Exhibition: Homaged, desired, censored – the forbidden female body part

They are everywhere. Anyone who has seen the exhibition “Breasts” in the Palazzo Franchetti will inevitably see Venice during the Biennale through different eyes. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the city is teeming with breast-emphasizing works, forms and objects: in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, opposite the Palazzo Franchetti, you can see Willem de Kooning's abstract female nudes, in which breasts are suggested and flattened works. The top of Yael Bartana's generational spaceship in the German pavilion consists of a breast-like sphere with a nipple-like ball sitting in the middle. In the city's churches: Madonnas with baby Jesus on their breasts. At the flea market: everything from antique busts to breast-shaped cups. Then lunch under the pompous painting of a woman with a slipped blouse. Even the roll on the table is white, round and with a bump at the highest point.

So if one thing can be said about the job of Carolina Pasti, the curator of “Breasts,” it is that there certainly must have been no shortage of potential exhibits for this subject. Breasts are as much a part of art as kings, war and churches. Pasti is also not the first to take on the topic: four days before the opening in Venice, the exhibition “Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat” closed in Vienna, which also took on the topic. The Berlin gallery Dittrich&Schlechtriem showed “Boobs in the Arts” last summer, and a book of the same name was also published. But – this is nothing new either – “the world can’t get enough of breasts,” says Pasti. “It is difficult to explore the boundaries of what can or should not be shown. I would like to initiate this debate.”

Because we live in strange times. The body part that everyone can't get enough of is constantly regulated and has been a venue for debates, especially in recent history: in the 60s and 70s, feminists ripped off their bras and declared it a revolutionary act. That trickled down , at least aesthetically, into the mainstream: topless sunbathing was de rigueur for many summers. This also pleased the predominantly male advertisers and media producers who populated their magazines with half-naked women and were able to spread sexist stereotypes under the guise of open-mindedness. At the same time, artists such as the photographer Helmut Newton were placed under absurd general suspicion of sexism.

The days of relatively carefree nudity are now over – except perhaps on beaches in the south of France and the Baltic Sea. The breast is still occasionally brought out as a sign of protest, for example by climate activists, but otherwise it is now more likely to be covered. She is therefore far from out of sight and out of mind. And it's not really chaste either.

Rarely have we lived in times so focused on the breast, because even if it is not explicitly shown, it is still emphasized and shaped more and more in the interests of the wearer. Balloon-like silicone balls are carried in front of them as status objects. On the one hand, the breast should not be “sexualized” by the male gaze, but on the other hand, you would have to be blindfolded. As long as the nipples are invisible, pretty much anything is possible – often under the pliable killing argument of female empowerment.

What leads to a bigoted situation, see the appearance of Lauren Sanchez, wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who recently appeared at the Japanese President's reception at the White House in a kind of lingerie evening dress with a corsage that left no questions unanswered. According to the rules of good taste, the dress was probably more transgressive. However, according to the standards set by social media, everything was fine, and it can be assumed that most women who are photographed a lot have mastered this etiquette and are consciously playing with it. Meta is currently defining what is not possible: “certain photos of female nipples.” And what is possible: “photos in the context of breastfeeding, childbirth and the moments afterwards, in health-related contexts (for example after a mastectomy, to raise awareness for breast cancer or gender reassignment surgery) or a protest are permitted. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is also permitted.” And the strange thing is: although there are grumblings here and there, they basically bow to these questionable maxims.

Of course this also applies to art. If you look at the exhibition “Breasts” under meta criteria, you can see how arbitrary and therefore absurd these rules are. Most of the works on display would therefore be “instagrammable” because they are paintings, drawings or sculptures. They are not necessarily reserved. Two contemporary works, those of the Canadian Chloe Wise and the French Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost, seem to have taken this as a real challenge. Wise's recently created satirical painting “Soccer” could be interpreted in a Freudian way on the occasion of the upcoming European Championships: large, plump breasts dangling gently over an equally beautifully shaped football. Is this what uncensored male happiness still looks like? Is this what “on a man’s mind” is? And does comedy, more than complaint, contain the power of female exposure?

Prouvost's breasts also float in the picture “In Deepth” (2023) – but completely detached on a black background and on a two-meter-high canvas. The texture of the applied paint has something of a confectioner's craft: like the carefully spread, shiny icing on a cake. As with Wise, Prouvost's breasts are comically over-stylized: More breasts aren't really possible – Mark Zuckerberg should actually be nervous.

It is the subtler works that, according to the current rules, increasingly have to elude the public: Philippe Garner's study “Lucilla (Breast), La Voile Rouge, Saint Tropez” from 1976 captures a tender and admiring look at someone who is presumably loved chest. Robert Mapplethorpe photographed “Breasts/Lisa Marie” from below in 1987 and gave them architectural force. And with Irving Penn, one of the great innovators of 20th century fashion photography, one wonders whether his 1993 shot entitled “Breast (A)” would give meta-censors a headache: armpit and a crop of the The upper body is largely in shadow; the nipple, accurately painted over with green and gold paint, is the visual center of the picture.

One of the most gripping works in the exhibition originally comes from advertising and fashion photography. Taken by now 82-year-old photographer Oliviero Toscani, it was part of the Benetton advertising campaign in 1989. The photo shows the naked torso of a black woman breastfeeding a white baby and wearing a red cardigan. This picture is still astonishing even after 35 years because it seems almost more shocking than it was back then and at the same time more contemporary than the contemporary works in the exhibition: it confuses and touches the heart in an unsentimental way. And one wonders whether today's fashion campaigns, most of which want to be so inclusive, will make it into the galleries and exhibitions around the world in decades. You don't have to be a cultural pessimist to answer this answer with no. Where Toscani raises questions and is aimed at a universal audience, today's fashion companies tend to fail to convey their ostensibly noble cause as such. They are primarily concerned with target groups, rather than with existential humanity.

Curator Pasti will explore these and other topics and questions in her own podcast entitled “Breasts” starting in September. In addition to some of the artists on display, she also wants to discuss it with doctors, lactation consultants and Meta representatives. “Are we going forward or backward when it comes to showing and displaying the female breast?” should be discussed from different perspectives. Maybe, you think as you look out at the Grand Canal through the pink-covered windows in the Palazzo Franchetti, we're running in all directions at the same time when it comes to this topic. Fortunately, the female breast is used to withstanding a lot. She will never lose her appeal – artistic and real. Not even her secret. In any case, it is not hidden in the nipple.