Fig Leaves to Photoshop, and a lot in between: Willful Alterations of Art across the Ages

The Visual Artists Rights Act protects artist’s works from “distortion, mutilation, or modification that would prejudice the author's honor or reputation.”  But what happens when the artist is no longer around to notice or object to such changes?  This talk will examine the long history of alterations to works of art done in the name of prudery, religiosity, changing taste, personal animosity, politics, and commercial gain. A review of paintings and sculpture from antiquity through the Renaissance, and into the twentieth century, that have been willfully distorted and perverted will provide a sobering and occasionally  humorous cautionary tale on the permanence of the artist's vision.

Part of the Winter Lecture Series