All language subtitles for Fig Leaf The Biggest Cover-Up in History BBC 720p HDTV x264 AAC MVGroup org_Subtitles01.ENG

This programme contains
scenes of a sexual nature.

The fig leaf...

The plant that Adam and Eve covered
themselves with after the fall.

From the fronds on antique gods...

..to the carvings
on Medieval cathedrals

and the heroic nudes
of Victorian Britain.

The fig leaf
is one of the great enduring motifs

of Western sculpture.

I am agog. I'm marvelling.

In it long fruition, it's evolved
into different shapes and sizes.

Can I just clarify one small point -

a fig leaf isn't always a fig leaf.

It can also be a drape, a gauze,
a girdle, a corset,

a skirt or,
how about, a mighty python?

The fig leaf is whatever hides
the unmentionable in sculpture.

It's a cover up,

but that's not all.

What's behind the fig leaf?

Well, it's a piece of censorship,
intended to divert the eye

and the mind
from man's bestial bits and pieces.

Although, paradoxically,

it's often had the opposite effect -
of being titillating.

But you know what?
The more you study the fig leaf,

as it's flourished
and shrivelled on sculpture,

it has actually been telling us
everything we needed to know

about our changing and conflicting
attitudes to religion,

to morality and to sex.

I'm in a world that
predates the fig leaf...

..a world of sensuality
and naked beauty.

This is the Cast Gallery
of Cambridge University...

..packed with statues
designed over 2,000 years ago.

Well, you could almost
be in ancient Greece,

except if you were,
you'd be dazzled by these statues.

They were painted then and they
had a vividness, a naturalness,

that today we associate with, say,
the waxworks of Madam Tussauds,

rather than with pale marbles.

It was celebrated in all its glory.

Although the statues were starkers,

they weren't intended
as objects of desire.

Many works
were modelled on naked athletes.

These sculptures
were telling a story

about the people they were based on.

They were vehicles, they were a way

of transmitting a message
in the public sphere.

Sort of Ancient Greek government
information films,

rendered in marble.

Key to this message
was the small penis,

a sign of restraint and control.

This was the only time in history
when having a small one

was something to be proud of.

According to classicist
Caroline Vout,

it helps add up to the perfect man.

In a sense,

it's the, sort of,
ultimate 5th-Century BC body.

So this is your classical pin-up.

So it's got wonderfully
exaggerated muscle tone.

He's pretty buff. He is pretty buff
and he's buff in a way

that's actually, sort of,
anatomically impossible.

I've certainly never seen a man
that looks like that, myself. Erm...

And in Athens in the 5th century,
these things are everywhere

and having a buff body like this
means that you are a good

Greek citizen and it actually
says something about your virtue

and it's very much linked to your
brain. I think showing these bodies

naked like this means that they are,
kind of, putting masculinity

on the table and saying,
"This is what we're about as a race."

As far as the Ancient Greeks
were concerned,

there was nothing they liked better
than the splendour

of an unadorned, unadulterated nude.

But something was about to happen
that would bring those values

and, indeed, many of the sculptures
concerned, crashing down to earth...

Christianity.

From the first century AD onwards,

this new religion
put down roots throughout Europe.

Its doctrine was embedded
in the pages of the Bible.

The very first book
of the Old Testament leaves no doubt

about the Christian view of
the bare body and its weaknesses.

As soon as Adam and Eve
eat from the Tree of Knowledge,

they're punished.

They become ashamed
of their nakedness.

From Genesis,
chapter three, verse seven,

"And the eyes of them both
were opened,

"and they knew
that they were naked.

"And they sewed fig leaves together
and made themselves aprons."

I can't think of another verse
in the Bible

that's had a more profound impact
on the way we think of ourselves,

our bodies and on art.

here at Notre Dame Cathedral,
in the heart of Paris,

this idea was etched into stone.

The last thing you see
as you leave Notre Dame

is that climactic moment
in the Garden of Eden.

Here we see the serpent,
disguised in female form,

writhing around
the Tree of Knowledge.

Eve already has the fruit from the
tree and she's sharing it with Adam.

But the striking thing
is they're aware of their nudity

and we know that
because they're covered up.

The Medieval Church said,
"Nudity was wrong."

The fig leaf would become absolutely
synonymous with original sin.

This is like a Medieval piece
of street furniture, saying,

"Thou shalt not get thy kit off."

