All was going well with my preparations. The work had been delivered. I ran a last minute ad on Facebook while preparing refreshment snacks. Then something happened to put a significant damper on the festive mood. Facebook wrote to me with a letter of "disapproval" for my drawing. I read their justification for their disapproval and not allowing me to advertise my drawings. I blinked in disbelief at their words. The completely innocuous drawing above was labeled by the Facebook crew as "indecent," "showing too much skin," "having sexual content," and "not in keeping with my product."
I wrote back to them explaining that there in fact was no sexual content. The content was about a man who took a bath, sat on a towel and looked at a piece of art work on his wall while his cats played in the background. If anyone actually read my description they would have understood this.
Here is the narrative that went with my drawing:
"It was Christmas Eve and Bertrand was alone. He turned up the heat in his apartment, poured himself a glass of white wine and sat on the floor to admire a large painting of dancing men that he had just purchased. The painting was just beyond the boundaries of his budget, but he had no regrets, for this piece of art made his soul smile. It was Christmas Eve, and although Bertrand was alone, he was not lonely. He had his music, his art, his warmth and his cats.
Enjoy this drawing in person tomorrow at the Portfolio Gallery in Columbia, SC and meet the artist from noon to 3PM."
To counter the "too much skin" charge from Facebook I pointed out that the figure has his back turned and not even much of that is showing. I simply stated that it is most certainly not indecent to sit on a towel and look at a painting. As to their last charge that it "is not in keeping with my product" I can only say that I am an artist who makes drawings. This is a drawing. My product is an exhibition of my drawings, of which this is included. The theme of the exhibition is cats. There are two cats present. Tomorrow I can only hope that there will be people present.
What caused Facebook alarm about this rather naïve yet joyful drawing? I can only conjecture that they had used some sort of algorithm in the screening of images and that my drawing fell haplessly into that evaluation. Hopefully they will correct this. In the mean time, figurative artists, museums that exhibit nude paintings, and galleries that exhibit figurative art should beware. Facebook might think that you're obscene.
November 11 - 12 Update: Facebook stands by their evaluation. The image is not allowed. "Too much skin." I had not realized that figurative art with nude or semi-nude figures is not allowed. How, then, would a museum trip to the Sistine chapel be advertised? Way too much skin there for sure. So I put the question to Facebook on how, given their restrictions, would someone advertise something like an art trip to the Sistine chapel as their guidelines would not allow any images. In reviewing their guidelines, not only are all nude images prohibited, but all draped figures as well. The latter are described as "implied nudity." We'll see how they respond. It seems like the crew that drew up these guidelines had not anticipated art or art history tours. In the mean time, the controversy simply made for some interesting conversation at my exhibition today.
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