If they think this is porn...

"Pornographic Billboard?"  - Photo by Sacramento Bee

 A billboard (at left)  promoting a chain of tanning salons was vandalized and labeled as porn in the small California town of Auburn two days after it was installed. The vandals covered the billboard with a black tarp and the words, "No porn in our town" written across it.  The billboard features a woman in a bikini and  cowboy boots laying on a rock.  The same billboard has been up in nearby Sacramento for over a month with no complaints against it.  You can read more about the incident at the Sacramento Bee website.  

Valya - 061611

If they think this is porn, then I guess I had better reconsider putting up my billboard in Auburn based on this photo of Valya.  She is clothed, but I am sure this would be way over the line and is porn to them.  IT HAS HER IN A BED!!!  I have to admit though, my photo is much sexier.

Some would call it porn.

The Broken Pitcher by William-Adolphe Bouguereau's (1891)

I went to the Legion of Honor Museum of Art in San Francisco on Saturday with my art history instructor and a few classmates.  I was amazed to learn from her and another student that William-Adolphe Bouguereau's The Broken Pitcher was considered by many as porn/erotica at the time it was painted and exhibited.

Broken Pitcher shows so many elements of the theme of "lost innocence".  This painting was scandalous  and way too suggestive for some at the time.  I am not going to argue that the young woman in the painting, her expression, body language, and the items around her communicate lost innocence, but I doubt many contemporary viewers would catch the message and classify it as bold, if at all.

I think most modern viewers that haven't taken an art history course would catch all the subtle and not-so-subtle suggestive elements in this piece.  If you compare this painting to an American Apparel photo advertisement, the subtle concepts are lost to the modern sexualization of everything.

I am working on a similar image for my diptych series.  My image is much more direct than Bouguereau's, but is still more subtle than current fashion/glamor advertising.   (Below is a working version.  I will use a different tombstone image since this one is for a boy.)  I wonder how my diptych will be received.  To be honest, I am not holding my breath on it.

Courtney and Lamb - 041811