In the light of Christianity,
everything about nudity

and sexuality was suspect.

This is Saint Augustine,
one of the fathers of the church.

He preached that,
since eating the forbidden fruit,

man had lost control
of his genitals

and that an erection
was a sign of disobedience.

Suddenly, those exquisite
nude statues,

left over from the days
of Ancient Greece and Rome

were a source of embarrassment.

The solution? Give 'em the chop!

The clergy, in general,

felt like hiding the genitals,
because sex is supposed to be dirty,

unless you are having sex
in order to procreate,

which is its only purpose,
according to the clergy.

And here you're on the church
the first church of

the Diocese of Paris.

It's the church of the capital,
of French kings.

You can't show genitals
on this facade.

So the poor old fig leaf, the poor
old fig tree, never hurt anybody?

No. But it's come to be this
symbol of shame, of sin, hasn't it?

In a way, yes, because it's almost
always used to hide Adam and Eve -

their genitals, especially.
And what do you think about that?

Do you think it suited
artisans and craftsmen

that they didn't have to show
this difficult, embarrassing part

of the body,
they just put a fig leaf on?

Or was it all about the religious
control? I guess you can say both.

Religion tried to control, I mean,
sex drives and people and so on.

I guess they missed their aim,
as usual.

And when you put a fig leaf on this
particular part of one's anatomy,

you attract attention to it,
more than anything else.

So, it's a double-edged sword.

But just one other thing,

why the fig leaf
and not the birch, the beech,

the chestnut,
or even the mighty oak leaf?

Well, scholars believe that
the Garden of Eden was probably set

in modern-day Iran,
where the fig grows abundantly.

And now I look at the old leaf,

it does have a certain meat and
two vegginess about it, doesn't it?

One of these chaps
would do the job for most of us!

The Middle Ages saw
a great unfurling of the fig leaf,

but there was still one way,
one wrinkle in church doctrine,

that allowed sculptors
to get away with the odd naked body.

is its 14th-century cathedral.

The glittering facade is one of
the great masterpieces of the age.

It was designed by
the architect and sculptor, Maitani.

The reliefs on the front wall
show scenes from the Bible.

One of the most prominent
is this one, of The Last Judgement.

And it's writhing with nudity.

This was acceptable,
because it sent the right message.

What it was telling you was
the wages of sin are death

and not only death,
but death with no clothes on.

You've got to admire
the sheer propagandising force

of this tableaux here.

It was a kind of
Medieval screensaver,

in your face the whole time,

and what it was telling you was,

"If you are virtuous,
if you observe the sacraments

"of Mother Church, you might
just avoid a fate like this."

Not only that, you could fee
a little bit smug about your less

virtuous neighbours. They were
going to end up squirming in agony.

And what was worse, perhaps,
in some ways, in indignity,

stark, you know what, naked.

While I'm here,
I can't resist going inside

to see the cathedral's
other great treasure.

And it's one of the most
powerful depictions

of the sinfulness of nudity
in all Western art.

Lucas Signorelli's
15th-century tour de force

shows the dammed cast into hell
and received by demons.

On a blazingly hot day
here in Orvieto,

you can practically smell
the sulphur coming off this wall.

You can see the slightly green,
sulphurous devils

in amongst those lost, poor souls,

grappling with them,
binding them, tying them up,

cutting their throats
and carrying them off.

For a thousand years, the Church
and artists had an understanding.

The nude could be shown
on one condition -

that nakedness was seen
as sinful, ugly, evil.

But then,
one sculptor broke the rules.

On the 14 May, 1504,
over five long days,

40 men struggled
through the streets of Florence.

They were moving a giant
five-metre stone statue.

The workmen brought
their massive payload

through these narrow streets
of Florence.

It was so big, in fact,
that, in places,

the streets had to be widened...

and whole archways torn down.

A great multitude
gathered to see the work,

but their gasps of admiration
soon turned to ones of horror

and they began
pelting the statue with rocks.

Small wonder.
Not only was he a giant,

he was butt naked.

And not in the right way.

The artist, Michelangelo,
had cast the fig leaf aside

and proclaimed the naked body
a thing of wonder and beauty.

In a world where
everyone went to church

and abided by the holy scriptures,
a giant celebratory nude

in the most public place in Florence
was verging on blasphemy.

Michelangelo's David was shocking.

Of course, there's a character
in the Old Testament called David,

but he didn't
look much like this fella.

