Some Downtown galleries participating in Saturday’s Nude ArtWalk-themed Second Saturday ArtWalk will post a statement issued by the National Center Against Censorship. The New York-based anti-censorship organization caught wind of Lafayette’s censorship kerfuffle, first reported last Friday by this newspaper, in which artist Nicole Touchet was ordered by the company that manages Gordon Square to cover an exhibition of nude portraits at her former gallery.
The NCAC’s recent blog post, “Shameless in Lafayette: Nude ArtWalk!,” is an attaboy to Lafayette’s art community, which banded together in the days after Nipple-gate to show solidarity with a fellow artist. At least seven Downtown galleries will exhibit figurative art including nudes during tomorrow night’s event, and there are rumors that some gallery spaces will have actual nude humans reciting poetry and even creating art on the spot.
From the NCAC’s statement:
It is sad and ironic that in a society where sex is frequently used as a selling point, and where the consumption of pornography involves many millions of Americans, representations of the nude body in art remain subject to complaint and censorship.
... Imagine art history without nudes: we would have to condemn Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Ingres, Courbet, Manet, Rodin, Degas, Renoir, Modigliani and Picasso, to name but a few artists for whom the nude was central. By removing nudes from public view, we remove access to a living language of visual expression and its centuries-old heritage. But more than that, wrapping the human form in shame alienates us from our own bodies.
Read it in full here: