August is the height of the summer season and there’s nothing better than to fashion something for yourself out of what you may find on your holidays.
If you’re lucky enough and live near the beach or if you're heading to a seaside resort (obviously always check out the rules regarding Covid-19 as travellers may be asked to show their Green/Health Pass to have access to public places in Europe), look for shells on the beach.
Remember to check the local regulations as on some beaches you may not be allowed to collect them, but if you’re allowed to pick shells, well, enjoy finding some great ones to create your own accessories, after all, shells are always in fashion.
I'm mesmerised by the colours and shape of shells and I have a soft spot for shell jewellery, especially if made with large shells and I particularly love scallops, but a few days ago my brother found two small chlamys varia shells with some wonderful mahogany, maroon and burnt orange nuances and I bumped into a cream and pale beige medium-sized cardium.
I turned the former into a pair of earrings, and the latter into a mono earring as I couldn’t find another cardium of the same size and in good conditions. Have fun with your summer craft project whatever it may be!
In yesterday's post we remembered some fun vintage bathing caps, so let's jump in the water today for a brief exploration of the shape of water or of the shapes that water can create.
Nature offers us the most inspiring patterns, designs and structures, many of them forming unexpected geometries. Water to our eyes is a fluid, yet it does have a shape: you may think about the inifinitely different snowflakes, all based on the hexagon, but the reason why we can talk about water and geometry is the structure of its molecule.
Liquid water consists of an interconnected network with water molecules acting as the network's components, connected to one another via hydrogen bonds. The water molecule has a distorted tetrahedral geometry.
Yet we're not here to talk about the geometries of molecules, but at the shapes that water can create: on Monday we looked at Chladni figures and, if you put water under frequencies of sounds and vibrations, you would realise that water creates shapes reminiscent of sacred geometrical patterns.
A while back Linden Gledhill, a Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical biochemist, began experimenting with water and photography (all his experiments suspended between art and science can be admired on his Flickr page; the third and fourth picture in this post are by Gledhill) and started taking pictures of water on a cymascope, a dish of water sitting on a speaker under a microscope.
The vibrations formed patterns on the waves and he focused on capturing the frequencies with a ultra-high-frame-rate camera. The results of his experiments are visually striking and mesmerising with a hallucinatory twist about them and they are also fashionable, as they were reprinted on the garments from Threeasfour's Pre-Fall 2018 collection.
If you think these experiments about the shapes that water can create are too difficult for you, well, create your own shapes with water, like I did underwater a few days ago for another personal project I've been working on. You may not get perfect results, but the fun is guaranteed.
The caps were created by Betty Geib, a Long Island housewife, who originally designed them to amuse her children.
The caps featured indeed funny masklike faces and motifs including a sea serpent, a black cat, and a sunflower, decorating the back of the head and creating a fun effect when you saw a wearer donning one.
Life magazine (20th April 1959 issue) stated indeed about the caps "it may be difficult to tell whether the girls on the beach this summer are coming or going".
The first ones she made for a church bazaar were rather successful, so Geib started producing them under the name Betty Darling.
Probably better for leisure activities around the swimming pool or the beach rather than for vigorously swimming in the sea, the caps still look fun after all these years and could be considered as the antecedents of contemporary kids' fun swimming caps shaped like animals such as cats, bears, fish or sharks.
In yesterday’s post we looked at sports uniforms and the sexualisation of women in sports. Yet, at times, there have been episodes that involved sports apparel, women and racism.
One episode that shed light on inclusivity in sports happened at the beginning of July when the International Swimming Federation (FINA) rejected the use of swimming caps by Soul Cap.
The Black-owned, UK-based company, co-founded by Toks Ahmed and Michael Chapman, specialises in silicone extra-large swimming caps for natural black hair. The caps are ideal for people with afros, weaves, extensions, dreadlocks, thick and curly hair.
The brand also partnered with 24-year-old athlete Alice Dearing, the first Black woman to represent Team GB at the Olympics and co-founder of the Black Swimming Association.
While in yesterday's post we mentioned the athletes from the Norway team who were told that their shorts didn't conform to the rules and were eventually fined for "improper clothing", FINA stated in this case that the caps do not fit "the natural form of the head" (you may have expected a more technical comment, like the caps facilitating swimming, something not even applicable in this case as the caps are larger and may actually put swimmers at a disadvantage).