Yes, you can make out, over his
shoulder, the slingshot he used

to fell the mighty Goliath,
but where's Goliath's severed head?

And by the way, where does it say
in the Bible that David was naked?

Try to move back to 1504, when
people saw this for the first time.

It was absolutely revolutionary.

Virtually every single David, before
during or after Michelangelo's time,

was clothed,
which is what the story indicates.

Michelangelo
doesn't follow the story

and that's the importance
of the work.

So Michelangelo
asked himself a question,

"How do I show
the most virtuous man?"

And his answer was to say,

"I'll show his inner beauty
through his outer beauty."

So what we see here is
an embodiment of the Renaissance,

it's a rebirth of the ancient nude,

in a Christian context.

Michelangelo wanted to recreate
the classical statues,

down to the tiniest detail.

And speaking of tiny...

Michelangelo shows David
with a small penis, why?

People ask about that.
I think the answer is simple -

he was looking at ancient statues.
In comparison to ancient statues,

the size of his genitalia
is perfectly normal.

The pubic hair, it's a little
embarrassing to some people,

but if you take a look at it,

you see that there are
three perfectly formed curls,

that form a triangle. We know that's
not the way pubic hair looked.

He's not trying to show reality.

He's trying to create
a new ideal of male beauty,

in order to show
the inner virtue of this hero.

But the Florentines
didn't see inner virtue,

they only saw the outer appendage.

The offending member
was covered up by not one fig leaf,

but by a skirt of 28 -
count them - copper leaves.

But David isn't the end
of Michelangelo's role

in the story of the fig leaf.

Michelangelo was passionate
about showing the naked male body

in all its glory
and with rendering it in stone.

Was it about art, or sex?

Rumours circulated about
his preference for younger men

and that was just
the start of the scandal.

Michelangelo was obsessed with
human anatomy, with dissection,

with cutting people, perhaps to
an unhealthy and unlawful degree.

You know that Johnny Cash song,

"I shot a man in Reno,
just to watch him die."

Well, it's even been said
of Michelangelo

that he had a model crucified,

merely to observe
the poor devil's death agonies.

But Michelangelo
didn't seem to care.

His most provocative artworks
were yet to come.

# But I shot a man in Reno

# Just to watch him die

# When I hear that whistle blowin'

# I hang my head and cry... #

I'm following in
Michelangelo's footsteps, to Rome,

where he went to work in 1508.

The invitation came from
the very top of the Catholic Church,

the Vatican,
from Pope Julius II himself.

He asked Michelangelo to create
a work

for the inner sanctum
of St Peter's...

..The Sistine Chapel.

It would go on to become
perhaps his most famous painting.

Even here in the bosom
of the religious establishment,

Michelangelo dared to show Adam
without his customary fig leaf.

And he didn't stop here.

Look at this statue for the tomb
of Pope Julius II.

Let's face it, it's a bit sexy
for the interior of a church.

Some of the clergy
certainly thought so.

An archbishop,
called Ambrosius Catharinus,

spoke for his brother priests,
when he said,

"The most disgusting aspect
of this age,

"is that one comes across
pictures of gross indecency

"in the greatest churches
and chapels,

"with the effect
of arousing not devotion

"but every lust
of the corrupt flesh."

Over the next three decades,

Michelangelo
continued to cross the line.

The murmurs of protest
grew to a clamour.

The Vatican was appalled
by the flagrant nudity of his art

and by the fashion it was setting.

Time to call in the Leaf Police.

I'm not joking. There really
was a special operation mounted

to clothe naked art.

It would become known
as the Fig Leaf Campaign.

In December 1563, just weeks
before the death of Michelangelo,

an official papal decree was issued.

It forbade the depiction of all
"lasciviousness" in Church art.

For Michelangelo's work,
the affect was devastating.

One sculpture in particular

would suffer the hammer blow
of censorship.

I'm going to see one of
the most controversial statues

Michelangelo ever created.

It's a nude, but more provocatively
even than that, it's a nude Christ

and he was rendered "con tutti
atributi", as the Italians say.

"With all his attributes."

I'm meeting Padre Baliccu,

Father of the Church
of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Bongiorno et benvenuto. Bene.

This is the Michelangelo?
Si, si, si, si.

Michelangelo's statue is called
Christ The Redeemer.

After the Fig Leaf Campaign,

a bronze girdle was placed over it
and can never be removed.

