Despite years of doing business with Fine Art America / Pixels.com, I recently had an incident that has prompted me from doing ANY business with them, as they have shown themselves to be unreliable, untrustworthy and hypocrites.
I have had merchandise of my work that has had frontal nudity (“Kansas”, “Flower Bed”) printed by them in the past and they have even printed items featuring “Carson” a week ago. But suddenly it’s an issue, hence their unreliability.
They recently cancelled a “Carson” puzzle that I had ordered for a customer. They did not even notify me they had cancelled it (untrustworthy). I had to discover it myself. When pressed for an answer why it was cancelled they told me it was ‘pornographic’.
I pointed out, that a company going by the (former) name Fine Art America, should know the difference between sexually explicit images a.k.a. ‘pornography’ and a simple non-sexual, non-sexually aroused, non-sexually suggestive nude. I also gave them examples on their own website of other images showing male genitalia, female genitalia, that are on par with my image. I also showed them images on their site of couples engaging in sex acts that are much more sexual in nature even though no genitals are showing.
As an artist of the male nude, this is hardly the first time I have encountered this bias against male nudes in the ‘art world’. Female nudes are always art, male nudes especially if they are in a fairly realistic style are deemed dirty filthy pornography. Though it’s never said, I am certain it’s a form of homophobia.
In this all-gender, all welcoming, all can have a seat at the table age, it’s very disappointing to still run into this issue especially from the so called “art world” which presents itself as ‘progressive’ and ‘boundary pushing’.
Same old homophobic puritans at the wheel.