FINA then added to this already puzzling comment that to their "best knowledge the athletes competing at the international events never used, neither require… caps of such size and configuration". The words to justify their excuse for not allowing the caps opened the proverbial Pandora's box as it became clear that the athletes seen so far by FINA competing at international events were mainly white, that’s why they never needed swimming caps specially designed for afro hair.
The case reshifted the attention of people on social media about the fact that members of the BAME community often decide not to take up swimming as there is a lack of products designed for them. Welcoming such a product at the level of official competitions could instead encourage members of the black and minority ethnic community of all ages to take up swimming which is not just a great sport, but it is first and foremost a lifesaving skill.
Eventually Brent Nowicki, executive director of the International Swimming Federation, apologised, but the ban wasn't lifted. The decision is being reviewed, in the meantime, Nowicki invited Soul Cap to submit again their application in September. Yet the main point of all this debate is not the ban on this product, but the inclusivity and representation behind the product.
But this is not the only time we have seen racism appearing in sports in connection maybe with a garment or accessory: in 2018 the French Open banned Serena Williams' catsuit that made her look like a superhero. Wearing it, she stated, made her feel like "a warrior princess… from Wakanda, maybe," referring to the movie "Black Panther". The catsuit had actually got a medical purpose as Williams had suffered from blood clots in her lungs after giving birth to her daughter and the suit helped the blood circulation going.
Most tennis tournaments have specific dress codes that quite often sound ridiculously dated: Wimbledon even requires players to dress almost entirely in white. The rule states: "White does not include off-white or cream; there should be no solid mass or panel of colouring; a single trim of colour around the neckline and around the cuff of the sleeve is acceptable but must be no wider than 1cm; shoes must be almost entirely white, including the soles; and any undergarments that either are or can be visible during play (including due to perspiration) must also be completely white except for a single trim of colour no wider than 1cm." In Williams' catsuit case, though, you felt that the French Open was almost bothered by the fact that the athlete looked like a fierce and sensual Amazon in her dynamic bodysuit.
But if these stories focus more on sports apparel and racism, there have been incidents that point at double standards. As you may remember, at the 2018 US Open Women's Singles tennis final, Serena Williams had an argument with chair umpire Carlos Ramos.
The umpire penalised Williams for receiving instructions from her coach, a charge of cheating, and complained about that. In the second set, Williams smahed her racket and got a point penalty. Frustrated, Williams accused Ramos of stealing a point from her and the umpire retaliated by deducting a game from the American. Williams was also fined $17,000 over the incident that sparked a debate and a racist cartoon in an Australian newspaper. At the time Williams claimed the umpire's decision were sexist, while her fans wondered if a man in her position (how many times have we seen a male tennis player smashing a racket on the court?) would have received the same penalties.
The same double standard was applied to a more recent incident: African American sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson, an athelete with an explosive power and a totally fierce look who won the 100m final at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 10.86, qualifying for the Tokyo Games, wasn't able to go to the Olympics as she was suspended after testing positive for cannabis during a dope test.
Marijuana is legal in some states in America, including Oregon, where Richardson used it. Richardson accepted responsibility and the story ended there, dividing public opinion and breaking the heart of her fans, while Congresswoman Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez stated on social media that the International Olympic Committee's ban was "an instrument of racist and colonial policy."
But while she was suspended, there was no ban on Alen Hadzic, an alternate on the US fencing team accused of sexual predation and sexual assault by six female fencers. The alleged crime is being investigated, but Hadzic was able to go to Tokyo, even though he was flown apart from his teammates, excluded from the opening ceremony's parade and also put in a different accomodation to keep him separate from the other athletes.
Mind you, there have also been cases in which there was no double standard applied, but racism still triumphed. In 2019, drawing attention to racial injustice, US hammer thrower Gwen Berry raised a fist on the podium when she won gold at the Pan-Am Games towards the end of the national anthem.
Berry violated the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) prohibition on athletes' demonstrations and the Olympic body put her on probation for a year. A white male athlete, fencer Race Imboden, who took a knee on the podium in the same games, incurred in the same fate.
Things may be slowly changing, though, as the USOPC stopped sanctioning athletes for such demonstrations and athletes are now allowed to raise a fist or kneel at the Olympic trials without being punished; besides, they can also wear clothes displaying messages such as "Black Lives Matter".
