Readers of Abbeville’s volume Courbet may have noticed that the slipcase cover features two large, exquisitely painted female breasts:
That fact hasn’t escaped the attention of Barnes & Noble, but it does seem to have made them blush like Sunday-schoolers. At least, that’s what we gather from the charming, awkward contortions they’ve gone through to avoid showing the painting in their site’s main image of the book:
They’ve included the un-slipcased jacket, the back of the slipcase—but not the slipcase cover! You know, the thing you would see if you picked the book up in a store. To view that you need to scroll through a slide show of other product images, and even then it’s grouped with two other images so as not to pull too much focus. This boyish modesty strikes us as not only silly, but also slightly offensive to Courbet’s model and her picturesque breasts. (Does B&N think they’ll hurt sales?) Plus, this whole situation reminds us of something…
Ah, yes: the Met’s spring Courbet exhibition, which we poked fun at for keeping the artist’s infamous L’Origine du Monde hidden away in a narrow passage under dim, seedy lighting. (Hey, at least we didn’t pick that one for our cover image!) And in fact, our designer, who’s seen the Met’s latest book catalog, tells us that it, too, carefully avoids showing our Courbet cover. What gives, folks? We love you for buying our books, but we wish you’d feel comfortable displaying them in all their naked glory. In fact, just because no one else will, we’re going to display the real cover image one more time, at maximum size and with maximum pride:
Magnifique.
