In an article I published in the journal Espace art actuel, titled Museums and Circumventing “Pornography” in Their Artworks in June 2023, I explored how modern museums manage and present artworks that could be considered provocative or explicit. This article examines the strategies used by institutions to navigate the tension between artistic expression and public sensitivity.
Article reference:
Jessica Ragazzini, 2023, “Museums and Circumventing “Pornography” in Their Artworks “, Espace art actuel, issue edited by Julie Lavigne, p. 18-28.
Context of the Article
This article examines the new forms of censorship confronting museum institutions in the age of social media and algorithmic regulation. Drawing on controversies surrounding works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Egon Schiele, Pablo Picasso, and Nobuyoshi Araki, I analyze the ways in which artistic nudity is now increasingly assimilated to pornography by digital platforms. The article demonstrates how museums must henceforth contend with automated moderation systems that erase the historical, aesthetic, and cultural contexts of artworks. By examining, in particular, the strategies developed by the museums of Vienna — oscillating between visual self-censorship and the use of platforms such as OnlyFans — the article highlights the contemporary tensions between artistic freedom, digital dissemination, and the control of bodily imagery.
Algorithms and Censorship
Digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok no longer meaningfully distinguish artistic nudity from pornography. Works of art are automatically analyzed by algorithms that isolate certain parts of the body — breasts, genitals, buttocks — without taking into account the aesthetic, historical, or symbolic context of the image. As a result, major works from the history of art may be censored in the same manner as pornographic content. The article therefore emphasizes that the disappearance of context in the automated analysis of images reduces the human body to a problematic form of visual data.
The Museums of Vienna: Exemplary Case Studies
The example of the Vienna museums is particularly compelling because these institutions chose not only to denounce the situation, but also to appropriate and subvert the very mechanisms of censorship themselves. On the one hand, they launched an advertising campaign in which the censored areas of artworks were covered with white bars accompanied by the slogan: “Sorry, 100 years old but still too daring today.” On the other hand, they opened an account on OnlyFans — a platform generally associated with pornography — in order to freely disseminate artworks containing nudity. This strategy reveals the full irony of the contemporary situation, in which museums are now compelled to use digital spaces associated with sexual content in order to exhibit heritage artworks recognized by art history.