Gallery removes naked nymphs painting to 'prompt conversation'

[french frank]

I'm not sure whether it was the gallery or the Guardian who first described the painiting as pre-Raphaelite, but of course it isn't.

Looks like it was Wikipedia. '… an English painter known for working in the Academic style and for then embracing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood style and subject matter …'

[Thropplenoggin]

I expect it's trebles all round up in Manchester, as this staged PR exercise has worked wonders for putting the gallery on the map. The Hepworth in Wakefield achieves this by putting on great exhibitions.

[Lat-Literal]

I think part of the point about this whole thing is to get people to think about those kinds of questions.
It seems extraordinary to me that so many folks are outraged by something that is a very gentle act of provocation.

It's hardly on the Fluxus level

I have been to Fluxus exhibitions and I enjoyed them a lot but it seems to me that most of what I saw was quite different in tone. While any situationism there was not apolitical with wider reference - challenges to what is expected, artistic provocation towards ideas of what is rational and what is absurd, commentary of a sort on or against the artistic and/or other establishment - its own place in the counterculture was clear and it appealingly represented substantial or even trivial fringes. Decades later, the likes of Emin and especially Hirst might have appeared to have been leaders of a fluxish renaissance - the former on the surface is part Yoko Ono as well as part William Morris and the latter could be placed in the context of Dali or others who dabbled in the absurd - they were also respectively the social and visual arts equivalents of JK Rowling and Gordon Gekko. Their key subtext was Loadsamoney.

Again, in that very establishment respect, they were not original. The principle had been established with Warhol et al although there the economic benefits were achieved more as a by-product. In other words, the painting material that was missing in the sixties had been that level of cynicism. As for the extent that the newer breed were political beyond money - Hirst dabbled with environmentalism and Emin's unmade bed has any number of things to say about attitudes in women, attitudes towards women and even the nature of borderline addiction - they were highly individual statements. Each broke into the establishment from outside. Little of it was a lazy approximation of what was in the daily news. From there, one can swing to Banksy whose innovative ideas in the community and anonymity are more akin to fluxus albeit writ large and as a part of "the people" with a clear alignment with graffiti artists of the past. In the other direction of the pendulum, we have this gallery which has simply tapped into the mob like sensationalism in the media that is always lucrative publicity. It might well be that the publicity is essentially for one individual who people have referred to here and whose name was mentioned not once but twice in the most unsatisfactory BBC radio interview.

In the 1990s a friend of a friend of mine had an installation in Hoxton entitled "Grass". It consisted of a room with a sign on the outside saying "Gallery" and turf on the floors. walls and ceilings. It was there for a very brief time, had no publicity, made no money and it relied purely on challenging assumptions about juxtapositions. Twenty years earlier at age 12, I was standing in my local library and had the first of many peculiar moments in my life when the world spun round. The giddiness I felt arose from a thought that had come into my head about the room not containing bookshelves at all. I was slightly disturbed that that would mean every one of us who was standing there on that Saturday morning was simply staring at a wall. I'd say it was an artistic thought. A gallery without any pictures might have as much merit as one where the pictures are not pictures but turf or more. In contrast, one that removes one picture of a certain kind so that it becomes a typical story in the Mail is not art but crafty. It lies on its back with no thought other than in a dalliance with this century's anxieties about censorship. Here, in place of sophisticated gradation there is only a binary choice between a Carnaby Street meets Soho let it all hang out and book burning a la Ku Klux Klan to ensure that society is supposedly more liberal and moral. That should no doubt be an important warning. However, anyone who can't see it needs more than artful advertisers.

[french frank]

I expect it's trebles all round up in Manchester, as this staged PR exercise has worked wonders for putting the gallery on the map.

I can imagine a meeting of curators coming up with the idea: how do we get people to come through the doors? A bit counter-intuitive to remove the painting, but since it has been replaced remarkably quickly that ceases to apply!

There is a point about how culture (and politics) evolve. There was the somewhat similar case of Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, c 1863 where the picnickers are two fully-clothed men and a naked woman (though I seem to recall it created a problem even back then, didn't it?).

[Thropplenoggin]

I can imagine a meeting of curators coming up with the idea: how do we get people to come through the doors? A bit counter-intuitive to remove the painting, but since it has been replaced remarkably quickly that ceases to apply!

[Stanfordian]

I can imagine a meeting of curators coming up with the idea: how do we get people to come through the doors? A bit counter-intuitive to remove the painting, but since it has been replaced remarkably quickly that ceases to apply!

There is a point about how culture (and politics) evolve. There was the somewhat similar case of Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, c 1863 where the picnickers are two fully-clothed men and a naked woman (though I seem to recall it created a problem even back then, didn't it?).

Hiya french frank,

It won't be long before they bring back the bathing machine.

[MrGongGong]

I can imagine a meeting of curators coming up with the idea: how do we get people to come through the doors? A bit counter-intuitive to remove the painting, but since it has been replaced remarkably quickly that ceases to apply!

There is a point about how culture (and politics) evolve. There was the somewhat similar case of Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, c 1863 where the picnickers are two fully-clothed men and a naked woman (though I seem to recall it created a problem even back then, didn't it?).

Aaah yes the famous Bow wow wow incident

[french frank]

Aaah yes the famous Bow wow wow incident

I expect you're really sorry the 'darts girls', 'grid girls' &c are being phased out. It's just a bit of fun, isn't it?

[MrGongGong]

I expect you're really sorry the 'darts girls', 'grid girls' &c are being phased out. It's just a bit of fun, isn't it?

I think you might have misunderstood the context

And the things you mention certainly aren't "just a bit of fun"
The image I posted is of the band Bow wow wow from the 1980's who's use of the Manet painting as a cover image was seen as some as explotative and others as a critique of the representation of women in pop music.

[greenilex]

Water Babies, anyone?

[ahinton]

I expect you're really sorry the 'darts girls', 'grid girls' &c are being phased out. It's just a bit of fun, isn't it?

I'd thought that "grid girls" were members of Central Electricity Generating Board staff pre-privatisation but what do I know?...

[french frank]

I think you might have misunderstood the context

And the things you mention certainly aren't "just a bit of fun"
The image I posted is of the band Bow wow wow from the 1980's who's use of the Manet painting as a cover image was seen as some as explotative and others as a critique of the representation of women in pop music.

I'm not sure what makes you think I misunderstood it. I don't really think that copying what others do, albeit in a pseudo-parody, is a very effective way of criticising what they do. You may not agree

[MrGongGong]

I'm not sure what makes you think I misunderstood it. I don't really think that copying what others do, albeit in a pseudo-parody, is a very effective way of criticising what they do. You may not agree

Never mind

[Richard Tarleton]

I
The image I posted is of the band Bow wow wow from the 1980's who's use of the Manet painting as a cover image was seen as some as explotative and others as a critique of the representation of women in pop music.

It's become a bit of a meme, that painting. A recent Brookes cartoon in The Times with Theresa May in the female role. A hilarious Bestie cartoon birthday card a while back.

[french frank]

A recent Brookes cartoon in The Times with Theresa May in the female role.

Just found it! As I'd read it, the two 'gents' are intended to have all the advantages, and La May, in all her nakedness, pretty much at their beck and call. Le Déjeuner du Brexit. Yes, I do think that is a clever use of the original, not least because it puts the vulnerability of the naked female into a topical context.