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Last week magazine time did not nominate a man or a woman, but a collective to “Person of Year”, MeToo movement. This has “released one of most rapid changes in our culture since Sixties”. These changes also include fact that, in last week as well, re was a no less rapid debate as to wher, in addition to good-grip people, re should be more strict follow-up of works of art in future than before.
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is accused: a painting of painter Balthus from 1938. The subject of indictment: his dreaming Thérèse, a teenage girl whose skirt has slipped so far that spectators look at blossoms of white underpants. The accusation of an online petition: in a “climate of sexual violence and accusations”, a child is turned into a sex object and voyeurism is strengned. At end of editorial work, around 12,000 people supported appeal to remove artwork from Metropolitan Museum in New York.
“One should also depend on Gauguin,” it says in a comment under petition, after all, painter had a 13-year-old as a lover. Anor comment voice notes that “sexual exploitation of a child” – meaning artistic representation – glorified abuse of young women. Balthus had made Weinstein possible. and must refore disappear.
Those who roam museums of world will be able to glimpse countless nude women and some naked men. There is no shortage of naked children. There is also a lot of violence to be seen: when Titian paints how Tarquinius falls on Lucretia. When Anthony van Dyck holds groped of Susanna in bath of two white old men. Or when Pablo Picasso Demoiselles Avignon as a prostitute.
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These images belong to great treasure of art history, and all of m are viewed in a different way, thanks to MeToo movement. Some, it seems certain, will fall into disgrace.
How much did artists contribute to spreading image of woman as a pleasure object? Where do you demand where subjugation? Does art still celebrate gaze of painting men, greedy and lustful? So does it thwart all efforts for balance and decency?
The museums have often made a bow to such questions. Art was art, and that someone could come up with idea of referring m to his life, his own physicality, seemed almost absurd. But this is also one of “changes in our culture”, of which magazine Time speaks. The pictures are taken more seriously. They unfold an unaccustomed effect. And that is first of all good news.
However, this is a paradoxical development: more heated debate, colder view of art. You take it terribly important. And yet ir esteem is falling so far that one has to fear for freedom of art.
Three years ago in Berlin, demand was kindled that boyish Amor of Caravaggio must be banished to depot because of his “unnatural and provocative position”. The “explicit obscene scene” undoubtedly serves arousal of beholder.
The University of Göttingen finished early in November an exhibition of artist Marion Vina, after students had complained about signed breasts and butts.
In New York, a bitter quarrel erupted in early summer, which was also about abuse, albeit not sexual. A white artist, Dana Lee, had painted corpse of a brutally murdered black boy, Emmett Till, and had exhibited picture at Whitney Biennale. So accusations have exploited suffering of black community. An open letter demanded “to destroy image and not let it enter art market or a museum”. Many criticized demand (time No. 31/17), ors expressed sympathy, also in German media.
