Placed on public display, art has a particularly potent ability to
polarise and offend. Whilst the broad success of artists such as Tracey
Emin or Marina Abramovic might suggest we are in a daring era of
uncompromised free speech, artists continue to face censorship by
political and religious authorities, protestors, and – occasionally –
gallerists themselves.
The recent ban of works in countries including Syria and Russia
highlight the ongoing difficulties faced by artist who – whether
intentionally or not – produce works which provoke. Art Media Agency
explored the history of censorship, and its continued impact upon our
relationship with art.
Historical examples of censored works
Many works which today are regarded as exemplary or
outstanding, were originally subject to censorship by political or
religious figures who deemed their content inappropriate or offensive.
In fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy, the strong influence of
Catholicism saw a number of artists denounced as irresponsible
proponents of the immoral or unholy. In 1565, under orders from Pope
Daniele de Volterra, a pupil of Michelangelo made revisions to the
Sistine Chapel fresco,
The Last Judgement, adding loin cloths
to figures which Michelangelo had originally left unclothed. The act
earned the promising young artist the nick name “Braghettone” (“the
britches-maker”) – an unfortunate diminution of his broader capabilities
which would follow him for the duration of his career.
To modern observers, the former Pope’s direction seems amusingly
prudish – an admission of an uncomfortable awareness of nudity – and
perhaps sexuality – which is far surpassed by the skill, colour, and
indeed every other aspect of the work. It seems highly unlikely that
contemporary visitors to the Sistine Chapel leave the ancient building
with an overwhelming sense that they have been visually assaulted by a
surfeit of nude bodies.
And yet, during the 1600s, Michelangelo’s frescoes received a barrage
of outraged comments from visitors who saw not skill, but obscenity.
Commenting on the work, poet and satirist Pietro Aretino wrote:
“Is it possible that you, so divine that you do not deign to consort
with men, have done such a thing in the highest temple of God? Above the
first altar of Jesus? Not even in the brothel are there such scenes as
yours…”
Though the style of the satirist perhaps demanded Aretino exaggerate
his outrage – and the last phrase appears to be an uncensored admission
of his propensity for brothels – the writer’s voice was not isolated.
His criticism was echoed by Biagio Cardinal da Cesena, who described the
fresco as “a stew of nudes, better suited to a bathhouse or roadside
wine shop than the Pope’s chapel”.
The ongoing shock of the nude
Centuries after Michelangelo’s figures were forcibly clothed, nudity
continued to shock the public, with new styles of production and
differing approaches to the figure perpetuating the idea of the body as a
battle ground.
Thought to have been commissioned by Turkish diplomat and collector Khalil-Bey, Gustave Courbet’s
L’Origine du Monde
(1866) has become one of the world’s most famous examples of
censorship. Originally part of a collection dedicated to the female
figure, the piece was not exhibited in a public institution until 1995,
when it joined the permanent collection at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, a
flutter of excitement still following the controversial artwork.
Originally thought to have been displayed behind a curtain, the
painting passed through several private collections, with its last
individual owner being psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Representing the
female body as no other “Salon” artist had dared to,
The Origin of the World gained mythical status in the arts circles of 19
th
century Paris, with M. Du Camp, a contemporary of Courbet describing
the work as “the final word in realism” – a comment to which he added,
facetiously “the artist, who had copied his model in a naturalist
manner, had forgotten to render the feet, the legs [...] and the head.”
In 1865 – a year before the creation of Courbet’s work – Edouard Manet’s
Olympia
similarly scandalised Paris, when it was exhibited at the city’s annual
salon. The piece depicts a reclining female nude, draped across
cushions in a pose which had previously been seen in Titian’s
Venus of Urbino (1538), Giorgione’s
Sleeping Venus (c. 1510), and Francisco de Goya’s
La maja desnuda (circa 1797–1800), known in English as
The Naked (or Nude) Maja.
For outraged observers – who described the work as “immoral” and
“vulgar” – it was not the nudity of Manet’s subject which was offensive –
perhaps because of the classical, conventional arrangement – but her
arresting, unwavering gaze. Yet some commentators praised the artist for
his honesty, with writer Zola stating:
“When our artists give us Venuses, they correct nature, they lie.
Edouard Manet asked himself why lie, why not tell the truth; he
introduced us to Olympia, this fille of our time, whom you meet on the
sidewalks.”
