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What does this "liberal" family have to do with the OP? These children saw postcards of classic works of art in art class. One boy goes home and tells mom he saw female nipples and that the art teacher says nude women are often depicted in fine art. Mom goes ballistic, teacher gets fired. Meanwhile your relative is a big bad "liberal" for taking her child to see nudity. I don't see the connection.
You don't get the connection because you obviously skimmed through this thread without reading it. Go back, read the thread, and you'll understand why I brought this up. I'm not going to waste time recapping the discussion to help you understand when you could just read it yourself.
Yet Utah the state with so much polygamy it is offended at the thought of seeing art.
Plus the Mormons especially, should be able to recognize this crazy censorship is nothing but a tool of satan, trying to deceive people into thinking the human body is dirty and nasty, needs to be covered up, etc.
As a teacher, I would not choose either of those paintings for a discussion on color. They just seem like strange choices. There are so many other paintings to choose from that would have been a better fit for a lesson on color. It just sounds like the teacher was being lazy and didn't care to properly prepare for that days lesson.
We don't have the whole story, maybe not being prepared was an ongoing issue, or maybe there had been other issues with this teacher.
I agree. There is something up with the teacher.
I'm a former art student. In a class about art, you'd think a teacher would choose artwork by the most famous artists, people like Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh etc. Modigliani and Frances Boucher are not even close to being famous "classic" painters, and these paintings aren't even close to being famous, either. So yes, choices are indeed very strange. The fact that he chose these two obscure works by two not-so-famous painters are very suspicious. Out of the hundreds of legendary painters (Renoir, Carravaggio, Vermeer, Goya, Degas, Lautrec, etc.) those were the two he picked for classic art?
To make matters worse, these aren't just "art"; they're erotic art. There are lot of poseurs who are shooting off at the mouth about "classic art" as if erotica and classic art aren't one in the same. But there are classic artworks that were definitely meant to be erotic but were "disguised" by being about subject matter that the elites thought were tasteful. For example, it was totally okay to paint naked little boys in erotic poses as long as they were "cherubs/angels" or have naked women clearly in an orgasmic state if they were Greek or Roman goddesses playing out a myth.
Frances Boucher specialized in this type of "innocent erotica." Here is a page that shows his works, but be warned, they are very NSFW!
It was probably this artist more than anything else that caused the uproar. If the kids introduced to Frances Boucher told their parents and the parents looked him up and saw his "repertoire", I can see the problem. Or maybe he showed a few more of Boucher's work that the article isn't mentioning or the teacher is downplaying. The article doesn't say that the Modigliani and Boucher painting were the only ones shown in class. There were other paintings shown as well.
Last edited by EastFlatbush; 01-01-2018 at 11:01 AM..
Plus the Mormons especially, should be able to recognize this crazy censorship is nothing but a tool of satan, trying to deceive people into thinking the human body is dirty and nasty, needs to be covered up, etc.
Just curious...do you think this painting, painted by Frances Boucher, is tasteful art and that anyone who thinks it's pornographic is a prude who thinks that the human body is dirty, nasty and needs to be covered up? What do you think about it? You and everyone else here seem to be so determined to refuse to believe there can be no such thing as erotic or pornographic art; according to you all if people are anyone sees any artwork as such, it's just Mormons or prudes overreacting.
Just curious...do you think this painting, painted by Frances Boucher, is tasteful art and that anyone who thinks it's pornographic is a prude who thinks that the human body is dirty, nasty and needs to be covered up? What do you think about it? You and everyone else here seem to be so determined to refuse to believe there can be no such thing as erotic or pornographic art; according to you all if people are anyone sees any artwork as such, it's just Mormons or prudes overreacting.
But that painting wasn't shown to the children. So why even drag it into this?
The paintings they saw were part of an educational set that was in the library. You are acting like he specifically chose those painting BECAUSE of their content. That hardly seems to be the case. Maybe he didn't give enough thought to how kids would react to simple nudity, but this isn't some guy who went out looking for erotica to bring in from an outside source.