Do you think Michelangelo
was right to produce this sculpture,

showing the atributi?
Was that right?

At first, Christ's lower body

had been simply obscured
by a fabric skirt,

but the bronze girdle was needed

after the statue
became a victim of vandalism.

The backlash against Michelangelo's
brazen displays of nudity

and his reputation.

Now, goodness knows,
there are precious few

nailed-on honest-to-God geniuses
in this world,

but you'd have thought Michelangelo
qualified as one of them.

At this time, though,
he was slandered as,

"l'inventor delle porcherie" -
the inventor of pork things.

Perhaps the greatest man
ever to hold a chisel,

written off
as the maker of pork scratchings.

Hello. Thank you.

Let's go.

The Fig Leaf Campaign continued
to cast its shadow over Western art.

But in the 17th century,
one sculptor

found a way to turn censorship
into a new form of sensuality.

His name was Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Some of his best-known works
are here in the Borghese Gallery.

One of them is Bernini's
very own version of David.

I can't help thinking
that he chose the subject

as a deliberate response
to Michelangelo.

Where Michelangelo's David is nude,

Bernini cleverly kept
the ticklish bits under wraps,

but in a way that's
all the more provocative.

If you know your Old Testament,
or even if you don't,

you wouldn't have any difficulty
recognising this David.

The whole centrepiece,
the whole thrust of the action,

the tension of him
about to release that thunderbolt,

that brick that's going to
knock down and kill Goliath.

The eyes drawn to that taut
slingshot and all the other details

are accurate,
as we read them in the Bible.

The clothes that he fought in,
a simple sheepskin,

but notice how Bernini
has arranged it, has draped it.

There's just a glimpse of what
would hitherto have been obscured

by a regular fig leaf.

Bernini knew that the more
you cover things up,

the more you want to know
what's underneath.

With his slipping drape affect,

he'd come up with an ingenious and
eroticised twist on the fig leaf.

And, in the process,
he'd revitalised Western sculpture.

Anna Coliva
is the curator of the museum.

How can you explain
your view that it's more sensual,

more erotic, even though you can't
see the crucial bits of the anatomy?

Bernini did more than
eroticise sculpture,

he eroticised Rome itself.

The streets and squares of the city
are still full of his work.

This is the Fountain of
the Four Rivers, in Piazza Navona.

By using his trademark
peek-a-boo effect,

Bernini kept
on the right side of decency.

Only just!

As enchanting as it is,
this square is also home to touts,

hustlers, and escapologists,

and it's no slight
on the mighty Bernini

that he fits in here rather well.
After all, what are those

artful folds of fabric
just over the crotch,

those wisps of clothing,

if not fool-the-eye devices?

He got away with murder.

As the sun went down on
the 17th century,

the marble manhoods,
teasingly hinted at by Bernini,

remained in the shadows.

But something was about to happen

that would make sculptors
think again.

Taxi!

In the 18th century, the new science
of archaeology was all the rage.

Suddenly, all of Europe
was fascinated

by its pre-Christian past

and it was being dug up right here,
in and around Rome.

It made the eternal city
the highlight of the Grand Tour,

that educational rite of passage
for young British men of means.

They came in search of
spectacular archaeological finds

and the statues they discovered
were all naked.

A funny thing happened
on the way to the forum -

nudity became OK again,

and there was nothing finer

than admiring
a recently dug up Roman marble.

Apart perhaps from having it
shipped off to your own living room.

The American novelist Henry James,
who visited here a lot,

caught the mood of wonder
and exoticism when he wrote,

"These relics were coming up

"like long-lost divers
from the sea of time."

The rediscovery of
the Classical World

inspired an artistic revolution
with the nude taking centre stage.

But those living on
one cold, rainy island

in the middle of the North Sea -
they were in for a shock!

Britain at the start
of the 19th century -

a nation in the grip
of an identity crisis.

With the largest empire
in the world,

it saw itself
as the natural heir to Rome

and inheritor
of the Classical Tradition.

But it was also a nation,
which had long prided itself

on Christian morality
and stiff-upper-lip propriety.

These two strands of the British
character came head-to-head

here in Hyde Park, in London.

I'm going to see the first public
nude in Britain since antiquity.

When it appeared
in the summer of 1822,

this beast was the biggest bronzed
sculpture anyone had ever seen

and I tell you something else
that was big about it,

the huge row over public decency
that it provoked.

