Arts & Entertainment

Rubens, Schiele nudes take to OnlyFans in censorship protest

Vienna, Oct 21 (EFE).- Museums in Vienna have started their very own page on the adult platform OnlyFans to protest censorship algorithms on social media sites like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, which took down posts featuring nude masterpieces flagged as ‘pornographic’ content.

The initiative was launched by the tourist board of the Austrian capital.

The museums involved in the ‘Vienna strips on OnlyFans’ campaign include the Museum of Natural History, Leopold and Albertina, which are now seeking new platforms to promote their exhibitions.

The social platforms went so far to suspend accounts when in July this year, the Albertina’s Museum TikTok account was blocked for showing a work by Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki that depicted a female breast.

In 2018, a post of the Venus of Willendorf, a 25,000 year old Paleolithic nude sculpture, was taken down on the Natural History Museum’s Facebook account after being deemed pornographic.

A year later, a painting by Peter Paul Rubens was taken down from Instagram for not complying with the platform’s community standards.

Today, masterpieces by Rubens, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser and Amedeo Modigliani have moved to OnlyFans, where viewers can view the artworks in complete freedom.

“For years, we have been observing the worrying trend of artistic publications with nudity being blocked or removed from social networks. OnlyFans seemed like the perfect channel to highlight this problem,” director of the Vienna tourism board, Norbert Kettner, tells Efe.

‘Vienna strips on OnlyFans’ is a provocative campaign that hopes to raise awareness on the issue of online censorship in the arts.

As part of the campaign, it covered the breasts and genitals depicted in famous masterpieces with a white strip reading: “Sorry, 100 years old but still too daring for today.”

Related Articles

Back to top button