The road to equality in sports is long, but, luckily, it is possible to meet along it some wonderfully fierce people, especially women, who are fighting racial discrimination and its underlying inequalities. A last honourable mention to complete this post goes to Olympic figure skater Surya Bonaly. Her signature backflips remained illegal and dangerous for the International Skating Union Bonaly, but she entered history for being the only Olympic figure skater to land a backflip on only one blade (in the history of ice skating, only men completed the backflip but all of them landed on both feet). In 1998, fearless Bonaly showed the judges who often claimed her style didn't meet the figure skating criteria, what she could do, making a statement as a fearless athlete and as one of a very few Black women in ice skating in her times.
Stars have always been trendy: if you started doing a research about stars appearing in collections as prints, patterns, embellishments and decorative motifs on clothes and accessories you would end up writing a lengthy tome.
Stars have always been in fashion as they represent a joyful motif, a passion for the universe, the cosmo and astronomy, and they can be used to interpret a moment of heightened glamour, if you think about the star studded ensembles by Adrian donned by Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner as Susan Gallagher, Sandra Kolter and Sheila Reganas, three aspiring showgirls in Ziegfeld Girls (1941), directed by Robert Z. Leonard.
Stars reappeared also on the leotards of the USA women's gymnastics team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games (currently on).
GK Elite, the official apparel sponsor for the U.S. gymnastics teams since 2000, created different leotards for the team's Simone Biles (who exited women's team final today over mental health concern), Jordan Chiles, Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum, Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner.
Two of the leotards featured stars motifs, the lavender one for the Women's Podium Training featured more subtle motifs of stars, and the Swarovski-embellished leoard in classic US patriotic colours - red, white, and blue - for the Women's Qualifications.
A sleeveless version of the leotard is available on the site of the brand: the "Scattered Stars" leotard has got a sustainable twist about it since it is made entirely out of recycled fabric.
Yet this year the focus is not on stars embellishing leotards at the Olympic Games, but on women's uniforms and sexism in sports.
Germany's Women's Gymnastics Team (Sarah Voss, Pauline Schaefer, Elisabeth Seitz and Kim Bui) stood proud at the Olympic Games in their stylish angle-length white, scarlet red and blue bodysuits. The team already opted for the full-body style that makes them look like superheroines for the European Gymnastics Championship in April.
Their protest and decision to wear full-length 3/4 sleeve unitards was a way to highlight sexism in sports and sexualization in gymnastics in particular.
The psychological and physical abuse some artistic and rhythmic gymnasts from different countries went through is well-known, but quite often athletes remained silent about them.
In more recent years things started to change: in 2018, the US gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, convicted of abusing at least 265 gymnasts over several decades, was sentenced to 175 years in prison (this is actually the first edition of the Olympic Games edition since Nassar was condemned...). This year seventeen gymnasts started a legal case against British Gymnastics over alleged physical and psychological abuse.
Full-length bodysuits in this sport are not against official rules, but they aren't seen that often: by wearing them the Germany team highlighted the importance of feeling comfortable in sports and creating an equal and safe environment without feeling objectified.
And while they were praised for setting an example, other women have been penalised for similar uniform-related reasons: Norway's Women's Beach Handball Team opted to wear shorts instead of the required bikini bottoms during a game at the European Beach Handball Championships and they alerted the federation they were going to do so.
Yet, on 20th July the European Handball Federation fined each player 150 euros (the total fine amounted to €1,500) for "improper clothing". According to uniform regulations in the International Handball Federation regulations of the game, women must wear close fit bikini bottoms with a side width of 3.9 inches maximum and a sports bra when playing official games. Men can instead wear shorts that are "not too baggy" and 10 centimeters above the kneecap and a tank top.
The Norwegian Handball Federation stated that it was prepared to cover the fines, but American pop singer Pink offered to pay what she called the "sexist" fine (impossible to disagree with her). In the meantime, the team will continue their fight through the Olympics and they are probably grateful they were fined as this decision by the International Handball Federation attracted the attention towards this case and helped the team spreading the message about this shockingly nonsensical rule, making us all realise the time has come to change it.
Yet, while they were fined for wearing slightly longer shorts rather than bikini bottoms, British Paralympian Olivia Breen, who will represent national team in the Tokyo Paralympic Games, experienced the opposite. Last week she was told indeed that her Adidas running briefs were "too short and inappropriate" by a sporting official at the English Championships. The same official also invited her to consider buying a pair of shorts. Breen hopes that she can continue wearing the briefs - that are actually less revealing than the bikini bottoms used in beach handball - when competing at the Tokyo Paralympics starting on August 24.
