20 thoughts on “The age of ignorance”

  1. This is tragic. The Victorians, senselessly prudish, could see the cultural value — they could understand the mythical connotations of this, yet today’s more “enlightened” society cannot see past the end of its own nose.

  2. A most apt title for this post… the police officers should be sent back to school.

  3. I wonder what percentage of the population has ever heard of the myth of Leda and the Swan and had ever seen it depicted quite like the photograph in the gallery. I certainly would be impressed to learn that the average bobby was familiar with the tale.

    Bear in mind this was a photograph, not the16th century statue shown by the DT, who obviously felt it too risque. Having seen it, (modesty forbids me to post it, but here is a link http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/incoming/article7684648.ece/ALTERNATES/w620/Leda+A+Fool+for+Love.jpg), I think it is disingenuous to imply that there are no sexual connotations to the ‘artwork’ and that a bit of gratuitousness was not intended. The idea has always titivated. During the Renaissance, it was deemed more acceptable to show an animal and a woman copulating than it was to show a man and a woman in the act. Hence the popularity of the myth.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leda_and_the_Swan#Eroticism

    Imagine if the photograph had shown a couple of ruffians raping some women, or a butcher calving up young children, or soldiers cutting off the foreskins of their enemies, or a host of other classical allusions. I am sure that at some point even the most liberal of art critics would have blanched.

    In short, while I think the police overreacted and were wrong to have the piece taken down, I think they had a point.

  5. Christopher, in the spirit of enlivening debate on these pages, I take issue with your opening comment that the Victorians were senselessly prudish. Prudish, yes, senseless, no. Given the debauched state of society in the late 17th century, following the Restoration and 18th century as the Industrial Revolution meant rural communities migrated en masse to the cities, I submit that the Victorian moral code, did a great deal to lift millions out poverty and to provide them with education, work and health. It was by no means perfect, but I think Hogarth showed pretty well what the alternative was. Britain prospered as a result of those Victorian values. That had to be a good thing.

  6. I have to say that I’m pleased that I didn’t comment earlier before Sipu posted us the LINK (there it is again) of the actual offending photograph. Thanks Sipu.

    Suffice to say that it wouldn’t adorn any walls in my household.

    Should it be banned, probably not. Should it be displayed in a shop window for all and sundry to see, I definitely don’t think so.

    I’m also of the opinion that an art gallery is perhaps the best place for it (with a suitable warning to the public of whats on display.)

    Have to agree with Bearsy about the ‘deceptive journalism.’

  7. Oh! Dear! I will have to eat my words… I assumed that the ‘photo’ (the mind boggles at just who was prepared to pose for such a photograph!) was similar to the 16th C statue.

    Like Soutie, I don’t think this sort of ‘art’ should be on open display in a shop wondow. I’m a little tired of ‘artists’ telling me that art should be confrontational. That’s fine if I choose to go to an art gallery – but not if I’m walking down the street.

    Sorry Sipu – I’m not going to enliven the ‘debate on these pages’ by taking issue with your comments on Victorian morality! I’m in agreement with your comments. By the time Victoria came to the throne it wasn’t only the ‘lower classes’ as depicted by Hogarth, who needed a lesson in morality – but also the upper classes, along with many in the Royal Family, who required the same lesson.

    It’s time for another Moral Regeneration.

  8. I have to say (and I am not prudish nor offended by the photo) that I thought the fuzz over reacted, but seeing the photo I do not think it should have been in the shop window, by all means inside the shop as it is not that graphic, probably in an adult room.

    As for the Victorians they were not that prudish , it was all for show. As for today, well I think the British are over prudish compared to our European neighbours, yet we have higher crime, drunken women on holiday flaunting everything and then complaining someone took advantage and so on.

  9. Sipu: I have a lot of respect for the Victorians and, like Ed West, often wonder if we deserve to call ourselves their heirs. They were optimists, creative, confident. They were humanists and innovators. Their literature was superb, their art sublime.
    They had their senseless quirks, wearing stiff and full Victorian dresses in Africa and India, for example, where the temperature was often a bit too high to justify it.

  10. I’m not sure why the photo version is considered to be less acceptable than the Victorian effort. The symbolic act is the same. Surely the photo is more honest?

  11. Janus :

    I’m not sure why the photo version is considered to be less acceptable than the Victorian effort. The symbolic act is the same. Surely the photo is more honest?

    Photoshop?

  12. I do not find either acceptable for public exhibition. The population is quite sufficiently lewd these days without further encouragement!
    I agree with sipu.

  13. I find the first rather beautiful; the second vaguely evocative of what might happen at Ladies’ Day at Aintree, if swans instead of horses were let loose… I suppose one man’s artistic meat is another’s poison. I would hate for things like this Yeats poem to be censored on the same grounds, however.
    http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172064

  14. I don’t either version offensive, but I am not persuaded that either should be displayed in a shop window.

    Both fine in their proper place, although I don’t think the photographic version has any artistic merit.

  15. Lots of classical nudes/art are not considered offensive, purely on the grounds of being ‘art’, whereas modern art of the Emin and Hirst variety always causes a storm. Perhaps they are deliberately provocative – undoubtedly so, in fact. But as you say, it boils down to whether they have any artistic merit or beauty.

  17. Ah, police should be executioners and well educated in the Arts and Mythology. Gosh, quite a challenge. Theresa May won’t want to pay any extra though…..

  18. Hello Ara; good to see you as well. Forgetting irony, for the moment, I do think that it is a bit sad that things like the second photo should be considered as worthy of ‘art’. We have a reputation, in Britain, for all things eclectic and whacky – the shock of the new, if you like, but quite honestly, sometimes I do wonder if we have completely lost touch with the beauty of the old, whether in literature, painting or music. I wonder whether many of us would even recognise it at all now.

  19. BB: the second picture is really quite tasteless, isn’t it? Very little “art” that has recently produced is of any notable quality, very little “music” is memorable, and the “literature” is almost unreadable. Yet attempts to encourage students to read great classics are met with derision and disdain.

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