Alex Taylor Tuesday brings one Anthony Comstock back to light. You probably haven’t heard of this gent or the delightful derision bearing his name.
Published in the Gainesville Times, October 25, 1988, Taylor’s “Nude Painting” feels harmless until you dive a little deeper into the deathly fallout of priggish policies.
A transcript and additional commentary follow the column.
TRANSCRIPT:
Nude painting: The beginning of censorship
A few weeks ago, the Quinlan Art Center held an opening of private art collections for a Hometown Exhibit. One of the more interesting oils was The Nude Lady in the Red Hat . . . unusual for Gainesville, otherwise a valuable contribution to the world of art.
But did you know that at one time, Americans could not even display works of art similar to The Nude? Censorship was never more evident than the late 1800s when Anthony Comstock, then his crusade against what he thought was vice.
Beginning in 1873, Comstock established the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and worked tirelessly until his death 42 years later. In that year, 1915, Congress passed the Comstock Act, which banned obscene material from the mails.
Comstock probably meant well, but allowed his fanatical puritanism to go awry. Yet, numerous writers and artists became famous, simply because they were targets of Comstock. George Bernard Shaw’s play, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” and Paul Chabas’s painting “September Morn,” all became famous because Comstock. Shaw even invented the word Comstockery, which is defined in the American College Dictionary as overzealous censorship of the fine arts and literature, often mistaking outspokenly honest works for salacious productions. As a result of Comstock’s activities, publishers stripped their books of any explicit language. For example, “pregnant” became “enceinte.”
Perhaps the most unusual event in Comstock’s crusade was his involvement in the September Morn incident. Not a very notable work of art, September Morn was a lithograph turned over to a brewer’s calendar. The picture of a naked girl taking a bath in a pond was not very popular, so publicist Harry Reichenbach devised a scheme that would make September Morn a national issue.
Reichenbach rounded up several boys and gave them a quarter to stand in front of the art store and gape at the picture. He then called Comstock and complained that several little boys were in front of a store looking at a naked woman. When Comstock arrived and began screaming for removal of the picture, a large crowd gathered. The resulting publicity was a success for Reichenbach for more than seven million copies sold.
The beginning of the end for Anthony Comstock came in early September, 1915. Passing a department store window, he arrested several employees for putting clothes on bare wax models in full view of passersby. A San Francisco judge, listening to the charges, dismissed the case, stating, “Mr. Comstock, I think you’re nuts!” Anthony Comstock went home to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he died two weeks later on Sept. 21, 1915. His epitaph read, “In memory of a fearless witness.”
I suppose the commercial is right. We have come a long way.
Alex Taylor’s column on history and criminology appears in The Times on Tuesdays.
————————-
Nude storefront mannequins ring a bell.
I’m looking at you, Christopher’s on the Square!
(That’s the Gainesville, GA Square)
Like this:
Like Loading...
