(a) Not those ones; (b) right, but I feel it detracts from the whole "all I did was copy a work of art and they made me cover it" vibe, if the original already incorporates some of the covering that was "added"; (c) if, as you say, the fact of it representing Aphrodite constitutes sexual context, then presumably the words "Aphrodite" and "Venus" themselves are equally sexual, and this sentence has strong sexual content. This is not really what I meant, and I doubt that the neighbours would have wanted the first word of "Venus de Milo" to be covered, had the snow sculpture been labelled.
What I'm getting at is that I dispute the notion that something being "high art" (whatever that is) disqualifies it from being sexual. I blame the Victorians. They desperately needed an excuse for having all this porn lying around within their cultural heritage, so they convinced everyone that it was somehow a special case.
Well OK, but regardless of her being the anthropomorphic personification of whatever, a picture of Aphrodite waiting for the bus doesn't have a whole lot more evident sexual context than a picture of anyone else waiting for a bus. This assuming you can even tell it's Aphrodite. I guess in this case it's a sculpture of her winning a beauty pageant (that part, I did have to look up) so it's not entirely simple, and maybe replace "sexual" and "non-sexual" with "more sexual" and "insufficiently sexual" as appropriate.
The Victorians may have had all kinds of hang-ups and excuses, but I'm not trying to invoke an absolute rule that "art" inherently cannot have sexual context. I am saying that you can pretty much only see snow boobs as *automatically* sexual, if you've first convinced yourself that boobs are all about sex. Having the police come along and force the offender to raunch it up a bit speaks for itself. Of course the person who actually complained possibly would have preferred something with a sensible collar.
a picture of Aphrodite waiting for the bus doesn't have a whole lot more evident sexual context than a picture of anyone else waiting for a bus
It would if she was in the nuddy.
I don't think it's coincidence that all the classical-era depictions of Aphrodite / Venus that we know of are wearing no or hardly any clothes, whereas (eg.) those of Athena / Minerva are usually fully clothed.
I'm sure there are some people who can gaze upon the Venus de Milo and happily admire the scupltor's art, entirely ignoring the interpretative level under which it's portraying the ultimate in female sexual desirability: but I can quite understand the New Jersey police not basing their enforcement of front garden decoration regulations on the assumption that such people predominate.
It would if she was in the nuddy.I think no more so than if whoever else it was, was also in the nuddy. For the snow-sculpture, you can only tell it's Aphrodite because it's got no arms, which is not the traditional coded signal of ultimate desirability. If simply recognising Aphrodite is the problem, since the allusion to the Goddess naturally leads to unacceptable thoughts of sex, then I'm not sure how clothing her is supposed to help. Maybe adding arms would have solved the problem, so that wasn't the Venus de Milo, just some naked body-builder
( ... )
Yes, the sculptor's objection does fall down if it's only in her mind that it's "a censored nude", and hence more definitively a sexual object than would be either "a nude", or "someone dressed for the beach". If it actually was recognisably the Venus de Milo once the clothes were on, then their effect might be what she says for more people.
Again I don't know the sculptor's mind, though, whether that's disingenuous or just not seeing things from the POV of the same ignorant passer-by whose POV you see.
Did you check? Actually, the Venus de Milo is a comparatively rare example of a female form sculpture that does have visible abs.
Hang on a second, the actual Venus de Milo is already wearing a sarong.
But not a bikini top.
a nude female form in a non-sexual context
How is Aphrodite non-sexual?!
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What I'm getting at is that I dispute the notion that something being "high art" (whatever that is) disqualifies it from being sexual. I blame the Victorians. They desperately needed an excuse for having all this porn lying around within their cultural heritage, so they convinced everyone that it was somehow a special case.
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The Victorians may have had all kinds of hang-ups and excuses, but I'm not trying to invoke an absolute rule that "art" inherently cannot have sexual context. I am saying that you can pretty much only see snow boobs as *automatically* sexual, if you've first convinced yourself that boobs are all about sex. Having the police come along and force the offender to raunch it up a bit speaks for itself. Of course the person who actually complained possibly would have preferred something with a sensible collar.
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Something like this?
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It would if she was in the nuddy.
I don't think it's coincidence that all the classical-era depictions of Aphrodite / Venus that we know of are wearing no or hardly any clothes, whereas (eg.) those of Athena / Minerva are usually fully clothed.
I'm sure there are some people who can gaze upon the Venus de Milo and happily admire the scupltor's art, entirely ignoring the interpretative level under which it's portraying the ultimate in female sexual desirability: but I can quite understand the New Jersey police not basing their enforcement of front garden decoration regulations on the assumption that such people predominate.
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Again I don't know the sculptor's mind, though, whether that's disingenuous or just not seeing things from the POV of the same ignorant passer-by whose POV you see.
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