These episodes prompt you to ask yourself a lot of questions: would male athletes for example be subjected to such careful and cruel scrutiny? Would they be told their shorts are too short or too long? Probably not. Sexualizing female athletes' bodies by imposing on them certain rules on sport uniforms contributes to kill body confidence, body positivity and self-esteem in our sports icons, but also in ordinary women (what if a young girl wants to start playing a sport such as beach handball, but she doesn't feel confident enough in bikini bottoms? should she just give up without even trying?) and makes you sadly realise that in our century and times women are still judged by their bodies, their shapes and attributes rather than their skills, talents, strength and intelligence.
In yesterday’s post we mentioned the waves of the sea crashing, but, for today, let's move onto a completely different type of waves - the wave vibrations as those studied by German physicist, musician and musical instrument maker Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756 - 1827).
Unanimously considered as the father of acoustics, he is known for his researches on vibrating plates, but also his studies about meteorites.
Chladni was interested in science, but his father was a lawyer and wanted his son to continue his career. Chladni therefore obtained a law degree from the University of Leipzig in 1782, but, after his father died, he resumed his studies in physics.
In the late 1700s he started his first experiments with acoustics and came up with a technique to show the different modes of vibration on a rigid surface to demonstrate and visualise the patterns of standing wave vibrations.
Chladni sprinkled fine sand on a metal plate and, drawing a violin bow along the edges, he produced vibrations. The sand reacted, settling at nodal points (also known as "nodes"), that is areas of zero movement, producing in this way intricately complex patterns.
Different modes of vibration produce different and unique patterns: for example bowing harder and faster on the same place produces a much higher tone and creates a more detailed pattern.
In this case the sand produces more intricate motifs with more nodes and smaller open spaces.
The complexity depends therefore on the frequency of the vibration, while the shape of the patterns is dictated by the shape of the plate.
This phenomenon was mentioned by Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks and discussed by Galileo Galilei in his work "Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo" (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632).
Robert Hooke did a few experiments in the late 1600s running a violin bow along the edge of a plate covered with flour, but Chladni’s main inspiration for his studies were the electrical figures of Lichtenberg, who made the experiment of scattering an electrified powder over an electrified resin cake; the arrangement of the powder revealing the electric condition of the surface.
Chladni published his studies in 1787 in "Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges" (Discoveries in the Theory of Sound) that comprised 11 plates and a total of 166 figures.
The patterns resulting from these experiments are called "Chladni figures" and they represent the first step towards visualizing sound.
Chladni often held lectures and became a travelling scientist: people were attracted by his experiments as the figures that formed on the plates looked visually pleasing and aesthetically sophisticated.
Chladni figures remain immensely inspiring: as you may remember from a previous post, Iris van Herpen explored cymatics (a word meaning "matters pertaining to waves") in her A/W 2016 collection moving from the work of Hans Jenny that is in turn based on Ernst Chladni's 1787 studies.
Chladni's figures could be take further to create jewels, graphic motifs and prints for both clothes and accessories, and the best thing would be to try and come up with your own patterns playing around with a bow, a plate, some sand or salt. Musicians have been doing such experiments for quite a few years now, so it's your turn now to take the discourse further in fashion as well.
Most of us do not certainly think about geometry while relaxing at the beach, but a basic bikini is a composition of triangles (bra) and inverted isosceles trapezoids (bottoms). But it is not rare to spot other types of summer geometries in vintage bathing suits like this one from the Met Museum archive.
Designed by Emilio Pucci in 1969 ca. for Saks Fifth Avenue, it is not your average one-piece bathing suit as it is made with two kite-shaped panels on the front. A kite, as some of you may remember from your school days, is a quadrilater in which each pair of consecutive sides are congruent, but opposite sides are not congruent.
If you don't like geometry even when they relate to bathing suits and you'd just wish you were lying on a beach lulled by the waves (whch can be studied also from the point of view of different disciplines, including physics and mathematics...), here's the sound of the waves crashing that I recorded a few days ago as part of another project. Have a lovely Sunday!
