In 1974, Tompkins was scheduled to show her work in Paris. When her art arrived, French customs officials seized it, declaring it obscene and unfit for public exhibition. It took Tompkins nearly a year to arrange its return, at great financial and emotional cost to her.Mason, ibid. In response to the ordeal, Tompkins began making paintings in the form of grids, where a set of white blocks with the word "censored" at the center blocked out all traces of genitalia or primary imagery in the composition. Tompkins said she would continue to make these paintings, as there was seemingly no end to government censorship of visual art.
