Michelangelo
All of this political correctness is getting out of hand. The National Gallery in Washington cancelled a Chuck Close exhibition because the artist has been accused of sexual misconduct. Seattle University removed Close’s “Self-Portrait 2000” from display citing concerns over “potential student, faculty or staff reaction”. A teacher in Utah was terminated because there were some images of nude works of art in a set of postcards he passed around a classroom (he obtained them from the school’s library). One individual even started a petition to have Balthus’s Thérèse Dreaming removed from the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Svetlana Mintcheva’s recent article in The Guardian also points out that as we travel down this road, there soon will be: No more marveling at Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, his lovely and sensual young models. (The artist’s favorite model is apocryphally known to be “his owne boy or servant thait laid with him” and, to add to his sins, he was also, probably, a murderer.) … No more Picasso, who lived up to his infamous slogan “Women are machines for suffering”; no more of the tortured expressionism of Egon Schiele who was accused of sexually abusing his teen models…
I am now wondering when the Vatican will decide to paint over Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling because of the artist’s sexual preferences? They do say history repeats itself … so, when do you think we will start destroying ‘degenerate art’, or burning books? I hope never!