It's a strapping youth in the guise
of Greek warrior Achilles.

It was created in honour
of Britain's great war hero,

the victor of Waterloo.

And here's the inscription -

"To Arthur, Duke of Wellington,
and his brave companions in arms.

"This statue of Achilles,
cast from cannon

"taken in the victory of Waterloo,
is inscribed by their countrywomen."

Now the countrywomen were
a patriotic committee of ladies,

perhaps an unlikely source
for a statue like this,

particularly when you know that
their leading light, Lady Spencer,

had been called the "most prudish
of all the great English Ladies."

And yet it was this group of
womenfolk who were saying

the statue should be nude.

They didn't get their way, though.

It was the men of the monument
committee who had the final say.

One of them implored, "Every feeling
of public decency and decorum

"renders it indisputably necessary

"that some covering
should be applied."

And so, the fig leaf was attached,

and you might suppose
that was the end of matter.

Oh, no it, wasn't.
Not by a long chalk.

This tiny leaf that doesn't
even hide the pubic hair

was hardly enough
to save the statue from ridicule.

This print shows William Wilberforce

hiding Achilles' tackle
with his hat.

Wilberforce was famous
as a scourge of slavery

but evidently he
didn't like everything to go free.

Leading satirist George Cruikshank

described the statue as
"The ladies' fancy-man."

And had them queuing up
to buy their leaves.

There was a tremendous fuss
about this in all the papers

and I've got one or two
of the choicer quotes here.

One woman wrote to Society
for the Suppression of Vice,

complaining about
"A naked and indecent figure

"now erecting in Hyde Park."

While another critic said, "We must
join the majority of our countrymen

"in wishing that so unmeaning
and disgusting a thing

"had not been the gift
of the ladies of England."

One thing was clear -

the nude just wasn't welcome
in the public spaces of Britain.

In 1857, the great doors
of what would later become

the Victoria and Albert Museum

creaked open to the public
for the first time.

In the same year,
it enquired a new exhibit -

a gift for Queen Victoria that was
going to raise an eyebrow or two.

Well, here he is.
Our old friend David, again.

This time, I can see him
up close and personal.

It could scarcely be more personal.

Now he's an almost exact replica,
a cast of the more famous David

in Florence, except that this chap
has his own very special accessory.

Hello, Amy! Hi, Steven. How are you?

Good to meet you.
Very nice to meet you.

Is it true this fellow
has some concrete lingerie?

He does indeed.
Could I possibly see it?

Yes, let's go the store
and have a look.

If that's where it is, lead on!

I'm about to see what's rumoured
to be the biggest fig leaf

in the history of sculpture.

This is real behind the scenes
of the museum stuff.

It is indeed!
Do we need a special key here?

I'm going to put the light on.

Yeah, OK. Well,
that will kill the romance

but we'll be able to see
what we're looking at.

It's like Fingal's Cave in here,
isn't it? It is rather, isn't it?

So there we are. It's a good size.
It is a good size.

It's correctly proportioned.
Fantastic!

I can pop it on the table for you,
for a closer look.

Don't let me put you off.
This is an important moment.

Is that heavy for you? It's
not very heavy at all, actually,

Not anywhere near as heavy
as one might expect.

I'll just take it over here.

I'm agog! I'm marvelling.

Now, clearly they couldn't get
Michelangelo on the phone

and get him to produce something.

This was done in London? Yes.

The firm of Domenico Brucciani
and company produced

this particular object.

Now luckily the firm themselves
had moulds of Michelangelo's David

so they could already...

They already had a basis on which to
produce something that was going to

be a nice... Snug fit.
Snug fit - precisely!

And it's not until you see the
underside that you can understand

how it was actually
fixed to the sculpture.

But if we just carefully
flip it round...

Oh, I see!

You can see how it was moulded
and kind of carved out.

You can see the tool marks here.
Well, it's early

and we haven't
known each other too long, Amy,

but I feel I must ask you
to expand a little bit

about these indentations.

Yes. What they were intended for,
in layman's terms?

In layman's terms.

Well, these are the indentations
of the sculpture's genitalia,

I suppose, and they would
have fit quite snugly against that

but at the same time not causing
any damage to the object itself.

Do you know whose idea that was?

Does history tell us or not?
Well, it doesn't,

and that's what's really fascinating
because the way that the story goes,

it was the Queen herself
that was shocked by this

and it was presumably
upon her request.

