By now you’ve probably read or heard about the removal of Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs from the Manchester Art Gallery. If your social media circle is anything like mine, you’ve also seen numerous articles, Facebook debates, and sharply worded responses. The institution which sparked this controversy made it clear that their intention was to promote discussion, and in that very general goal I must admit they succeeded. People are angry, concerned, and confused. Speaking personally, I was initially disappointed in the gallery. In the end though, I was much more disappointed in myself.
It would probably be best to clarify a few items right off. Most importantly, if you have not read the official statement that explained this action, I recommend doing so. It took me many third party interpretations before I found my way back to the source. The gallery press release, in it’s entirety:
We have left a temporary space in Gallery 10 in place of Hylas and the Nymphs by JW Waterhouse to prompt conversation about how we display and interpret artworks in Manchester’s public collection.
How can we talk about the collection in ways which are relevant in the 21st century?
Here are some of the ideas we have been talking about so far. What do you think?
This gallery presents the female body as either a ‘passive decorative form’ or a ‘femme fatale’. Let’s challenge this Victorian fantasy!
The gallery exists in a world full of intertwined issues of gender, race, sexuality and class which affect us all. How could artworks speak in more contemporary, relevant ways?
What other stories could these artworks and their characters tell? What other themes would be interesting to explore in the gallery?
The act of taking down this painting was part of a group gallery takeover that took place during the evening of 26 January 2018. People from the gallery team and people associated with the gallery took part. The takeover was filmed and is part of an exhibition by Sonia Boyce, 23 March to 2 September 2018.
Contrary to almost every piece of coverage that I initially saw, there is nothing in this statement to suggest that the nude body is offensive. They do not describe the work as immoral, obscene, or otherwise malign the artist or painting in any way.
Additionally, the painting has already be restored to its original spot, being absent for a total of seven days.
How could artworks speak in more contemporary, relevant ways?
My initial reaction to reading that a Waterhouse was being removed from a museum, ostensibly for an excess of sexiness as all reporting indicated, was anger and exasperation. I had the kneejerk response that I was to see ripple all through our community: this is puritanical censorship. That kneejerk reaction is important, and I will come back to it in a moment.
Following this was my eye rolling at what a blatant publicity stunt the whole thing was. Of course, their press release makes that pretty clear so I don’t know why it seemed particularly significant. But as I read more responses from like minded people, many passionate to the point of rage, I found myself suspecting that we might be missing the point.
The Manchester Art Gallery has been in possession of Hylas and the Nymphs since the very year that it was painted, well over a century ago. It is clearly a valued piece of their collection and history. And nobody had been agitating for its removal so far as I’ve read. To my best knowledge, this painting was a popular, completely uncontroversial piece hanging in a completely uncontroversial museum.
And so the gallery asks us, point blank, should the status quo be so uncontroversial? Are we giving proper consideration to traditional default depictions of women in art? Are we in step with similar conversations of women in other cultural outlets like film and TV? Is our representation inclusive? What improvements might be made, both in contextualizing the past and particularly in creating the future?
It’s all right there in the press release. Not “boobs are bad,” but “what do these boobs tell us about us?”
In the space normally occupied by Hylas and the Nymphs, visitors were asked to leave comments
Unfortunately, the natural response when something which we enjoy is challenged is often to cover our ears and shout. Instead of talking about any of those completely relevant and damn uncomfortable and complicated questions, we do the kneejerk thing: shift the conversation to familiar and easily defended territory, relevance be damned. Difficult questions? Censorship! The lizard brain doesn’t look for nuance, it reacts on impulse. Instead of going straight to fight or flight though, what about assessing whether there is even a threat in the first place?
I can feel it now, you want to say “but this is Art, and this is History, and it’s in a museum! If we hide it away, we are betraying our highest ideals!” And while that is a perfectly valid position, it isn’t the issue. The relevant discussion should be about questioning where our status quo could use some routine maintenance. The stated goal is the opposite of censorship: not to conceal, but to fostering broader, deeper awareness and critical thinking. When I read the news articles and so many online responses (mostly to those articles), I’m warned of a destructive, scary wave of anti-sex hysteria just waiting to break and sweep half of art history away. When I read the statement and listened to follow-up comments from gallery curator Clare Gannaway, however, I see no such thing. All I see there are very reasonable questions about reappraising how art reflects our society in regard to “gender, race, sexuality and class,” and particularly what that will mean for future exhibits and contemporary works.
Unfortunately for me though, this brings me to a tricky place because I’m still very much struggling with these topics myself. By no means would or should I try to direct that particular conversation. I am doing my best to listen, however. The discomfort I have felt for some time at phrases like “the male gaze” and “objectification in art” are huge red flags that I need to better educate myself on issues that were invisible to me for most of my life. Invisible purely because I’ve always had the option to not bother about them.
