Rioting Venus

With this motive I tired to create a photo-realistic picture of the Venus of Milo. To do this I used a high resolution picture of the famous statue in the Louvre, cut over 20 layers and  painted her using a realistic palette: body tones and a blue tones to make the toga look like a jeans skirt.

The idea behind this motive was inspired by the ‘free-the-nipple’ movement but more so by the general obsession of the public /and social media in particular to cover the female nipples. Interestingly, when a piece of art like a statue or a painting is displayed, this rule does not seem to apply anymore. But the question here is, where is the limit? When is it the display of a real person and when is it “art”.

The experiment therefore was to see, how people would react when confronted with one of the most iconic plastics ever created but painted as if she was a real person. To emphasize on the project I added a pink beanie, relating to the Punk band Pussy Riot, to Femen and other feminist organizations and hence also the title “Rioting Venus”.

First, I painted it at Upfest in Bristol, later one was commissioned by performance artist Wolfgang Flatz at Heaven 7.