Blocking out the uncomfortable bits

in #art8 years ago (edited)

Art v. censorship: where is the line? Something about blocking off Renaissance naughty parts just doesn't feel right, yet there's clearly a time when the line becomes blurry and the sacrilegious is not just accepted but expected.

https://diasp.org/camo/13d4409e02503fc60d5203551d110f3d02bce8cd/68747470733a2f2f36362e6d656469612e74756d626c722e636f6d2f39303435313765336532666138386136313466643033333934623766646337322f74756d626c725f6f646b6e7434344b555a31716a3838726a6f315f313238302e6a7067

To save you some googling, it’s Brujas yendo al Sabbath, translated as Witches going to their Sabbath (or The Departure of the Witches, or again, The Vision of Faust) by Spanish painter Luis Ricardo Falero (1878). Now here’s not only an uncensored version, but an anticensored one. You can see everything from all angles ; )

https://diasp.org/camo/1e1e7f1d42402a2e2046db1d63fa9c071abcf9bd/687474703a2f2f6939392e62656f6e2e72752f33332e6d656469612e74756d626c722e636f6d2f33313333383061613965323661396337383861333037303961663665393762312f74756d626c725f6e75306e67633662634b317166326467326f315f3530302e676966

… reminds me of what the Internet once did to French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s La Naissance de Vénus (The Birth of Venus, 1879 -- that's right, painted literally a year after Luis completed the above):

https://diasp.org/uploads/images/scaled_full_6360af1699a65e971d24.jpg

... or even to Michelangelo's world-renowned David (1501-4):

https://diasp.org/uploads/images/scaled_full_432ff3c67cd11af53f60.jpg

I posted this on Diaspora already, but what the heck, let's see if you guys like it here too. None of the ideas or even pieces here are mine (though I did touch up David myself a bit) but putting them together like this is where my contribution lays. I know I'm toeing the line here, but that's what art's all about right? Pushing boundaries? Right? Guys? You guys?

Yay, art! Enjoy : )

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Lol yay art... Minus points for hiding the good bits :P

Like when the block out the genitals in japanese porn.

Lol this has never made sense to me either.


Not fully censored :O

Oh my goodness, I don't know how I missed that. Rectified! Crisis averted. Phew, that was close.

My poor eyes will never recover from the brown cock you forced into my brain! :O


if i sit up so i look a my screen from above it gets lighter and you can see this dick is not censored! :O

i feel like im playing wheres waldo dick edition. god help me! xD

Wait! I thought the same but then, upon closer inspection, those are just the centaurs' legs -- in both cases. Had me fooled too though.

oh now that I look closer your right. xD
poor centaurs has no pee pee! :O

Nice post, Nemo :)

The thing with all this censorship is that it is really just puritan US culture that is pushed in the faces of the rest of us. Not long ago I saw the film Ronia the Robber's Daughterwith my 7-year old daughter. It is based on the novel by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, and in the film there is a scene where all the robbers are snowbathing in the nude. In Scandinavia it is acceptable to have naked people in a children's film, so you can imagine that there has been some incidents where the censorship from Facebook and Apple has made people furious in our countries. Latest in Norway.

I wont even start on censorship of historic art!

I know, right! Or how prevalent nudism is on central European beaches. A friend from there once remarked about the interesting violence/sex paradox we have going on in the USA/Canada: you can hack someone to bits in the most violent way in Hollywood, but if you show those bits, boy, you've got some reckoning to do.