Earlier this week, National Gallery visitor Susan Burns was so enraged by the “evil” and “very homosexual” painting of Paul Gauguin’s partially-nude Two Tahitian Women, that she attacked it with fists and curses, until she was tackled by a social worker from the Bronx. She has now joined the ranks of the famous holy avenger Kathy Folden, whose crowbar-wielding antics at Colorado’s Loveland Museum destroyed Enrique Chagoya’s The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals for its XXX-ish transgendered Jesus. Which reminds us: There are some seriously sexy paintings in art history that must be cleaned up. Obviously, we can’t get them all, but click through our gallery of a few works we’ve put through some much needed censoring, before the next art attack.
Thou shall not show your wiener to God, Adam. Even if Michelangelo’s God is emerging out of an embracing pile of amorous angels, he is not in the mood. And cut the gay stuff!
Ta-da! It’s The Birth of Venus by William Adolphe Bouguereau sans all the “evil” bits. All better?
The most expensive painting in the world now rendered a lot less saucy without Picasso’s musestress nudity.
Somehow, censoring four sets of nipples in this classic Otto Dix leaked-celeb-nude-photo-preview style makes the painting much more obscene.
Beethoven Frieze is one hot Gustav Klimt. It caused plenty of trouble in the 1900s. So hot, in fact, that last year the Vienna Secession Museum exhibiting the painting hosted a BDSM sex club, as tribute.
Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World is not only pornographic, it’s heretical. CENSORED.
Even though Georgia O’Keeffe always denied vaginal likenesses in her flower paintings, we’re not taking any chances.
Louise Bourgeois is not holding a giant phallus. Not allowed.
Here’s Salvador Dalí’s The Great Masturbatorsans fellatio, though we can’t vouch for any other surreal phalli slyly weaseled in here.
Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights triptych’s hell is just too full of coins, birds, and musical instruments emerging from anal cavities.
Bad Francis Bacon. Bad!
This is a highly controversial 1594 painting Gabrielle D’Estrees and Her Sister the Duchess of Villars by an anonymous painter. The Louvre better watch for crusaders against nudity.
Modigliani’s cliche “reclining nude” makes us think that perhaps this censor-quest is futile…
…After all, it goes way back. Venus of Willendorf, you harlot.