Art News

The National Gallery has removed a picture from an upcoming major exhibition from its website over claims of antisemitic portrayal of Jews.

Albrecht Dürer's Christ Among the Doctors from 1509 depicts a story from the Gospel according to Luke of Jesus on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover, alongside a caricature of Jewish men from the synagogue.

The National Gallery had initially displayed the artwork prominently on its website advertising the upcoming exhibition without mentioning its portrayal of Jews. After the gallery was alerted to the fact by Jewish News reader Ralph Harris, it removed the picture online and highlighted the antisemitic representation in its gallery. A spokesperson said:

We are aware that the representation of the Doctors may cause offence and both the wall texts and the audio guide in the exhibition will acknowledge and address caricature and antisemitic portrayal in the painting.

We have removed the image and accompanying text from our online gallery of selected exhibited works as we felt that in this format there was not adequate space for the interpretation required for this work.

The city of Vienna is taking an offbeat approach to the social media censorship of art and has turned to using the adults-only online platform OnlyFans to put its most explicit artworks on full display.

The tourism board for the Austrian capital is now presenting art from four of Vienna's most revered museums, including the Albertina Museum and the Leopold Museum, on the adults-only platform in response to the blocking of some artistic content containing nudity on social media.

In July, the Albertina Museum's TikTok account was suspended -- and later blocked -- for displaying works by the Japanese artist and photographer Nobuyoshi Araki that showed a partially-obscured breast. Back in 2019, Instagram said that a painting by the legendary Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens violated its community guidelines. Earlier this year, when the Leopold Museum marked its 20th anniversary, a video uploaded to Facebook and Instagram which contained work by Koloman Moser was rejected because it was flagged as potentially pornographic by the platforms.

Now, these works and more of Vienna's 18+ content can be found on full, unfiltered display on OnlyFans -- a subscription-based website best known as a platform for sharing and viewing pornographic content.

Recently Pornhub decided to have a little fun with classic nude art house in notable museums. Pornhub explained in a blog post:

After a year of being cooped up and isolated, it's no wonder there's talk of the emergence of a New Renaissance. Now that the world if finally starting to open up, we wanted to do our part to inspire and reintroduce people to some of the most famous cultural institutions with fresh eyes and realize how lascivious art can really be!

Introducing Classic Nudes, an interactive guide to some of the most provocative scenes in six renowned art museums around the world. And as for those of you who think art is boring, put your faith in us because even though porn may not be considered art, some art can definitely be considered porn.

We'll help you skip the SFW masterpieces and head straight to the erotic paintings and sculptures at The Louvre, The MET, The Museo del Prado, The Uffizi Gallery, The National Gallery in London, and The Musee d'Orsay. With the Classic Nudes mobile site, you can now take a sexy tour with audio commentary from our very own Brand Ambassador Asa Akira who gives an oral history of the curated collection of nudes, orgies, and bushes. And as if hearing what Asa has to say about these racy scenes isn't convincing enough, you can also expect a surprise happy ending with MySweetApple who helped bring these artworks to life.

Now thelocal.fr reports:

The Classic Nudes series has been ruffling some feathers since it was posted online earlier in July, with the Uffizi museum in Florence threatening to sue. Bosses at the Louvre have said only that they are dismayed, while the Musee d'Orsay has remained silent on the subject.

Update: Art vs Porn. Art wins

13th August 2021. See article from artnews.com

Last month, Pornhub launched Classic Nudes, an interactive guide to some of the erotic art that can be found in major museums around the world. Following complaints from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, and the Louvre in Paris, audio tours and other content referencing artworks owned these institutions have been removed.

Following the guide's launch, the Uffizi announced that it was planning to sue Pornhub for copyright infringement. In particular, the Uffizi objected to Pornhub's use of Titian's famed Venus of Urbino (1538) in a pornographic reenactment with the amateur adult couple, My SweetApple. In an interview with the Art Newspaper, a representative for the Uffizi said that the museum viewed Pornhub's use of its paintings as totally illegal and that it had been done without any permission.

