Revealing Too Much

It was just a momentary discomfort really. Not a big deal. In general (actually more than that...overwhelmingly), I respected and admired the professor. It was just this one little moment when he tried to explain why there's not as much lost as a class of 19-year-olds might think there is via certain societal standards of decency. In fact, he explained, there's more lost by having no limits at all.

His example was what got me, though. He was right, of course, that there's something much sexier about a woman revealing a nude thigh from beneath a silk sheet than there is about someone sprawled out like an anatomy diagram. It was simply that extra glimmer in his eye when you could see that he had imagined it. TMI, I thought; Too Much Information. (Ironic for a man whose gallery's current exhibition includes a life-size nude sculpture of him, I'll note...before someone else does...but stick with me here.)

My professor's example is a good benchmark though of where the line is between erotica and pornography, and thinking of this reminds me of a rather uncomfortable exchange I witnessed at an art fair once when an artist whose work was being shown by another gallery introduced herself to two women in our booth and explained where her work was. "Oh, yeah," said the one woman. "We saw your work...the pornography, right?" "It's erotica," shot back the artist, in a tone both weary and a bit too defensive. The two women huffed and left. At an art fair. Clearly the distinction is not as clear to everyone as it might be.

If that's the case, though, you can't blame the French. In an exhibition that's causing quite a stir (and can take up to an hour to get into), the National Library in Paris has opened its vaults and presented a show that, as The New York Times explains, "offers a peek at its secret archive of erotic art, putting on display more than 350 sexually explicit literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, film clips, even calling cards and cardboard pop-ups." Titled "Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret," the exhibition includes quite an array:

The handwritten manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s novel “Les Infortunes de la Vertu” (“The Misfortunes of Virtue”) is under glass here, as are 17th-century French engravings of “erotic postures”; English “flagellation novels” exported to France in the late 19th century; Japanese prints; Man Ray photographs; and a police report from 1900 that compiles the addresses of Paris’s houses of prostitution and what they charged.

Until this exhibition, the only visitors permitted to view this collection were legitimate researchers. For the next three months or so, though, anyone (well, anyone over 16 years old) can take a look.

The items, on display through March 22, are drawn from a permanent collection created in the 1830s when the library isolated works considered “contrary to good morals.” They were put in a locked section with its own card catalog and given the name L’Enfer — hell. Many pieces have been consigned there over the years by the police for safeguarding, perhaps, and posterity.

I have to wonder, though, what happens to the collection now? I'm sure the off-limits L'Enfer section of the library sparked the imagination of many a visitor over the past two centuries or so. Now that it's been "consumed" by the public, though, will it loom as large?

The same question occurred to me when I heard that German researchers claim to have definitively identified the subject of Leonardo's world-famous portrait "Mona Lisa." From National Geographic:

A researcher has uncovered evidence that apparently confirms the identity of the woman behind the Mona Lisa's iconic smile, Germany's University of Heidelberg says.

She is Lisa del Giocondo, wife of Florentine businessman Francesco del Giocondo, according to book-margin notes written by a friend of Leonardo da Vinci while the artist worked on the masterpiece, the school said in a statement Monday.

The discovery by a Heidelberg University library manuscript expert appears to confirm what has long been suspected. [...]
In a copy of the works of Roman philosopher Cicero, a Florentine official and friend of Leonardo's wrote in the margins that da Vinci was working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. The friend, Agostino Vespucci, dated his notes October 1503, also helping to pin down the exact time Leonardo was working on the painting.

"All doubts as to the identity of the Mona Lisa are eliminated (by) one source," the university said.

The discovery was actually made in 2005, but was not widely known until a German radio station last week aired it in a report.

That's sad to me actually, that "all doubts as to the identity of the Mona Lisa are eliminted." The mystery of her identity, I'm sure, is part of the painting's widespread appeal. Sure, it's still an extrordinary work of art, but knowing it's the wife of a Florentine businessman does take just a bit of the glamour out of it for me. By revealing her identity, these researchers have lessened the work's mystique to a large degree. A bit of mystery, as my professor would gleefully explain, goes a long way.