Women are from Venus

I don't want to take a stand on this one. I just think it's interesting...

The February 15th issue of the Indianapolis Star stated that London's Transport Authority was refusing to display a poster of Venus by Lucas Cranach because it was too racy. They said they would display the poster if the bottom half was cropped out. I guess the breasts were ok, it was the vagina. But, on Feb. 22, the Transport Authority allowed the poster after a lot of ridicule, sans cropping. "The posters went up on February 22 and so far there have been no reports of spontaneous orgies breaking out on the tube nor has anyone been struck blind by having to view the racy art work" (DigitalJournal.com).

I don't know. I'm pretty well-traveled, but have not been to London. I'm not sure how well the nude artwork would go over in our culture. It wouldn't work in Asia. Certainly the Transport Authority does have people of all ages traveling along it; it's a public service. I'm sure many people rely on the subway as their primary means of transportation. If the artwork were to be in a museum, well, people don't have to go to the museum. Over and over I've stressed that parents need to be held accountable and responsible for their children, and if parents choose to not expose their children to nudity until a certain age or maturity level, I think that's ok. In this case, the parents don't have a choice. Is it London's job to force parents to have certain conversations with their children before the parents and children are ready? It was actually the Academy of Arts that used this portrait for their posters, but looking over Cranach's artwork, most of them do contain a nude Venus, so what choice would they have?

I know intellectual freedom does entail artwork, also. But, at the risk of sounding anti-intellectual freedom, I think the London Transport Authority was right for at least reviewing the poster in further detail, putting it into the mind's eye, and letting the public decide for themselves.