Whenever I’ve felt some group of people is being overly sensitive, it almost always turns out I’m just ignorant to their problem. And so, as I was rolling my eyes, I saw my own dismissal reflected in the responses of so many others and I forced myself to pause. I reminded myself that these are telltale signs that I have misunderstood the problem, because I’ve been fortunate enough to not know that problem. Because confronting this problem is uncomfortable and threatening, particularly as a male artist who sometimes paints sexy women. But I want to understand it. I want to learn from it. Ultimately, I hope that doing so can help me as an artist. I’m certain it will help me as a person.
These questions and conversations are not new, but many aspects of them are new to me. I look forward to following along as these discussions continue. And I hope, the next time I’m confronted with a complicated social issue hiding in plain sight, I will be quicker to listen with an open mind.
When my kneejerk response to a plea for understanding is to roll my eyes, I now understand it’s because I’ve missed the point.
If you have thoughts on the issues raised in the Manchester Art Gallery’s statement, we strongly encourage you to comment!
I am female. I have always regarded the painting as pretty and wondered why no nipples. Comparing the nymphs to todays salacious photograps of women they are very innocent.
It seems obvious to me the issues being articulated by the Museum’s move are those limned nearly 50 years ago in John Berger’s famous Ways of Seeing. The painting’s eroticism or salacity is less the point than the woman’s culturally ingrained role as object of the male gaze. Anyone who wants to understand this better would be well-advised to revisit Berger.
Thanks, an example of how much catching up I have to do! Adding it to my reading list
You don’t have to read it! You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1GI8mNU5Sg
This is the second episode of four topics on the art world. All 4 are excellent, and available on YouTube.
Dave,
This was such a rational and well balanced post! Really great read. I’m sure you saw James Gurney’s post about this a week and a half ago and you are correct that many spoke out about censorship rather than what our portrayal of women in art history to today says about our society. We are living in an age of difficult conversations and hopefully the fact that we are even having them says a lot about our society as well.
All I can say is that this non-stop, day in and day out neo-Marxism and post-modernist deconstruction of everything is getting on my last nerve. Critical Theory needs to die already.
Thank you, for being receptive. I enjoyed your balanced take on it 🙂 This piece has always irked me because all the women are exactly alike- its like pre raphealite disney heroines 😉
They’re not women though. They’re fish.
ha, totally! Effective for the scene or not, I can see how it really ties into the gender commentary concerns either way
This is pretty basic, but it bears occasional repeating. To begin, any headline from any source is suspect. Headlines are to grab attention first, then generally inform about the apparent content of the article. Very often, headlines are not written by the author of an article. It is not uncommon for a headline to actually contradict the findings presented in an article. Second, articles lead with the most provocative claims, and only after perusing the whole of the article are the actual details presented. If indeed they are presented. When they are, they are typically buried so far down that casual readers miss them. It is rather typical for an article’s penultimate or final paragraph to provide the details that contradict a headline or the lead paragraph. And I’m not talking about questionable agencies, but right out of Reuters or AP feeds; published at the BBC, NYT or Post.
The Manchester statement is clearly a provocative PR move. But they “loaded the question” telling viewers “Here are some of the ideas we have been talking about so far. What do you think?” and then offering both overt and oblique statements easily viewed as PC by casual viewers. A more open-ended and less bias-fraught method might have been “We removed this painting? Why? Tell us what you think.” Greater equilibrium, but that would not have engendered nearly as much emotion as what is easily construed as an “attack” on differing sensibilities.
So, my point with that lead is this: your eye-rolling dismissal or another’s outrage at introduction to the press was natural and normal and exactly what their tactic was contrived to provoke. They framed it to elicit the gut responses they are getting. But you did the rational thing and read deeper, and more closely, and applied reason and experience to formulate something more than a terminal gut reaction. You didn’t miss the point.
The curious thing is that the overwhelming responses people had, either journalists, people online, or even the people adding post-its in the gallery (first hand viewers), all seem to completely ignore the particular prompts. I guess they might color the interpretation somewhat, but I doubt the public reaction would have been any different with an even more ambiguous statement. As is, the responses all go immediately to the same censorship arguments and concerns. Most social media threads I’ve seen at some point assume (wrongly) that it was taken down by outside pressures and complaints (perhaps subconsciously linking it to the recent controversy at The Met), which would fit just as well with a no-explanation-provided removal.
