Erotic gallery public show

Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum has been both exhibited as art and censored as pornography. The Roman cities around the bay of Naples were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD , thereby preserving their buildings and artifacts until extensive archaeological excavations began in the 18th century. These digs revealed the cities to be rich in erotic artifacts such as statues, frescoes , and household items decorated with sexual themes. The ubiquity of such imagery and items indicates that the treatment of sexuality in ancient Rome was more relaxed than current Western culture. However, much of what might strike modern viewers as erotic imagery e.

Andrew Clarke. Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse, By funny I, of course, mean strange. The act of removal was part of a staged gallery take over by artist Sonia Boyce, who coincidentally is having an exhibition of her work there from March to September. Not content with sending this beautiful picture back to the store room, she persuaded the gallery to remove all postcards and posters featuring this popular scene of temptation and sexual desire from the gallery shop. The Manchester Art Gallery curator Clare Gannaway, who actually carried out the act of removal, then felt the need to justify her actions in the national press, saying that the removal of the painting was itself an artistic act, designed to provoke a debate into objectification of women. If they wanted to start a conversation, they certainly got one as the gallery was swamped with protests from art lovers — many of them women — wanting the painting returned; now.

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It is a painting that shows pubescent, naked nymphs tempting a handsome young man to his doom, but is it an erotic Victorian fantasy too far, and one which, in the current climate, is unsuitable and offensive to modern audiences? Postcards of the painting will be removed from sale in the shop. Members of the public have stuck Post-it notes around the notice giving their reaction. The work usually hangs in a room titled In Pursuit of Beauty, which contains late 19th century paintings showing lots of female flesh. Our attention has been elsewhere