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“Smut,” if not outright “pornography” is what Loveland City Councilman Daryle Klassen calls one piece of artwork in a new local exhibit titled “The Legend of Bud Shark and His Indelible Ink,” a collection of lithographs from Lyons master printer Bud Shark. The specific work of Klassen’s ire is a 12-panel lithograph by Stanford University professor Enrique Chagoya dubbed The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals. The comic-book-like piece depicts Jesus Christ receiving oral sex from a man (view the work pictured here, and more, on Shark’s site).
Klassen tells the Loveland Reporter-Herald the work should be removed from the Loveland Museum/Gallery because of its graphic depiction of Christ. Deacon Ed Armijo of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church is also among those who say the art goes too far, notes 9News. But Loveland’s cultural services director, Susan Ison, defends the work, saying art is meant to stir debate.
“I think people need to come in and see it for themselves. It is hard to take one piece in isolation,” she adds. “It is in the context of an exhibit, and this one particular piece is not a stand-alone piece.”