But none of the documentation
really supports that.

In fact, behind closed doors,

the Queen enjoyed these types
of works of art.

She didn't faint
or have a fit of the vapours?

No, not at all. In fact,
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

often exchanged gifts between them
of paintings or sculptures

in which the nude
figured quite significantly.

But when it came
to her public image,

I think there was
an expectation that

a degree of decency and morality

kind of surround her
as a public figure.

It wasn't necessarily
on her demand -

it was something that I think
was perhaps imposed upon her.

We tend to think the Victorians
preferred a nice cup of tea

rather than sex. Actually,
that wasn't true in private.

But in public they had
a global reputation to think of -

the British Empire.

So it was a case of
"No sex, please. We're British!"

And the fig leaf worked
as a brilliant screen

for keeping sexuality and nudity
out of the public realm.

But not for much longer.

By the end of the 19th Century,
Victorian values were under assault.

The French were coming.

This is the Paris studio
of Auguste Rodin,

father of modern sculpture.

In works like The Thinker...

..The Gates Of Hell,

..and The Kiss...

..he created
a new language for sculpture.

At the heart of his vision was
a frank attitude to human sexuality.

And there was none franker
than this.

Iris, Messenger Of The Gods

exhibited in 1898.

What was he thinking of, Rodin,
when he created Iris?

Of course he was thinking
of an offered woman, in a way, and...

A what women?
Offered, er...offered

Legs. I see, yeah. Legs open. Mmm.

And how was that received?

For some people, it was unacceptable.

It was impossible,
"I don't want to see that."

"This is..." Too much.
Yeah, it is a nightmare...

But for some people it was,
it was great.

The fact that it has no head
and no left arm, this was for Rodin,

this was very much connected
with antique sculpture.

In the state where they arrived
to us... With bits missing? Yeah.

The right arm holding the foot

is a part of
this very compact composition.

So, it is still here,
but the others are not.

There not necessary
so they're not here.

It's a different way
of composing the female body.

I mean, we were more used
to seeing nudes lying

with their legs together more.

This is a complete break
from that, isn't it?

Yeah, this is much more dynamic.

He wanted it to stand in the air.

To me, it's just like a women jumping

and her sex, um,
jumping to us, in a way.

Rodin was a breath of fresh air
in the garden of sculpture.

Actually, make that a hurricane.

Suddenly, all the fig leaves
shrivelled and fell off

and they weren't about
to go back on again.

From now on, the human body in all
its grizzly majesty was fair game.

From the moment Rodin
let the cat out of the bag -

Some cat! Some bag! -

each generation has vied
to outdo the previous one

in provocation and shock value.

These aren't the virtuous nudes
of the ancient Greeks.

Sex in ever more-convoluted forms
has been taking centre stage.

It seems to me, what's happened
is that in today's art

the shock of the nude is more
important than meaning or beauty.

Now I'm going to see a sculptor

with an extraordinary
body of work, herself.

Orlan? Steven, enchante. Enchante,
nice to meet you. How are you?

Excellent and you? Yes, I'm fine

'Since the '60s the artist, Orlan

'has been creating
ever more-outrageous works.'

Here's one where she gives birth
to a mannequin.

Another where
she used her own pubic hair

and a nude body suit
in a performance piece.

In this work, she made
her body into a slot machine

and snogged people who paid up.

Am I right in thinking, Orlan,
that this work provoked an outrage,

it was a scandal at the time?

SHE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

French kiss? French kiss.

Do you think the fig leaf
still has a purpose?

Still has a role or is it finished?
Throw it away?

So you might think
that's the end of the story.

Just going into a modern art
exhibition these days

seem to prove Orlan's point.

But you don't get rid

of 2,000 years of
artistic tradition that easily.

The fig leaf lingers
on in unexpected places.

I'm at The White Cube Gallery
in Hoxton, London

to see the latest sculptures
by Marc Quinn.

In this show, he's chosen subjects
who've had plastic surgery

to change or enhance
their sexuality.

Thomas Beatie is a transgender man
who's given birth to three babies.

Meanwhile Chelsea Charms
is a breast entertainer,

who's said to have
the largest ones in the world.

Do you think there's any need now
any, any role for a fig leaf?

You mean for moral reasons?

For moral reasons
or even artistic reasons.