Zola’s description of Manet’s work as the “the truth”, heard against
voices which described the piece as immoral, encapsulates the complex
relationship which observers of the period had with artistic
representations of nudity. By this period, Michelangelo’s censored
figures had comfortably entered art history tomes as classical – perhaps
aspirational – figures. A “classical” understanding of painted nudity
had developed, which Manet’s
Olympia and Courbet’s
L’Origine du Monde directly negated, offering depictions of the human body which acknowledged it’s reality with an offensive pragmatism.
Political censorship
Whilst works depicting nudity have sparked outrage for centuries, works
of art which are stifled or destroyed because they offend those in power
suggest a desire to control, not just representations of the human
body, but of the ideas of a collective group.
Censorship often accompanies pieces which present an uncomfortable
truth, responding to, or representing political injustice, conflict, or
morality. In regions where political rule is accompanied by
tightly-controlled propaganda, artists who seek to veer away from
accepted forms of image production present a dangerous unknown, capable
of undermining governing forces whilst acknowledging unspoken truths.
Perhaps one of the most prominent contemporary examples of an artist
persecuted for political reasons, Chinese artist and activist
Ai Weiwei
produces works which directly criticise his native government’s
approach to democracy and human rights. In April 2011, he was detained
for 3 months, with Chinese state media describing the artist as a
“deviant and plagiarist” – description prompted by works such as ”
草泥马挡中央 – grass mud horse covering the middle”. Depicting the artist
leaping into the air naked, the caption – perhaps abstract or
non-sensical to the Western observer – gains a sudden meaning in
Chinese, where it sounds dangerously like 肏你妈党中央 – or “Fuck your mother,
the Communist party central committee”.
The
China Daily subsidiary,
The Global Times,
released an editorial in response to the arrest on the 6 April 2011,
acknowledging, rather than defending, the dangerous nature of Weiwei’s
production:
“
Ai Weiwei
likes to do something others dare not do. He has been close to the red
line of Chinese law. Objectively speaking, Chinese society does not have
much experience in dealing with such persons. However, as long as
Ai Weiwei continuously marches forward, he will inevitably touch the red line one day.”
The artist’s detention sparked an international protest, with both
The United States and the European Union condeming his detention. The
international arts community began “1001 Chairs for
Ai Weiwei”
– a series of petitions which called for artists to bring chairs to
Chinese embassies and consulates across the world on 17 April 2011 to
“sit peacefully in support of the artist’s immediate release”.
A street art campaign, incorporating slogans including “Free
Ai Weiwei” and “Who’s afraid of
Ai Weiwei”
(the latter acknowledging art’s potential to intimidate and threaten)
travelled across Hong Kong and further afield. One of the most prominent
proponents of the campaign was London’s Tate Modern, which still has
“Release
Ai Weiwei” emblazoned across its glass tower in giant lettering.
The censorship of politically-motivated art works can paradoxically
increase their visibility. Where work is censored, media bodies may
initially respond with a broader focus on the implications for human
rights and a right to freedom of expression. This initial investigation,
however, will inevitably highlight what it is that censoring bodies
originally wished to cover up – a desire to erase which often points
towards a significant truth.
In 1982, Syrian doctor and artist Kamal Al-Labwani witnessed the Hama
massacre, in which the country’s government crushed the uprising by the
Muslim brotherhood – an event which led him to oppose the ruling Ba’ath
party and establish the Syrian Liberal Democratic Union. He was
arrested in September 2001, after attending a political seminar in the
house of fellow activist Riad Seif, before being released in 2004 – a
period which allowed him to briefly travel to the US and through the EU,
before he was once again arrested upon his return to Damascus in 2005.
Al-Labwani’s paintings reflect upon his experiences in prison, and
the Emergency Laws which have been in force in Syria for the past 40
years, focusing on the human rights abuses which affect citizens of the
country. His paintings have been exported to the United Kingdom, and he
has been supported by bodies such as “Freedom to Create”, which seeks to
promote creativity as an essential component of human expression and
“just and fair societies”.
Whilst the Syrian artist’s paintings initially sought to respond to
the political situation in his country, Al-Labwani’s incarceration
increased both the prominence of his works in international media, and
the unjust sentence imposed by the Syrian government. His case came to
the attention of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
in 2009, the body concluding that Dr. Labwani “had been condemned for
the peaceful expression of his political views and for having carried
out political activities” that are protected under international law,
also deeming his trial unfair.