The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games opened yesterday, after being rescheduled to this year due to Covid-19. Needless to say these are rather controversial games as Coronavirus is still spreading: just a few days ago there were rumours the Olympic Games may have been cancelled as a few athletes at the Olympic village had tested positive, casting a shadow on the event. So far, fears, anxiety and uncertainty dominated the news rather than a healthy dose of enthusiasm for some great sport events.
The opening ceremony offered some distraction and a little bit of entertainment from a fashion point of view as well. Some trends emerged for example in yesterday ceremony, but they didn't hint at colours, shapes or silhouettes, but at themes and moods.
Japan went for example for a national moment but in a contemporary key when Japanese singer performed the national anthem in an evening gown by costume designer Tomo Koizumi, a favourite with entertainers and fashionistas since he showcased his collection of gargantuan organza gowns at New York Fashion Week in 2019.
There was a transnational moment when the Italian team arrived: after designing the suits for the Italian team at the 2020 European soccer championship, Emporio Armani created the uniforms also for the Olympic athletes. Japan has always been an inspiration for Giorgio Armani, so the uniforms featured the Rising Sun reinterpreted with the colours of the Italian flag, while the word "Italia" was written in Kanji, Japan's vertical writing system (the letter T in the word was also inspired by the Torii, the entrance gateways to Jinja shrines).
Kenya looked particularly striking as for the occasion the uniform of the athletes attempted a reappropriation of the Maasai attire.
The team's female athletes wore Maasai print dressesi with a caped bolero jacket and the male athletes wore matching shirts with black trousers. The dresses looked particularly simple and functional, yet elegant.
Team New Zealand went for minimal black and grey uniforms matched with white sneakers, but flag bearers Sarah Hirini and David Nyika donned the Te Māhutonga, a kākahu (cloak).
The Te Māhutonga was created in the occasion of the Athens Olympics in 2004 to build cohesion in the team. It is a collective work of art, made by different artisans using fibres and feathers. After each Olympic Gamees the cloak is returned to weaver Rānui Ngārimu, of the Te Roopu Raranga Whatu o Aotearoa (the national Māori weavers group) who designed it and restores it after every Olympic event (the feathers are particularly fragile).
The cloak includes flax fibre and feathers of different endangered birds - khe kiwi, kākāpō, toroa (albatross) and tieke (saddleback). New Zealand is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) that ensures that international trade in wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of species, which means that special permits must be obtained at every Olympic Games to carry this masterpiece of craft out of the country and into another country and then back to New Zealand.
It looks like there is more to see and appreciate then in the Olympics opening ceremony, than just some uniforms often created by famous fashion designers.
The fashion industry took the fight against Covid-19 very seriously with different companies actively joining the vaccination campaign. As you may remember from a previous post, the Solomeo-based king of cashmere Brunello Cucinelli has been busy vaccinating his 1,174 employees against COVID-19 and highlighted once again yesterday that he asked no vax employees in his company (less than 1%) to stay at home with a paid leave for six months to protect workers who have taken their shots.
Vaccination is mandatory for health workers in Italy and at the moment the Italian government led by Mario Draghi is debating the possibility of making jabs mandatory in some workplaces (schools included), as suggested also by Italy's business lobby Confindustria.
As the country is worried about the surge in new infections (especially the Delta variant), the government also announced that, from 6th August, Italians will have to show their Green Pass - that should be an extension of the EU's digital Covid certificate (most Italian who completed the two doses of vaccination already received it) - to enter stadiums, museums, theatres, cinemas, exhibition centres, swimming pools and gyms. The Green Pass will also be required to eat indoors at restaurants.
The pass will be available to those who have had at least one vaccine dose or who present proof of a negative test taken within 48 hours before accessing any of the activities under restriction.
The decision follows similar restrictions imposed in France with a compulsory "pass sanitaire" (health pass) to access cultural and leisure venues (cinemas, theatres, museums, theme parks or cultural centres) that came into force in the country on July 21.
The health certificate proves the bearer has either been fully vaccinated or had a recent, negative PCR test that is less than 48 hours old. From the beginning of August, it will be necessary to show the health pass in France to have coffee or eat lunch at a restaurant (even outdoors) or shop at a mall. The permits will also be required for entry to hospitals and to board long-distance trains.
At the moment France's rules are among the most restrictive in Europe: different European countries are using different strategies to tackle the rise in new infections. France actually registered 18,000 cases in the 24 hours prior to 20 July; yesterday Italy registered 5,057 new Coronavirus infections; today 5,143, mostly caused by the Delta variant (many cases may be the consequences of the euphoric celebrations after Italy's vistory at the Euro 2020 football championship).
