I'm rarely shocked by art ....

It depends what it is for and where it is exhibited. Lots of paintings are done as a comment on or social protest against what is accepted as a valid depiction of women at the time.

Compare Titian's Venus of Urbino 1538, with Manet's Olympia 1865

In the same pose, one shows a beautiful demure young bride with symbols of love, beauty and fertility (and signs of the wealth of her doubtless much older husband) the other a prostitute, gazing straight into the viewers eyes and challenging any argument about her occupation, with a cat (symbol of female sexuality).

Olympia caused shock and hooror when it was first exhibited, but Manet was showing what he saw as the reality of female sexuality - and how men were prepared to pay for it with flowers from admirers, and implied cash, too. The marriage of Titian's Venus of Urbino was probably based on cash, too, but that was the accepted way at the time. Manet shows without sentimentality how money is at the root of much sexuality.

But both of these show a beautiful woman, and have become ideals for some women to aspire to.

There is another painting in the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art (I can't remember the title or the artist, sorry) which made a strong impression when I saw it during a guided tour. It is of a nude woman reclining on a sofa - same pose as the Manet and the Titian - but she is by no means a beauty. She looks as though she is of very, very low intelligence, and is slack-mouthed and dull-eyed, vacant of face and lumpy of body, lying back in an attitude which is not sensual, just open-legged and ready for exploitation, perhaps even welcoming the violation, but without any expression in her face. This is a transaction. No symbols at all. No luxury.

The tour members were revolted at it, because there was no beauty in it at all, but it was explained that the aim of the artist was to carry the Titian/Manet progression a stage further, to show that the buying of sex was not about buying beauty, but buying the use of a body, and that art which showed women as glamorous sexual objects obscured this and betrayed them by showing them as beautiful people, not as things to be bought and used up.

Further, the guide said that this is not decorative art, to be hung in a living room, but protest art for teaching purposes. The dreadful chairs could be seen as such too.

To be fair to the artist, he claims it was never meant to be turned into a chair.

I don't rate it as a piece of art anyway and different things offend different people ...... but I think my shock and revulsion is more with this silly Russian woman using the chair as a prop in a fashion shoot.

Yes, some people seem to have no idea of the effect their choice of props for the photos will have.

Have just been to a pop art exhibition, one of the artists being Allen Jones whose work the chair was copied from. Seeing the pictures made me think of this thread, so re read the article and there was his name. Was very much part of the Andy Warhol fetishist art movement [and, obviously, frowned on by feminists]. Amazing exhibition, though. Works by Peter Blake [my favourite] Briget Riley, David Hockney, Damien Hirst, Gilbert and George, Testino [the iconic Diana photo] and a few others, inclucing Allen Jones.