The position of the Prado Museum was categorical from the outset: the virtual tours offered by the pornographic platform Pornhub through nude paintings from various museums were "an exercise in cynicism."
"They said that with the pandemic the museums had been left empty and that what they wanted was to encourage people to visit them," explains a Prado spokesman to this newspaper.
"But it was a
marketing
and communication
initiative
, a way to be talked about."
The leading adult content page on the internet created last July an "erotic" walk through collections of six of the most important museums in the world: in addition to the Prado, the Metropolitan in New York, the National Gallery in London, the gallery of the Uffizi in Florence, the Louvre and the Orsay in Paris.
The occurrence unleashed such a scandal in the art world that Pornhub has ended up withdrawing tours of the Prado, Uffizi and Louvre rooms, but the other three are still active, without giving explanations as to why it has removed some and kept the ones. others.
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The Prado spokesperson assures that the museum never gave its consent for the pornographic platform to use images of paintings from its collection, including
La maja desnuda,
by Goya, or
Las tres gracias.
of Rubens, and points out that, in fact, they found out about the controversial travels through the press. At that time they consulted their legal team about the possibility of filing a lawsuit, but the lawyers pointed out the difficulty of winning such a case in court and the complication of proving authorship of the photographs. The museum director then decided to send a letter directly to Pornhub in which he stated the Prado's opposite position towards this initiative and invited the company to remove the name and images of the museum from this campaign and future similar ones. They sent the letter to two company headquarters in Canada and Luxembourg, but they have no record of it reaching them because they received no response.
In the Prado they are "satisfied" that the pornographic platform has removed the images and "having defended the value of art over cynical and spurious exploitation."
They emphasize that their objective when sending the letter was "to keep the brand free of unsolicited travel companions" and clarify that "it is not a case of prudery", but to avoid "a cynical and advantageous treatment of the universal artistic heritage" and that "take advantage of what is everyone's heritage."
They believe the company's goal was to get free publicity and attention.
Goya's 'Las majas', in an image taken in the Prado in June 2020.
Perhaps the letter from the Madrid museum did arrive, because a week ago the platform withdrew the tour of the Prado paintings. Those of the Louvre and the Ufizzi have also disappeared. The Florence gallery, the main art gallery in Italy, had sent a legal request in July to Pornhub for using without permission and for commercial purposes some of its paintings, including
La Venus de Urbino,
by Titian, and
The Birth of Venus,
by Botticelli , masterpiece of the Florentine Renaissance and one of its greatest treasures (explained on the pornographic portal by the former Italian actress and former politician Ilona Staller
Cicciolina
).
Those responsible for the Uffizi have declined to make statements in this regard, claiming to this newspaper, through a spokesman, that the museum wants to avoid publicizing the initiative of the pornographic platform.
Italy has a 1993 law, updated in 2004 and 2014 in the Code of Cultural Property, which allows the free use of the image of the paintings if it is done privately or for scientific, educational or informational purposes.
On the other hand, if its use is for commercial purposes, it must be accepted and paid for.
The withdrawal of the tour of the Louvre, which included works such as the
Presumed portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrees and her sister the Duchess de Villars
, by an unknown author, did not stem from a direct request from the Parisian museum.
A representative, who has also refused to make statements in order not to publicize Pornhub, has stressed to this newspaper that the gallery has never collaborated with the pornographic platform but that it has not taken legal action or contacted those responsible.
A controversial conglomerate
Those responsible for Pornhub remain silent in this controversy and have not wanted to answer the questions of EL PAÍS.
The company registers an average of 130 million visits per day.
It belongs to MindGeek, a conglomerate of technology platforms - mostly pornographic, such as YouPorn and RedTube - whose headquarters is in the Canadian city of Montreal, but which is registered in Luxembourg for tax reasons.
In May, the platform launched a project to restore old erotic movies using artificial intelligence.
'The three graces', by Rubens, in the Prado Museum, Samuel Sanchez
The clash with the museums is his most recent controversy. In mid-December, the company had to delete two-thirds of the videos from its platform and cancel the possibility of downloading unverified images after the publication of a text, on December 4, in
The New York Times
, where it was noted that the company it hosted videos of alleged sexual exploitation and assault and child pornography, benefiting financially from said illegal content.
In addition, several women who maintain that Pornhub did not remove images where they appeared, despite requesting it at different times, have presented millionaire appeals against the company in US courts.
Some of the applicants were minors when these contents were recorded.
A committee of the Canadian Parliament, in charge of investigating this type of abuse in this type of platform, has carried out various hearings in 2021 with victims, executives and experts.
One of them was attended by Feras Antoon, CEO and one of the owners of MindGeek.
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