Is Facebook too Conservative for Contemporary Art?
Bob Duggan on September 16, 2011, 11:08 PM
In the second article, Bomsdorf and Helen Stoilas discuss Facebook’s disabling of users’ accounts for posting historic paintings such as Gustave Courbet’s 1866 The Origin of the World because of nudity and/or strong sexual content. If the Fotografiska situation revisited censorship from a few decades ago, l’affair Courbet reaches back to the days of Queen Victoria (although Origin wasn’t exhibited publically until 1988). Uwe Max Jensen, a Danish artist known for courting controversy himself (such as repeatedly walking his dog on a museum’s lawn and leaving a series of mementos), posted nudes by long-dead Swedish artist Anders Zorn (such as the one above) only to have Facebook delete them. In that second article, a Facebook source claimed that naked photos of “actual” people are removed, but drawings, paintings, and sculptures of nudes aren’t.
It’s hard to determine whether a real problem exists or not with Facebook censoring art. Facebook groups such as Artists against Art Censorship and Stop Censorship of Modern Art document daily deletions by Facebook of images that violate Facebook policy. I’m interested to hear in the comments from any artist that has tried to post their artwork on Facebook only to be met with censorship. Like it or not, Facebook is an unavoidable reality for anyone wanting to reach as many people as possible.
Facebook, however, belongs to the people, not to the special interest groups or individuals who take it upon themselves to decide for everyone else what is offensive or not. Facebook will only be as censored as we let it be.
[Image: Anders Zorn. Female Nude (detail).]
http://bigthink.com/ideas/40236?page=2
http://bigthink.com/ideas/40236?page=2
