"Is it allowed for things to look like that?"

Is it allowed for things to look like that, a patently Molly Ivinsly question, is much too frequently another way of asking, Who may look upon this image? Not all suppression is state censorship.

Some of it is possessiveness, some is timidity for other reasons. Very little of it, frankly, qualifies as courtesy, such as is claimed on behalf of concealing evidence of Presidential filicide. 

But the two questions are of fundamental everyday urgency, much as the naked aviator precipitates the crisis of giving him lunch. When they express an objection to delight, they are yesterday’s question. When they inquire into the arrangement of things, we are getting somewhere.

When they converge they engage the artist's voice, as well, from Shostakovich to Jasper Johns, in every form of imagery - literary, sculptural, horticultural, musical, graphic.

Jasper Johns