https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/sep/20/police-called-to-hay-on-wye-gallery-after-it-puts-painting-of-naked-woman-in-window

[RaspberryParade]

Fgs! Drag acts can be as obscene as possible in front of children and tras get their knobs out on live tv, but godforbid a so obviously non sexualised barely representational painting of a naked woman be in a gallery.
And I thought Hay on Wye was full of Guardian arts luvvies and that Sheelah Nae Gigs would be right up their street.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/sep/20/police-called-to-hay-on-wye-gallery-after-it-puts-painting-of-naked-woman-in-window

The way the woman spoke in the article was awful. Writing off the residents of hay as pearl clutching fuddy duddies.

Are you she?

@RaspberryParade

Cant help feeling that at least some of the pursed lips is outrage that the artist is a young woman,

No, it's 2 reasons, and one is that it is utter shit. Secondly, there is no reason that a painting of this "subject" should be on display on a shop window. (See all the reasons above, I cba to retype them)

One thing is for sure, there isn't much as pretentious as a 19 or 20 year old art student.

I bet she sells that picture for a fortune after all the publicity.

(I mistyped that as 'pubicity' first time round 😃).

Baynham read aloud a statement defending the work: “Most straight women haven’t seen a vulva so I see why they might be scared of it and it is clear to me there must be a lot of straight women in Hay.

Did she actually say that? Fuck me how embarrassing. I thought she came across badly on the BBC article but that quote is hilariously awful. I suppose it matches the quality of the art....

Elaine Miller is a solid gold hero defending women in a merkin.
The crass marketing of this painting and the lack of real concept behind it shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as her.

And I thought all that ‘90s ladette / ‘00s cool girl nonsense was in the past…

This claims to be subverting or reclaiming porn while actually reproducing it completely unchanged. Cue clickbaity formulaic “debates” about pearl clutching and sex positivity.

If this is your feminism, you’re either thick, cynical, or young and naive. Spoiler alert: women tried this before. It failed. Ask anyone who was there. You’re not subverting or reclaiming anything. You’re just reproducing the same old same old.

Also - straight women don’t see vulvas? Who does the artist think does intimate care from infancy to death? Shocking fact: around half of care recipients have vulvas. Of course those entirely unsexual vulvas are not the vulvas the artist has in mind. Because do vulvas even exist if they’re not on young women?

And the painting of the headless figure doesn't show her vulva it shows her pubis.

Maybe it depicts a decapitated terf, that would have been on-message a few months ago.

I can’t not see a face in the torso.
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I'm very confused as why I should be scared of vulvas simply because I am a straight woman who admittedly rarely sees them. It seems as though most that are on display are by manipulative men for men so no, I want no part of that.

I don't see how a standard pornographic pose painting in a shop window is doing anything other than increasing the in-your-face sexualisation of society to the detriment of women.

So sick of this pretend reclaiming sexuality. Perfectly fine in a gallery.

Thanks v much for this post, @drhf . It articulates so well what I always want to be able to say about "sex positivity", ie that sex positivity is performed again and again by young women in every generation and our male-led society always shapes it into the same thing: it always comes down to the same ethos -- that women should celebrate their sexual autonomy on terms that just happen to suit the shape of men's sexuality.

In the sixties and seventies they called it "the permissive society" and expected women to be on tap for men's needs; in the nineties (as you say in your post) it was the "cool girl" ethic. It always amounted to the same demand: women, love sex, but don't expect the space and the toleration of difference that you need in order to enjoy it on the terms of a female-led agenda. Same old fucking same old.

In between the peaks of permissive society, cool girl and sex positivity, there have been some periods where cool girl values are critiqued a bit more by feminism and the critique gains a bit more traction, but even then feminists are permanently fighting a rearguard action against been slandered (absurdly) as anti-sex.

If this is double standards as RaspberryParade suggests, I am breathless with anticipation to see the Mumsnet feminist threads where full frontal naked men (either real or painted/sculpted images) are lauded for appearing in public / tv / shop windows.

Bound to be loads.... right ?

