Is she right or is she wrong

Witzend I think it's the Courbet painting you are talking about. It's a wonderfully detailed painting, but you probably wouldn't show it to many people.

Its not to my personal taste (would not have it on my wall) but I dont have any intrinsic objection to it in a shop window.

I'm still visualising male and female buses which Grandmabatty's post put in my head 😂🤣

Grammaretto, so sorry 😂

L’Origine du Monde by Gustav Courbet is in the Musée d’Orsay. Seen by many people every day.

I've enjoyed this thread, it's so good to have been able to share different opinions without being targeted personally, as often happens on political discussions. I'm spending next weekend with someone I call "my arty farty friend" she's opened my eyes to so many cultural things over the past 35 years. We have completely different taste in artistic styles but we can spend very happy times together at galleries and exhibitions disagreeing over art.

For those who are unfamiliar with Olympia, or the Venus of Urbino.
www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/later-europe-and-americas/modernity-ap/v/manet-olympia-1863-exhibited-1865
I tried to find a picture of the other painting I mentioned in my post at Sat 21-Sep-24 22:20:22, but there don't seem to be any images of it on the internet - probably censored for being an unattractive model, though if you search for images of women reclining on sofas you will find hundreds of portraits of pretty girls langorously draped on velvet chaise-longues ready to be ogled.
It didn't help my search that I vividly remember the painting, but have forgotten the artists's name.

Grammaretto

I'm still visualising male and female buses which Grandmabatty's post put in my head 😂🤣

So that is how the bus companies source their replacements!

NotSpaghetti

Allira are you a cross-stitch artist?

😂
Am sure that Allira was referring to periods not embroidery.

Nothing divides like Art or Politics or Religion. I think there are a few things going on here, is it good art or bad art, should that painting be in a gallery window and is a faceless body with vulva on display really art or just done for shock value?

Anyone here from Hebden Bridge?😄

Bizarre - tried to follow this lead Elegran by a search "Women artists react to Venus of Urbino"

and hit a "safe search" censor wall.

The male gaze (what is beauty, what is sexually attractive, associations of nudity with "not respectable") had dominated the portrayal of nudity or part nude women for centuries until it started being challenged by women artists in such variety.

Many very quiet interventions - for example there is a large body of work by women artists portraying older Womens bodies as "beautiful" and real in their own ways.

Now the variety of women putting out there aspects of real bodies.

The shock value is a good question because as has been said above many artists in the past have had their work seen as shocking ie not acceptable, then later it's become popular.

But with work made in the present, we don't know what will survive as being memorable or forgotten.

Very true.

That is often the case when artists try a new approach to a subject or medium which has been used in the same way for a long time.At first it is greeted with shock/horror that they should upset the apple cart with work which goes against what the established have spent a lifetime of work and practice to perfect. The impressionists were a case in point. Artists who had learnt to apply paint carefully and accurately (and the galleries and buyers who paid good money for the results) rejected the looser techniques and accused those who employed them of throwing paint at the viewer. Yet now these works are among the most popular and expensive items to appear at art sales. Some of those who scorned them when they were new must have wished eventually that they had invested before the prices soared! The same is true of other styles which didn't catch on with the critics. Some of them were later accepted into the mainstream once the art world and the buying public got used to them, some were one-off cul-de-sacs which are still hardly ever seen. Which ones last is unpredictable.

It's entirely intended to shock so ignoring it is a far better response. Doesn't look like a great painting in any case.

How about the art o made a thread about a fairly long while ago.
There was I, expecting "the joy of painting" and on comes someone and does a poop on a stage!

A woman sticking her fingers down her throat, and vomiting..
You name it, they did it!

Dynawritecat
intended to shock?
I don't think so.

Maybe for a gynaecology wall.

Whether those viewing art are shocked or not (or claim to be) depends on their individual beliefs and values (and their perceptions of acceptable attitudes in society). The history of art shows that paintings thought shocking at the time became acceptable, even lauded examples of a famous new school as in Impressionism or Fauvism. Shelley's 1810 pamphlet supporting atheism had to be removed from a window display in Oxford as it was regarded as shocking and he was sent down for it. Today it would hardly merit attention.

MissAdventure

How about the art o made a thread about a fairly long while ago.
There was I, expecting "the joy of painting" and on comes someone and does a poop on a stage!

A woman sticking her fingers down her throat, and vomiting..
You name it, they did it!

I'd have walked out. Not my kind of thing, plus anyone else vomiting sends my stomach into convulsions!

It looks pretty tacky and definitely isn't great art, but she says it is "improving her profile as an artist"! I'm perfectly happy with nudes but think this goes a bit far.

Think it's an awful painting I wouldn't be happy if that was myself painting like that. Why not display inside if it was anything but a PR stunt

Actually, since a statue of homo rape and another of a drowning girl floating in a river have been lauded as great art this picture is better criticised as not very well executed.

Me too…