| Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Leena McCall |
| Year | 2012 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing is an oil on canvas painting made in 2012 by the British visual artist Leena McCall, portraying her friend Ruby May. [1]
| Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Artist | Leena McCall |
| Year | 2012 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing is an oil on canvas painting made in 2012 by the British visual artist Leena McCall, portraying her friend Ruby May. [1]
The painting depicts May, a tattooed black-haired woman, smoking a pipe. May is coolly scrutinizing the viewer, her other hand on her hip, with her trousers unbuttoned such that her pubic hair is visible. McCall's intention in painting May was to explore "how women choose to express their sexual identity beyond the male gaze". [2]
The painting received public attention after the Mall Galleries removed it from the Society of Women Artists's annual exhibition in 2014, after which it was replaced with another nude portrait. According to a statement by the Galleries, this was done because of "a number of complaints regarding the depiction of the subject and taking account of its location en route for children to our learning centre", and, according to McCall, because the painting had been deemed "disgusting" and "pornographic". Writing in The Guardian , Rowan Pelling interpreted this reaction as implying that "the minute a woman is alive and free to move, an active agent of her own sexuality, she is a menace to society", whereas Mall Galleries viewers appeared to feel more comfortable with a nude woman who is a "more passive and unthreatening recipient of the wandering viewer's gaze". [3] In response to the removal of the work, McCall started a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #eroticcensorship. [1]
Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Pubic hair is terminal body hair that is found in the genital area of adolescent and adult humans. The hair is located on and around the sex organs and sometimes at the top of the inside of the thighs. In the pubic region around the pubis bone and the mons pubis that covers it, it is known as a pubic patch. Pubic hair is also found on the scrotum and base of the penile shaft in males and on the vulva in females.
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Depictions of nudity include all of the representations or portrayals of the unclothed human body in visual media. In a picture-making civilization, pictorial conventions continually reaffirm what is natural in human appearance, which is part of socialization. In Western societies, the contexts for depictions of nudity include information, art and pornography. Information includes both science and education. Any ambiguous image not easily fitting into one of these categories may be misinterpreted, leading to disputes. The most contentious disputes are between fine art and erotic images, which define the legal distinction of which images are permitted or prohibited.
The Federation of British Artists (FBA) consists of nine art societies, and is based at Mall Galleries in London where the societies' Annual Exhibitions are held. The societies represent living artists working in the United Kingdom who create contemporary figurative art. Mall Galleries aim to 'promote, inspire and educate audiences about the visual arts.'
Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Harlem Renaissance, and selected works by the Afro-British painter Chris Ofili. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art, and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.
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