Sexuality in the Arts

A considerate man from Instanbul wrote the following note to me on my flickr account:

Subject line:  Ridiculous! Isn’t it?

(He gave me the link to the below image that he posted on his flickr page)

I found the link sexualityinart.wordpress.com in your profile and just being curious clicked the link.

What I see was this censor screen What an incredible system we have!

By the way, the site is very interesting and has a valuable work.

Regards.

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Here is the image he mentioned.  Click on it if you wish to read it more clearly.  It references an apparent civil court decision:

He also took the step of adding a thoughtful note to the above image on flickr that read:

“The site is prevented to reach by TTNET - Turkish internet service provider.  See it and decide yourself if you can find anything similar to millions of adult sites in the net.  Users who can’t see the site may use www.w3privacy.com/ to open the site. ”

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Part of me is tempted to find some humor in this, but I’ll restain myself from focusing too much on witticisms around “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “I guess that’s nobody’s business but the Turks.”

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I wrote back to him, saying:

Thank you Mr. (withholding his name to protect him because he lives in Istanbul, Turkey),

Warm regards to you.  This is the first instance of censorship I have seen for my blog.  I really appreciate you bringing this to my attention.  It is good to be reminded of the cultural and religious forces still working to limit the flow of information in our modern world. . .

Best wishes and respect to you and yours.

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In response to this censorship, I’ll start by quoting lyrics from

Jewel’s song “Hands:”

“I won’t be made useless
Won’t be idle with despair
I’ll gather myself around my faith
For light is the darkness most feared

My hands are small I know
But they’re not yours
They are my own
But they’re not yours
They are my own
And I am never broken”

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Then I’ll continue doing what I do, sharing representative arts I can find related to the issues of debate. 

More specifically, some excellent examples of

Turkish Sexuality in Art:

RUMI

Any discussion of Sexuality in Art in Turkey should include a volume or two on Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi).  I cannot recommend his intellect highly enough.  It is not that I agree or condone everything he said.  Rather, I admire his brilliance and the power of his independent reasoning.  I highly recommend considering his ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi

http://www.rumi.net/rumi_by_shiva.htm

http://www.indranet.com/potpourri/poetry/rumi/rumi.html

NPR and PBS have done several recent segments on Rumi’s artworks.

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Turkish Arts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_culture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_literature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turkish_painters

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Pera Museum in Instanbul, Turkey - http://www.pm.org.tr/index_en.html 

Istanbul Modern Art Museum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Modern

Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimar_Sinan_University

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Turkey and its Influence on European Painters:

“The Turkish Bath”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Auguste_Dominique_Ingres

The Valpincon Bather by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1808 (140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 146 x 97.5 cm (57 1/2 x 41 1/8 in); Musee du Louvre, Paris  

The Turkish Bath by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1862; Oil on canvas on wood, Diameter 108 cm (42 1/2″); Musee du Louvre, Paris

Related artworks, previously featured on this blog:

Pierre-Auguste Renoir:

Paul Gauguin:

Paul Cézanne:

John Singer Sargent:

Edgar Degas:

Georges-Pierre Seurat:

Pablo Picasso:

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The Odalisque Paintings:

An odalisque (Turkish: Odalık ) was a virgin female slave who could rise in status to be a concubine or a wife in Ottoman Seraglios.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odalisque

La Grand Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique, Musee du Louvre.  

Odalisque with a Slave by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1840; Oil on canvas mounted on panel, 29 3/8 x 39 3/8 in; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Odalisque by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, US. 

http://www.artic.edu/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Joseph_Lefebvre

Related artworks, previously featured on this blog:

Edward Manet:

Paul Gauguin:

Frédéric Bazille:

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“The Book of Handsome Ones” 18th Century homoerotica by Fazyl bin Tahir Enderuni:

© All rights reserved by the respective artists.

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The images above are images I found in a couple hours of searching.  Turkey must have an unbelievably amazing and diverse history of Sexuality in Art.   I’m inserting a couple sarcastic comments here (to relieve some aggravation):  Thank goodness modern Turkish corporations and politicians are censoring that history from their citizens.  One small step for TTNET.  One giant leap backward for Turkey.

Why did I respond this way?  Why share beautiful sexual Turkey-related and Turkey-inspired imagery and ideas?  It is because I don’t believe in hate.  I don’t believe anger is a good method.  When people try to censor or silence art, I respond by sharing and publishing information . . . a.k.a. love. 

That is my modus operandi.