed a seminal Pre-Raphaelite artwork from the wall of the Manchester Art Gallery “to initiate a discussion.” My analysis of what happened was just published in Dispatches section of […]
I am shocked! Why risqué paintings do not need warning labels
#MeToo is in the news again (still), now going after paintings with unpalatable content. My article “A Warning about the Balthus Warning,” just posted in the Dispatch section of The New Criterion. It explains why it is a very bad idea to decide whether an artwork deserves to grace museum walls based on how offensive […]
