Censored: One cheeky Venus

Louis Wise The Guardian February 14, 2008 If you're wondering what the Royal Academy's next show is, you may have to search harder than usual. That's because the RA's forthcoming Cranach exhibition - showcasing the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder, key German Renaissance painter and friend to Martin Luther - has had its posters vetoed by the London Underground authorities. The reason? The painting being used represents Venus, goddess of love. Naked.

And she's not just slightly undressed: strange as this is to say about an early Renaissance painting, Cranach's Venus is "full frontal", happily standing face-on with a wispy see-through veil as her only covering. But that's as much as you can use today's porn-tinged vocabulary to describe what's going on here - since if she looks cheeky, alluring, you'd have to be quite eager to describe her as indecent. Still, it's enough for the Underground authorities to ban her.

Apparently, in order to not offend customers, Tube advertising must not "depict men, women or children in a sexual manner, or display nude or semi-nude figures in an overtly sexual context". I never quite believe it when I hear that we are living in a more retrograde, conservative age, despite various "Nipplegates" suggesting it; but this does seem to take the biscuit. Since when does nudity automatically mean impropriety?

Assuming, of course, that sexual matter is immediately inappropriate; but I can accept that some sexual content can be too much for your average commuter, especially the very young ones. In other words, if this had been one of Egon Schiele's more explicit nudes, or some vintage Robert Mapplethorpe , I could maybe understand it, though it would make me a little sad; but this vetoing of what is a delicate, intelligent, sensuous picture, by no means abrasive, seems a real shame. It's the equivalent of Victorians painting fig leaves over those Adams and Eves they couldn't quite stomach. And if Cranach's nudes didn't prevent his friendship with Martin Luther - hardly a slouch in the morality department, what with the Reformation and all - you wonder if they are really, truly, inappropriate now.

It's also sad because this Venus would be a dose of fresh air for London's travellers. London Underground may like to consider that as its clients enjoy its vetted posters, they will still be bombarded by all kinds of adverts and freesheets promising perfect bodies, or disparaging the imperfect ones, as they go about their day. They'll have probably encountered nudity - or more importantly here, sexual imagery - by the time they reach the bottom of the escalator, let alone get onto the platform.

Cranach's Venus, with her curvy tummy, small breasts, and pinched face, represents a different ideal of beauty to the one we are subjected to today - and if you can't necessarily claim one is more "natural" than the other (painters, after all, have always tended towards some unrealistic kind of female beauty, be it pneumatic or not), it's nice to get a different perspective. I have no doubt that a little bit of a frisson was at the back of the RA's mind when they chose this picture for the poster - which museum can afford to ignore sex appeal these days? - but really, in what kind of a society does a frisson require censorship?