Does it free the artist in some way,
or is it only a constraint?

I think it depends, doesn't it?

I mean, if you have a clothed figure,

it's... You don't have to deal
with explicit sexuality.

If you have an unclothed figure,
in some way you are dealing with it

and also you can have, like, for
instance in this figure of Thomas.

Yeah. He's wearing shorts.

And what's great, to me,
about the shorts is the ambiguity.

That it somehow forces you to wonder
what is under his shorts.

Mmm. So, again, that's a fig leaf,
in a sense,

working to create meaning
in the work.

This is Buck Angel
and Allanah Starr,

two transsexual porn stars.

Buck here was born a woman...

..Allanah was born a man.

There's a sense
of Adam and Eve here.

Yeah, yeah. Or an allusion to that.

And they're very upfront
and unashamed.

Yeah, well, isn't that the idea
of Adam and Eve?

Before the fall.

Before the fall, there's
kind of innocence and...

Indeed. No fig leaf here.
If you put a fig leaf on,

it would be a different sculpture.

What would it be then?
It would be a normal couple.

You wouldn't understand
the sculpture.

Some of today's artists
might like us to believe

we're beyond taboo and that
you can take or leave the fig leaf.

But step away for the confines
of the modern art market

and the same old rules apply.

There are still "no show" areas
in public sculpture.

This is a statue of the ancient
Greek god Priapus,

god of fertility
and it's in Pimlico, London.

In ancient times,
he was symbolised by a penis.

Hence the word priapic,
meaning phallic.

So here's Priapus and in places
you can see that old Priapus

has got it going on,
he's got some moves.

In his hair, bunches of grapes,

in one hand, a little bell,

summoning people, men particularly,
to the Bacchanalian revel.

But in the other hand,
a pair of shears.

Now speaking as a man, I don't
find that particularly priapic.

But I don't know, if he's
supposed to be the god of sex,

there's something missing here
that I can't quite put my finger on.

There should be an erect penis
right here.

So where is it?

I've come to find out from
the sculptor Sandy Stoddart

who has the plaster cast original
in his studio in Paisley.

Hello, Sandy, how are you?

Hello, Steven.
Are you well? Yes. Good.

Now, I've seen your Priapus
in Pimlico. Yeah. And I'm engrossed.

'Sandy did make
a phallus for the statue,

'but he's kept it hidden from view
for fear of prosecution.'

So you solved the problem
by rendering Priapus complete

and then, as it were, separating...
Yeah.

Was that because
of the law, basically?

Well, of course, you see if you put
a thing like this up,

you've got no end of contumely
will fall on your head.

There'd be outrage
and general furore.

I think it might be time

to grapple with the elephant
in the room, what do you think?

Gosh, it's got a decidedly Hindu
quality about it, hasn't it?

That's one way of putting it.
And it plugs on, you see,

to the two dragonflies here.

We cannot, in a world today,
erect an entire image of the god.

Because, you know how we live
in such a puritanical,

strangely puritanical
world nowadays?

Yet it is overflowing
with a hyper sexuality

in the most inappropriate of places.

We are allowed to walk down
the high street of any town

with the letters "FCUK"
written on our chest.

We can have 20ft-high-advertisements
of women in underwear,

you know,
or men in their underwear.

In other words it seems to me that
there's an uber indecency everywhere

and yet in the context of this,

a little image of the god
must remain neutralised.

Could you have done a Priapus...
With a fig leaf? ..with a fig leaf?

In a way this is what
this is, you see.

It has been, as it were, removed.

The times are incapable
of dealing with this.

What do you feel,
how do you reflect on this work now?

This is how it should be?

One of these days,
I'll go down by train to London

and overnight slot it on

and then run for the border.

In a time when we think
we're all free and easy

in our attitudes to sex,
it seems to me that we're not.

We're more easily shocked
than we care to admit.

And just like in the past, there are
still rules and regulations

about what you can...

..and what you can't show.

All of which brings us back
to our old friend, the fig leaf.

For hundreds of years,

it was a crude but effective
form of censorship.

But contrary-wise,
it also provoked artists

to new heights of creativity.

Sex was there, sure,
but not dominant.

The problem with modern art
is it's too upfront.

It's in your face, it leaves nothing
to the imagination.

How do we go about restoring
the gaze to where it should be,

on the beauty
and the meaning of art?

What leaves something
to the imagination?

Fig leaves.