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.
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