Art and pornography

I am a regular subscriber to The Jakarta Post, which I enjoy reading. I congratulate you on your fair and also critical commentating.

The April 15, 1996 edition of Newsweek ran an article on the famous Spanish painter Goya. Some little censor man in Indonesia had the delightful job of covering the bare parts of Goya's famous The Naked Maja in all the magazines distributed in Indonesia.

What has the world, or Indonesia, come to if it needs to hide the female attributes by applying black felt pen strokes over her better parts? How often are breasts featured in Indonesian art and culture? Since when has women's breasts ever corrupted the morals of Indonesian society?

The same is happening on the Art Pages of The International Herald Tribune, which you may have noticed yourself in the May 4, 1996 edition on page 7. Here the (same?) censor applied the black felt pen strokes to cover up the US$5,477 million painting of the great French Impressionist Degas Femme Au Tub.

When did Art become pornographic in Indonesia? I recommend the same little censor be sent to Bali. There he will have to cover up 50 percent of all paintings and statues, which freely show women's breasts -- nothing, I think, most Indonesians feel ashamed of showing or seeing.

In your Sunday paper (May 5, 1996), you somehow avoided the black felt pen strokes covering up your art works, but if this is becoming a standard in Indonesia, where do we go from here?

KIM BERGENSER

Jakarta