Side of Enrico's Restaurant, 504 Broadway at Kearny

Diane Blell, Odalisque (7pm, 9th September 1976)

Description

Dianne Blell confronted the infamous “topless” district of San Francisco and its standards of public morality with a painting of a nude torso on a billboard. It was made from a photograph which she had staged of a female in the classical “odalisque” pose. The billboard was declared immune to censorship invoked under a city ordinance prohibiting full exposure of the female body, for the work was a painting in the accepted conventions of the fine arts. (Foley 1980: 29-30)