Oh for goodness sake…

No problem seeing all sorts of incredibly sexualised pornified stuff on channel four, on strictly, on every reality tv show, or objectified nudes by creeps like Freud

i do have a problem with this

To remind you a bloke exposed his actual dick on tv, and channel four are about to put on a show where virgins have sex on live tv

i do have a problem with this

Cant help feeling that at least some of the pursed lips is outrage that the artist is a young woman

i have no idea how old she is

i don’t have a problem with it as a piece of ‘art’ displayed in a gallery for sale or just for a show….i do have a problem with it in a shop window

I also have a problem with this painting being displayed in a shop window, it's vile and I'd hate to have been walking past that shop window if a man was standing there staring at it. I'd feel intimidated, scared too if the man was of a nature to say something to me about it. And it's called 'Party Time', yeah right, like you do.

As an aside, this painting reminds me of something I saw here on this forum a while ago. It was a very similar pose of a woman wearing red boots. Someone had thought it a good idea to adorn entrance gates to a park (I'm not sure where the park was but am pretty sure there was a children's play area within the park) with the woman's leg's spread across the two opening gates. So, as you walked through, the legs parted.

Women's bodies are not vile, but this type of depiction and presentation in a shop window is vile.

"Most straight women haven't seen a vulva and are scared"

1. fuck off

2. Do they think we don't own a mirror? Do they think we don't have a good idea of what our own must look like from having wiped and washed it every day, let alone found pleasure in it, alone and with our oh-so-unfashionable male sexual companions??

3. If the vulva is as badly depicted as the rest of the woman, it's hardly educational, is it. I'd get a fright if I thought my body was as oddly proportioned as the painting, too.

If that's meant to be a vulva, then I do wonder what the hell I've got between MY legs! <gets mirror>

I like art and I enjoy art when it's a bit provocative, as long as it has an inherent value aside from it being intended to cause outrage/offence/pearl clutching. This piece is pretty shite and mediocre IMO, plus the idea that it offends or scares 'straight women' because there's a visible vulva (WHAT vulva?? I can't see one, just an inverted triangle sort of hanging down, and some pink wool which I assume is ... pubes??) is just daft and insults the intelligence. Rather pathetic attention-grabbing.

So clearly a ‘wow I’m so edgy and outre’ artiste trying to drum up business. Probably loving that the police were called. Oblivious to their contribution to further objectifying and degrading women. Probably thinks they’re a feminist.

It's a sexualised image of a woman with her legs wide. And it's not like sheela-na-gigs in 12th century churches, which are not sexualised in the same way this image is - cowboy boots are a 'turn on' and linked to various kinks. This appears to be a female body that's available. I understand, I think, the point the artist is making - that women are made voiceless by pornography - but it is still an inappropriate image in that place and I would find it offensive in a window in a shopping precinct. I would find in not offensive in a art gallery I had chosen to enter. It's not an appropriate image for a high street window. Needs removing.

Paintings by the talent-free who identify as artists are ten a penny and have been for a very long time. This is just another misogynistic, porn-saturated hack's attempt to get attention. As for her "het women don't see vulvas" - child, I saw mine decades before you even emerged from your mother's, and I'm hardly unusual.

Yes the media are good at switching back and forth depending on the type of shit stirring material they’re presenting

As for her "het women don't see vulvas" - child, I saw mine decades before you even emerged from your mother's, and I'm hardly unusual.

Agree completely. And also, there have been other artworks about seeing one another's vulvas that are soooo much richer, more, though-provoking, more human. I'm thinking in particular of a wonderful photographic project that I'm sure I saw in the media a few years ago (unless I dreamt it - which would be a weird and wonderful dream).

It was just loads and loads of photos of individual women's vulvas (and the surrounding pubic zone -- for want of a better term) arranged alongside one another. It was beautiful to see how different they were from one another and yet so powerfully the same. So rich. Makes a mockery of that particular justification of the daub in the shop window,

Do you remember 'My beautiful cervix' which was similar?

Wow, just had a google, Sethera. Really interesting, thank you. Much more medical (and therefore challenging) than the artsy photos I was thinking of, but still beautifully informative and alive.

It's a terrible painting in an inappropriate place and the "artist" is being very clever getting all this free publicity for her mediocre talent.
Subject matter aside, it's awful. There's no depth, no meaning, just a bit of salacious nudity to get the £££££ rolling in.
Untalented artists HAVE to be talented at marketing. I'd give her an A for marketing, and D for the actual painting. It'll make a nice firelighter.

Her marketing so far has been lousy if the best she can come up with is women never seeing their own body parts and the objection to the placement of the painting being fear of a little black triangle.

But it she or a publicist has read this thread, she might come up with something better about headless and silenced, displayed like a product. Better not to try the Sheela na gig comparison, its too easy to point out the flaws in the analogy.