The announcement of the Green Pass ignited a vaccination drive in Italy and France, but it also brought criticism, especially from right-wing parties and supporters. In Italy, where the state of emergency was extended until the end of the year, far-right parties Brothers of Italy and the League complain about a "health dictatorship" and talk about the freedom of choice of those who do not want the vaccination.
Yet, we all want to go back to our pre-Covid-19 lives and, to do so, we must make sure we protect ourselves and others with vaccines. Sure, we all want our rights to be respected, but we all have civic duties to honour and taking the vaccine is part of our collective duties.
So you can bet that, come September, those fashion houses organising live shows in the main European capitals will request a health passport at the door. Considering that France and Italy have now issued precise rules regarding the health pass, you can expect that guests at fashion weeks in Paris and Milan will be asked to show their passes to enter the show venues.
And, while the health passport can be shown digitally on a smartphone as a QR code, we can now expect fashion houses to start designing health passport covers or maybe send a health passport cover as invitation to the September runway shows. Who knows, maybe by September as health passports become trendy at fashion events, the only untrendy people left out there will be just a bunch of no-vaxxers.
Rarely do copyright stories have something titillating about them, but this one is a terribly titillating case with some hilarious twists about it.
Last week Pornhub released an advert featuring iconic adult film star (and former member of the Italian parliament) Cicciolina (Ilona Staller). The advert celebrated the launch of a Pornhub page entitled "Classic Nudes" and featured Cicciolina recreating an ironic tableau inspired by Botticelli’s "Birth of Venus".
For this initiative Pornhub selected paintings from the collections at the Museo Del Prado in Madrid, the National Gallery in London, the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, the Met in New York and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The platform then accompanied some of them with humorous and provocative descriptions or with adult videos inspired by them.
The selection includes Courbet's controversial explicit representation of sensuality and temptation "The Origin of the World", but also the ethereal naked nymphs in William Bouguereau's "The Oreads", Francisco Goya's "Naked Maya", Edgar Degas' "Male Nude", and Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" just to mention a few ones.
Some of these classic masterpieces were recreated by amateur porn stars MySweetApple and turned into brief adult scenes: Venus starts masturbating, Courbet's painting develops into a cunnilingus scene and Degas' reclining man turns into an opportunity for a fellatio.
Botticelli's "Venus" is described as "the most famous nude" on Pornhub's tour. "The painting was commissioned by Renaissance playboy Lorenzo de Medici, who had such a large collection of nude paintings, you could call him the first Pornhub Premium member."
According to the adult entertainment platform the "Classic Nudes" series is a way to attract the public to visit the museums and fall in love with some of these masterpieces, especially after the pandemic and the long months of lockdowns in which all museums around the world had to shut down, and encourage people to look at art from a different perspective (at the end of the advert Cicciolina states: "Because porn may not be considered art, but some art can definitely be considered porn").
Some museums were definitely not happy about this "cultural project": the Louvre first announced it was suing Pornhub, then decided it may not do it; while the Uffizi wasn't pleased at all. "No one has granted authorizations for the operation or use of the art," an Uffizi spokesperson stated.
"In Italy, the cultural heritage code provides that in order to use images of a museum, included works for commercial purposes, it is necessary to have the permission, which regulates the methods and sets the relative fee to be paid. All this obviously if the museum grants the authorization which, for example, would hardly have been issued in this case."
The Uffizi also issued a legal warning against MindGeek Holding, the Luxemburg-based society that owns Pornhub (but it may be worth noting that Pornhub is not based in Italy and wouldn't really be subject to the Italian jurisdiction).
For the time being the videos relating to the works from the Louvre and the Uffizi were removed. But if taken in front of a judge the situation may turn in favour of Pornhub (even though, to avoid any legal issues, the site should have added a disclaimer highlighting this wasn't an official collaboration with the museums).
If the Uffizi sued Pornhub for the advert starring Cicciolina, they wouldn't actually have any ground as recreating a tableau from a painting is not technically an infringement of copyright. In "La ricotta", Pasolini reproduced two tableaux inspired by Rosso Fiorentino and Jacopo da Pontormo and he didn't have to ask for any permission to do so. In this case Pornhub may reply that what they did with Cicciolina was "fair use for parody".
