nd experiences of three artists, David Wojnarowicz, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Francisco Goya, the use of censorship and its affects can be understood. Although modern examples of censorship concerning cultural taboos are almost understandable because of the controversial subject matter, the censorship of art was just as prevalent in the 1700s in Spain. Censoring was based on protecting public morals, and it took political action in the form of Spains Holy Inquisition. Just as the NEA is pressured to works by threat of pulling funding, so was Franciso Goya pressured to self-censor his artwork for fear of losing his job as a court painter. The Inquisition began with censorship of public visual arts anonymously produced, but as Spain experienced the struggle between the church and the Bourbon monarchy it limited all works considered too sexual or anti-Christian. Goyas painting of Naked Maja was his way to defy the traditional association of the female nude with evil just as modern day artists, Mapplethorpe and Wojnarowicz fight against societys taboos with their controversial artworks (132). By self-censoring his artwork he painted the same female but clothed the naked female for the public to see, so his patron, Godoy, could lift the Clothed Maja to see the Naked Maja (140). However, in response to having to create another painting because of the attitudes of sex held by the Spanish government, Goya made the Clothed Maja even more seductive then the first women. We know that near the end of the Inquisition, in 1815, Goya was brought to trail accused of painting obscene naked women, but the results are unknown. To bring the discussion of Goya up to date, in 1991, a reproduction of Goyas Nude Maja was taken down from a classroom wall at Penn Sate following a complaint form a woman professor that it was a form of sexual harassment. The painting had hung in the music room on campus for more than a decade. The president of the Student...