What I think about your chosen painting is that Leda and the swan is a bit of erotic Greek myth being brought to life through a painting. Why wouldn't the ancients have a version of pornography? Erotica has been around as long as people have.
It doesn't mean the particular images in the school set are erotic.
But that painting wasn't shown to the children. So why even drag it into this?
Why drag that into this?
Two reasons:
The teacher chose work by an artist who was known for making erotic art. The teacher told the students to tell their parents about Boucher's work and the other works they had seen. If the parents looked that artist up and saw all his other stuff, that could've been the basis for the reaction.
Second, I didn't like the smug, sanctimonious attitudes of some of the posters here making the implication that nudity in classic art had nothing to do with sex and that anyone who thinks otherwise is just being a lame prude or a Mormon or whatever. If any of these people knew anything about classic art, they would know that much of it was, in fact, sexually charged in nature. It was just, like I said, disguised or made in a way that was considered tasteful (no pubic hair or labia, hand or other things "conveniently" covering naughty bits, etc.).
Quote:
The paintings they saw were part of an educational set that was in the library. You are acting like he specifically chose those painting BECAUSE of their content. That hardly seems to be the case. Maybe he didn't give enough thought to how kids would react to simple nudity, but this isn't some guy who went out looking for erotica to bring in from an outside source.
Yeah, I am acting as if he chose those paintings because of their content. Like I said before, I'm a former art student. It does not make sense whatsoever that in an "educational set" about classic art, there wouldn't have been other more famous artists and paintings in it unless that "educational set" consisted of paintings in the exact vein as these Modigliani and Boucher works, and unless that "educational set" was based around the female nude or erotic art.
But let's say he chose those paintings by accident. It just shows lack of poor judgment, anyway. Showing that Boucher work was as showing Robert Mapplethorpe's flowers and not expecting either the kids or their parents to look him up and discover his more racy photos.
Last edited by EastFlatbush; 01-01-2018 at 12:37 PM..
Yes, it was inappropriate for that age group. I think we need to know more about this teacher and I think there's more to the story.
I've studied art too and we saw nude pictures probably in late high school and definitely in college and grad school. At age 11, that kind of art would have been wasted on us because we were too immature. We would have giggled and snickered and the lesson on color would have been lost. Probably poor teaching--but if this is the one and only thing the guy did, I don't think he should have been fired over it.
The teacher chose work by an artist who was known for making erotic art. The teacher told the students to tell their parents about Boucher's work and the other works they had seen. If the parents looked that artist up and saw all his other stuff, that could've been the basis for the reaction.
Second, I didn't like the smug, sanctimonious attitudes of some of the posters here making the implication that nudity in classic art had nothing to do with sex and that anyone who thinks otherwise is just being a lame prude or a Mormon or whatever. If any of these people knew anything about classic art, they would know that much of it was, in fact, sexually charged in nature. It was just, like I said, disguised or made in a way that was considered tasteful (no pubic hair or labia, hand or other things "conveniently" covering naughty bits, etc.).
Yeah, I am acting as if he chose those paintings because of their content. Like I said before, I'm a former art student. It does not make sense whatsoever that in an "educational set" about classic art, there wouldn't have been other more famous artists and paintings in it unless that "educational set" consisted of paintings in the exact vein as these Modigliani and Boucher works, and unless that "educational set" was based around the female nude or erotic art.
But let's say he chose those paintings by accident. It just shows lack of poor judgment, anyway. Showing that Boucher work was as showing Robert Mapplethorpe's flowers and not expecting either the kids or their parents to look him up and discover his more racy photos.
My take away from the article is that he used the entire set, not picking and choosing pictures to hand out. I don't see the two offending pictures as overly erotic, maybe a little questionable simply because children at that age are often very body conscious and easily stimulated or embarrassed by sexuality in any form.
The painting set came from the school library so perhaps the poor judgment was expecting that the school would provide resources that they wouldn't fire him for using?
ETA, your post is full of coulda, woulda, shoulda. Parents and school officials need to stick with the facts of what happened, not what people might think if they looked up other paintings or artists works.
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