An artwork featuring three garden benches surround a rose garden has been banned by Southend Council due to it referencing the locally based development of early atom bombs which were then sent to Australia for testing. Promotional Material for the Estuary 2021 Festival explains:

An English Garden is the Estuary 2021 Festival iteration of How to Make a Bomb , the durational gardening project by artist Gabriella Hirst. The project is centred on the propagation and redistribution of a nearly-extinct species of garden rose which was created and registered under the name Rosa floribunda ‘Atom Bomb’ in 1953.

The How to Make a Bomb project aims to provoke questions about the relationship between of nationalism, gardening, and nuclear colonialism. The garden is a reminder that the red rose of England and the English garden is entangled with a violent past of gardening the world, which has continued into a dangerous present.

The artwork is installed just upriver from Foulness Island at Gunners Park, Shoeburyness, which is former MOD land and is now a nature reserve under the care of Essex Wildlife Trust.

An English Garden's formal layout and beds echo the floorplans of Foulness's nuclear heritage architecture, and the aerial maps of the Australian contaminated test sites.

The artwork has now been taken away and placed in storage thanks to Sourthend councillors' objection to the wording of a plaque in the installation that detailed the fact that nuclear weapons were assembled at Foulness (a matter of record) before being shipped to Australia, where they were detonated. The most vocal of the offended councillors, James Moyies, has said he objected to the artist's view that by increasing its nuclear armament by 40%, the UK government was directing considerable resources towards industries of violence instead of those of care, and by the suggestion that Britain had a historical and ongoing identity as a colonial nuclear state.

The councillors emailed the local arts charity Metal, which commissioned the work jointly with the artists' charity the Old Waterworks, claiming that it constituted a:

direct far leftwing attack on our History, our People and our Democratically Elected Government.

Kurt Westergaard was a Danish cartoonist famous for creating the controversial cartoon of a terrorist, although not the Islamic religious character Muhammad as it is often claimed, wearing a bomb in his turban.

This cartoon was the most contentious of the 12 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, which met with strong reactions from Muslims worldwide who condemned the act, including Western countries.

After the drawing of the cartoon, Westergaard received numerous death threats and was a target of assassination attempts. As a result, he was under constant police protection.

In his later years, Westergaard had to live with a bodyguard at secret addresses.

Speaking to Reuters news agency in 2008, Westergaard said he had no regrets about his drawing. He said the cartoon had generated important discussion about the place of Islam in Western countries with secular values:

I would do it the same way (again) because I think that this cartoon crisis in a way is a catalyst which is intensifying the adaptation of Islam. We are discussing the two cultures, the two religions as never before and that is important.

A Russian court is conducting a trial of a feminist activist and artist ludicrously charged with disseminating pornography after she shared drawings with a blob of pubic hair.

Yulia Tsvetkova is on charges related to her group on the popular social network VKontakte where colorful, stylized drawings of vaginas were posted. Tsvetkova is not allowed to give details of accusations against her.

Her drawings also depict gay themes that go against repressive Russians laws against what it considers as gay propaganda.

Tsvetkova ran a children's theater and was a vocal advocate of feminism and LGBT rights. She founded an online group, called Vagina Monologues, encouraging followers to fight stigma and taboo surrounding the female body, and posted other people's art in it.

Many public figures have spoken out in her support. Activists across Russia protested her prosecution, artists dedicated performances to her, and an online petition demanding that the charged be dropped gathered over 250,000 signatures.

A Canberra art gallery has removed three artworks relating to Chinese leaders after receiving complaints and hundreds of angry messages in what appears to be an attack coordinated by China.

The Ambush Gallery at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra removed three pieces -- including one depicting Communist China's founding leader Mao Zedong as Batman and another depicting him as Winnie the Pooh.

The works were part of a 25-piece exhibition exploring the pressures people are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The whole show is a comment on the abuse of power, artist Luke Cornish said.

In response to criticism of supposed racism, Cornish previously apologised for the work depicting Chairman Mao as Batman, which he said was an attempt to mock conspiracy theories around coronavirus origins. He said the other two works were taking the piss out of an authoritarian regime.