![]() ![]() At least I didn't attempt to totter around Florence in those killer heels that Debrant mentions - someone else in Arts must have beaten me too them when the kit was being handed out. I'm sorry that Debrant found the programme banal and vulgar: I must say I share the view of other contributors here who thought we got the tone about right - I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I?! But the truth is that we wanted to make a watchable and (with luck) entertaining film without indulging in double entendre and innuendo. True?Īs the presenter of the 'Fig Leaf' programme, I'm grateful to the contributors to this forum who went to the trouble of watching the film and voicing their thoughts. One question, though - whether it's from my early visits to the British Museum, or whether it dates from the days I had Greek art history lessons there, i can't recall - but I've always believed there was a room in the British Museum which contains the willies (privy members, to you, debrant) of ancient figures, placed there during the Victorian era to spare the blushes of the lady visitors. I have noticed that there is, sometimes, occasional dumbing-down, but this programme wasn't guilty of it. I didn't see the Anglo-Saxon programme to which you refer, so I can't comment. The entire discussion about society and allowing representation of the male (and female) genitalia was amusing, educational and enjoyable. (I've had as my pc and phone wallpaper for some time now - and was feeling rather smug about my taste in statuary.) There's absolutely nothing - repeat nothing vulgar or banal about it. (My one and only nit-pick was the equation of 'priapic' with 'phallic' - the former expressing an innate enthusiasm not necessarily carried in the latter.)Īnd I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion of Bernini, and it was a pleasure to hear the curator of the Galleria Borghese. So as well as being entertaining, it was certainly educational. I studied Classics at college, and yet I didn't know the reasons for the representation of the phallus on ancient statues was to reflect the virtuosity of reasonable restraint (a value reflected in the laws, aimed at protecting the solidity of the household unit). ![]() Maybe the presentation was a little too light-hearted at times for your taste, but it was neither too earnest nor too 'carry on'. I can only assume it was the subject matter to which you refer as being banal or vulgar so perhaps you shouldn't have watched it. It was fairly clear what the programme here was going to be about. Stephen Smith is the presenter of Fig Leaf: The Biggest Cover-Up In History.įig Leaf: The Biggest Cover-Up In History is on BBC Four at 9pm on Thursday, 10 February, and is part of Focus On Sculpture, a season of programmes on BBC Four.Ĭomments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.ĭebrant, if you go to see a movie called Snakes on a 'Plane, there's a good chance you'll see some snakes and a fair chance they'll be on a 'plane. And it's not stretching things too far to say that it can still be a snug fit for 21st century sculpture. Nature's jockstrap remains an impressively elastic device, two millennia after it was first twanged into place. If only he'd clothed him in a fig leaf instead, I couldn't help thinking. Yes, contemporary artists can - and do - present sculptures of naked figures in exhibitions now if they wish.īut, as Sandy told me, he could face prosecution if he left Priapus as he'd intended, fully endowed and ready for action. That lies 350 miles away, in a drawer in Paisley, where it was reluctantly stashed by its creator, the sculptor Sandy Stoddart.Īs Sandy showed me around his studio, the manhood of Priapus was the elephant in the room, if that's the phrase I want. ![]() In a square elsewhere in the capital, a statue of Priapus, the god of fertility, is complete in every detail - apart from the all-important one of his defining feature. Not for the royal person herself, you understand, but to shield her eyes from the full glory of a replica of Michelangelo's David, which she used to inspect in the galleries above. In a little-visited vault under the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I gazed agog at an outsize fig leaf made especially for the monarch. In fact, historians now think she was much more amused in that department than we give her credit for. You might imagine that Queen Victoria took a similar line on the naked form. On the carved façade of Orvieto Cathedral, for example, the lost and the damned writhe in hell, without so much as a stitch on. The only time the Church encouraged bare flesh was to reinforce the eternal message that the wages of sin are death. In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. ![]()
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