In Russia, a spate of recent arrests and instances of censorship in
the art world have paradoxically increased international awareness of
the country’s intolerant laws, and the government’s attempts to control
its citizens’s free speech. Earlier in September, the Saint Petersburg
police were the target of criticism across international media when Vera
Donskaya-Khilko’s painting Wrestling – which depicted Presidents
Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama fighting to prove their manliness – was
removed, and the director of the museum which held the work was detained
for 24 hours.
This was recently followed by the arrest of performers from the group
Pussy Riot, the Moscow-based collective, established in 2011, which
seeks to promote women’s rights in Russia, and which has broadly opposed
Putin’s leadership. In a period preceding the 5
th Moscow Biennale – described as the “La semaine de la censure” (the week of censorship) by the
Journal des Arts,
t-shirts made by Pussy Riot members Artem Loskutov and Masha Kiselva
depicting the group as religious icons were censored, and images of the
works were banned online. In the same week, an exhibition at Marat
Guelman’s Moscow gallery, featuring photographs of the city’s destroyed
buildings, was threatened with closure by authorities who deemed the
show’s content offensive.
Open-minded censorship
Whilst examples of censorship in Syria, Russia and China are the direct
results of a political regime’s desire to stifle artistic expression,
incidences of censorship continue to appear in regions ordinarily
connoted with the active promotion of free speech.
In 2010, MoCA director Jeffrey Deitch, who became renowned for
showing some of the most innovative and interesting contemporary art in
his eponymous New York gallery for a period of around 15 years,
attracted attention after the decision to censor a large-scale work –
which he himself had commissioned – by Italian street artist Blu. The
latter was asked to produce a large-scale mural at the museum’s
entrance, and presented his initial idea in a preliminary sketch: a huge
painting of the coffins of war casualties draped, not with American
flags, but with dollar bills.
The artist began work whilst Deitch attended Art Basel, though
rapidly grew unpopular with the director, who requested Blu paint a
different mural over the coffins – an emblem which would be more likely
to invite people to come into the museum. The artist refused to
compromise his practice, responding to Deitch by stating that he had
simply chosen the wrong man for the job. The work was whitewashed
shortly after its completion, with LA MoCA justifying its action by
stating:
“The Geffen Contemporary building is located on a special, historic
site. Directly in front of the north wall is the Go For Broke monument,
which commemorates the heroic roles of Japanese American soldiers, who
served in Europe and the Pacific during World War II, and opposite the
wall is the LA Veterans’ Affairs Hospital”.
Directly engaged with the link between Capitalism and warfare,
however, and coinciding with the controversial wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the piece was more prominently a critique of approaches to
contemporary conflict, rather than a trivialisation of the actions of
war veterans. The work, however, was covered before debate, or critique,
could begin.
Nor have we quite overcome the ability to be shocked by the naked
form – even in an age which has seen works by Lucien Freud and Jenny
Saville. In 2011, experts who carried out the restoration of a mural
depicting a 13
th century “Tree of Fertility” were accused of
attempting to sanitise the piece by scrubbing out the 25 phalluses which
had happily hung from the tree’s branches. Restorers denied
accusations, stating that the affected areas had been removed due to
compromising deposits of salt and calcium. Others, however, were more
sceptical, with town councillor Gabriele Galeotti commenting “Many parts
of the work seem to have been arbitrarily repainted”.
For those who feel that art should be a forum dedicated to the
freedom of expression, censorship is nothing other than problematic. In
cases of political censorship, artists are revealed to be socially
responsible figures, whose practice seeks to highlight and change the
society it comments upon. For others, censorship might represent a means
of correcting works which outrage, or which show a purposeful disregard
for accepted cultural practice. This was the argument against Blu’s
piece from LA’s MoCA, and is often the reaction to controversial pieces
by artists such as Jake and Dinos Chapman.
The controversy which censorship attracts ultimately raises the
question of the artist’s role in society, and the idea that they might
have social responsibility. Censorship opens up much broader questions
about the role of art as truth, and the problematic implications of
forcibly constrained expression. Commenting on the complex nature of the
issue at a May conference on censorship, Tate director
Nicholas Serota stated:
“We can probably all agree on many of the principles that we seek to
uphold. What’s actually much more difficult is to recognise that there
are no easy paths, that there are no guarantees by which, and through
which, we can preserve this hard fought-for right for the freedom of
free expression.”
That art is still capable of provoking political unrest, violent
debate, and protest is an attestation of its value and power. It is also
an admission of its complexity; inextricably linked to notions of
liberty, truth and justice, art seems set to continue to attract the
attention of those who would prefer it to be silenced.