Yet, as works are usually protected by copyright for 70 years after the death of their author, all the paintings used on Pornhub should be copyright free.
Museums usually do not own copyrights of the artworks they own or preserve but hold permission to use an artwork as a whole or as a part. Besides, they may hold the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit economic rights such as reproduction, distribution, rental and lending, public performance, communication to the public by electronic transmission including broadcasting and adaptation. Depending from museums, for what regards non-economic interests, they may also hold the right to object to derogatory treatment of a work.
When it comes to economic rights and commercial purposes, while indirectly Pornhub obviously hopes the campaign will attract more consumers to the platform, the site clearly states its "Classic Nudes" project is supposed to promote art, hoping to get people to visit the museums. To this aim they also added maps of the various museums with a dedicated erotic art trail for visitors, so, in a way, rather than damaging the museums, the platform is actually promoting them.
The Uffizi highlighted they wanted Pornhub to ask for permission, but there are hundreds if not thousands of examples in which artists, designers, fashion designers, illustrators and assorted creative minds, used "The Birth of Venus" without doing so and also for commercial purposes.
The list is long and includes Andy Warhol, The Muppets (remember the Miss Piggy parody?), Dolce & Gabbana (remember their 1990s halter dress and their S/S 1993 trouser suit and dress with prints of Botticelli's Venus, also donned by Lady Gaga?), Tomoko Nagao (the logo-covered "Birth of Venus"), David LaChapelle ("Rebirth of Venus"), artist Julian Totino Tedesco for "The Birth of Black Widow", an alternate cover for the Fantastic Four #17 or the poster for Cathy Yan's "Birds of Prey" (2020) film featuring Harley Quinn & Co unleashing mayhem in a Botticelli reinvented scene.
Obviously, these are just a few Birth of Venus inspired artworks, some of them used for commercial purposes (did D&G actually ask the Uffizi the permission to print "The Birth of Venus" on their designs?).
The Uffizi seems to have a record of suing people for using artworks: the gallery recently sued waste collection company Alia for depicting Michelangelo's David in a hi-vis jacket and a red broomstick. According to the gallery that was an unauthorized use of a work of art, but surely the company in this case was just inviting people to take care of art and the city with a social media campaign and wasn't offending anybody.
You wonder if in other cases involving prestigious artists museums also gave their permissions: did Jeff Koons (incidentally Cicciolina's former husband) asked for permission to any museums when he copied several masterpieces and added a shiny blue sphere in front of each of them?
Basically, museums are reacting in a negative way in this case not to protect their copyrights but because they don't want to be associated with porn - and in particular with Pornhub, a platform that may have profited from nonconsensual video uploads including child abuse imagery - for fear they may be offending their visitors.
At the same time, it is this association with porn (rather than their association with trendy influencers who are invited to visit museum institutions and to use famous paintings as cool backgrounds for their Instagram selfies…) that may open up museums to people who never stepped into a cultural institution before.
Sex sells and museums should know this, after all the Secret Cabinet (Gabinetto Segreto), the collection of erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum, is probably the most visited section of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples; most visitors at Gabriele D'Annunzio's Vittoriale in Gardone Riviera will probably not be able to quote anything by the Italian poet and writer, but will definitely remember his leather phallic slippers (View this photo) and Jeff Koons rose to the attention of the art world after a series of sculptures and photographs with his then wife Cicciolina scandalised the 1990 Venice Biennale.
Maybe the most scandalous thing about the whole Pornhub story is that the selection shows how the category of classical art predominantly features white bodies painted by white artists and mainly female nudes (even though they made an effort to include also male nudes), which proves the Guerrilla Girls theory is not a theory at all - women have to get naked to get into museums.
To balance things Pornuhub, added the category called "Another Perspective", which draws on a number of international collections to showcase artworks from India, Japan, China, and the Americas depicting non-white bodies, an addition that should make us think about discrimination in art and museums.
As for the Uffizi, I have a question for them, will they now sue each and every "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" player for having bought from a fox "The Birth of Venus" painting and having donated it to an owl to put it up in the revered museums of their islands?
If Schmidt thought that Cicciolina was a problem, it will be even more shocking for him to know that millions of "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" players can admire "The Birth of Venus" in their private museums at any time of the day.
Will they sue us or will they sue just Nintendo now? The doubt remains, but, whatever happens, I'm certainly not going to surrender my hard-earned copy of the precious painting to them.
