The movie poster for Pedro Almodóvar's latest film “Madres Paralelas”, which shows a close-up photograph of a milk-dripping nipple in one eye, was censored by Instagram for the time being.
A new “Nipplegate”, as Americans call it.
According to Instagram, the picture disregarded the company's own “guidelines against nudity”.
Because a storm of indignation broke out, the parent company Facebook reversed the decision and apologized to the Spanish filmmaker.
There was nothing scandalous about the poster for Almodóvar's film.
The artist had fitted the nipple, which was photographed in elegant black and white, into an almond-shaped eye cutout in such a way that, viewed from a distance, it looks like a pupil, the atrium around it, printed in nuanced shades of gray, like an iris, and the droplet emerging from it like a milky one cloudy tear.
And why shouldn't one eye water maternal milk in wonderful Spain, where so many statues of Mary are bleeding, especially when the Madonna-like Penélope Cruz mimes one of the two mothers giving birth at the same time?
The two Spaniards Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí had one eye far more devilish than they cut one eye with a razor in their 1929 surrealist film “Un Chien Andalou”.
Blind to art
The fact that the graphic artist Javier Jaén embedded this watery nipple eye not on a natural, flesh-colored, but on a cherry-red background, with the title of the film in Almodóvar pink underneath, should, as an additional alienation, perhaps even irony, prevent any suspicion of pornography. The picture pusher company Instagram should at least have apologized to the artist of the poster, because Xavier Jaén is known for his trademark eyes. He already opens a zipper in the shape of an eye, so that in this case too the zipper hangs down like a tear, or he makes people with cylindrical green hats on their heads and white skirts as tutu look like eyes when photographed from above.
But because the algorithm or the sharp employees or both are obviously blind to art, Instagram will continue to be potentially at risk in the future: all Maria lactans depictions of art in which Our Lady nourishes her son with milk and in which it is currently in the The painting of the meticulous early Dutch can lead to the formation of droplets, which - by the way, for the puritan Instagramericans - are also a highly venerated relic. Above all, however, the exhibition “Mother!” Is at risk of censorship. It will open in the Kunsthalle Mannheim at the end of September with numerous pictures of maternity. Open your eyes is the motto in the future, even with nipples, which artfully camouflage themselves as eyes!