London censors Schiele on the subway, and Vienna responds with provocative intelligence

2018 will mark the centenary of the death of Egon Schiele (Tulln an der Donau, 1890 - Vienna, 1918), one of the greatest exponents of expressionism, and Austrian museums are preparing with exhibitions and events. There will be Schiele exhibitions in Vienna as well: as a result, the city’s tourism board has planned to publicize these events around Europe with ad hoc posters. Some of these posters were also sent to London, and two of them reproduced two of Schiele’s works, a Seated Male Nude (self-portrait) and a Girl with Orange Socks.

The problem is that Schiele depicted the two figures with their genitals prominently displayed, and so all was not well: according to Helena Hartlauer of the Vienna Tourist Board told the New York Times, the London transport company had rejected the images, deeming them too risqué to be shown on the London Underground, and similarly, images with genitals obscured by pixels had been rejected.

Vienna’s response, with all its provocative intelligence, was therefore very simple: the Vienna Tourist Board again sent the same works, but this time censored by large white boxes, imprinted with the words “SORRY, 100 years old but still too daring today” (“We are sorry, they are 100 years old but still too daring”). A refined response against the prudery that had prevented posters with uncensored works from being displayed.

The goal of the Vienna Tourist Board, as director Norbert Kettner told the press, has thus also become to stimulate a public discussion about nudity in art: the campaign has thus been followed by the hashtag #ToArtItsFreedom, which echoes the slogan “To every age its art, to every art its freedom” coined by the Viennese Secessionists in 1897. “We want to show the public,” Kettner concluded, “how far ahead the artists of Vienna were at the time, and also encourage the public to analyze what has or has not changed over time in terms of openness and attitudes in society.”

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Image by Christian Lendl / Vienna Tourist Board

London censors Schiele on the subway, and Vienna responds with provocative intelligence

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