art

A few years ago I worked at a small private university where sometimes an art class would put up paintings, drawing, photographs, whatever, in one of the hallways of the arts building. It was a public hallway, outside of the more “formal” art venue on campus. Sometimes there were sheets for comments from passersby. That building happened to lie between one of the parking lots and the rest of campus, so lots of people would go through that hallway on the way to somewhere else. I think that made it a perfect place to hang art. 

It was also the perfect place to cause a little “controversy”. One of the students in some class submitted a full-frontal male nude photograph. Well, .someone saw it and got uncomfortable (I imagine), and wrote a letter to the dean complaining about the pornographic picture.

It wasn’t pornographic. Clearly the purpose of this photo was not to turn anyone on. It was not a sexually explicit photo, just a guy with no clothes on in an unremarkable pose. His penis was not erect; there was no smirk on his face...just a naked guy in a studio somewhere: blank wall behind him. Black-and-white, nice lighting, in focus, nice-looking guy, perfectly normal-looking penis (i.e., not crazy, giant, porn penis). But it was really quite tame, boring even. Not worthy of sparking controversy. Yet, it did. There were a few letters in the school paper; people from off campus, maybe a few alumni, but also folks not directly connected to the school weighing in.

I think the dean asked the art teacher to take down that picture. Of course, that sparked a little more response. But it ended with the teacher taking down the whole group of pictures, and whatever else it was, a few days early. That’s unfortunate.