I’ve yet to read a professionally written article on this that, in it’s body, acknowledges the intention accurately AND respects the artwork in question. Even when they provide quotes, the commentary focuses on unrelated or imagined issues. Others argue the gallery is right to raise questions, but mostly because they just think Pre-Raphaelite art is trash (which is also misunderstanding the curator’s direct statements, just in a different way).
Of course I guess it’s all rorschach tests. I totally get the grain-of-salt caution you’re talking about to headlines, but this feels different. Like the people reporting and responding are missing key frames of reference to even know what to report on or respond to. Which I think is actually where many of us are at on these issues.
To be honest, I definitely went through those same stages of outrage and eye rolling. I then found myself even more outraged by the newspaper articles ostensibly raising the hue and cry against censorship–but only because they felt that such “trashy fantasy” pieces were low hanging fruit that would eventually lead to more “important” modernist artists such as Picasso being censored. Now THAT really got my rage going.
In any case, you raise good points about this event derailing into emotion rather than deeper analysis, by and large. I wonder what the curator could have done differently to better foster the conversation she apparently intended?
I’ve been wondering that too. She calls it a provocation, which I think is fair. If nothing else, it seems to be making it plain where the conversation is currently at if for whoever wants to notice. If anything, it almost seems she overestimated how ready people were, particularly in the press, to hear their message
I find it a little ironic that this painting portrays a myth about a MAN who was so beautiful that he was especially beloved by Hercules and whose beauty was so great that it tempted the nymphs to kidnap him.
Taking the picture out of the context of the story and you have a dude with some sexy women. But the story is actually (hilariously) about a particularly sexy dude. WHO, in the context of the story, caused great love in men and women. (To be clear, it’s not a story about how all women slavishly fell in love with him, but how all humans reacted that way to him. When Hercules lost Hylas he wept for days, I believe.)
Do you think this painting was especially chosen among all the Victorian nudes BECAUSE of the context of the story and that story is part of the desired conversation? Or do you think the painting was selected as a Victorian nude painting beloved by the public that would get a lot of attention if taken down?
I think the context of the story could add a lot to the conversation. If paintings were discussed simply on the objects they portrayed, I believe a lot is lost. If, however, the historical context AND the context of the subject matter itself (especially because so many classical paintings are about very specific stories or incidents) is added to the conversation, it’ll be much healthier and fruitful.
SINCE the posted line is “This gallery presents the female body as either a ‘passive decorative form’ or a ‘femme fatale’.” I imagine that the gallery isn’t thinking of the story behind the painting. But perhaps the gallery IS thinking of the story context and simply saying their own presentation of the painting in the gallery isn’t adequate. Either way, I think it is a great disservice to a painting to not present the context of the story (if the painting does have a concrete incident it is portraying).
In responses made by the curator (I think some of this is in the audio clip linked above), it seems they chose this painting particularly because it’s well liked. It’s also mentioned that the room it hangs in is called “Pursuit of Beauty” and the implications of that title (with other works in the same section taken as a whole) might be a bit out of step with the raised concerns. By my reading of the statement, the concern is not for one isolated image (which the curator seems to quite like) but how this image fits a recurring and clear pattern. One might offer a context and reasonable explanation for every individual painting in the whole collection, but the aggregate message remains the same. Part of what makes the issue so thorny.
Regarding the specific image, it definitely fits to a “woman as femme fatale” narrative for me, in or out of mythological context: Hylas is victim of the lust of the Nymphs, who come across as predatory to my understanding. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like this painting at all, but I don’t find it a stretch to seeing how it supports a message of women as decoration or danger
Do you think this image in a room labelled “Pursuit of Beauty” supports a message of women as decoration or danger, but the same image in a room labelled “Greek Mythology in Victorian Times” no longer supports that message? Because that would be an example (albeit a little boring) of what I meant by putting the painting in context. Not necessarily that you need to read the background of every painting in fine print next to the picture in an attempt to explain them all away individually, but that the painting be presented with it’s context readily available. That would seem in line with the motivation of the curator based on the message posted when the painting came down.
I will say that often times walking through an art gallery can be surprising as to why certain paintings are in certain places. Sometimes that’s a fun surprise, and sometimes it’s confusing.
I could be really missing the point, but tight now my take away is that none of this really has anything to do with the paintings themselves, but with how the gallery presents them.
I think that’s right, that the presentation is a large part of the problem here. For the hypothetical you give on changing the name, it certainly does contextualize the image into a more historical and less general prompt to be interpreted.
I imagine that might be combined with some thought to breaking up the consistent patterns of content. Ideally adding female artists and works that show women in more rounded portrayals, to what extent it may be possible for the era or theme. As I understand it, the theme of this particular room currently can be summed up as “paintings of beautiful women by male artists.” Unless there is a compelling reason historically (artists of the same school for example), it makes sense to me to update that
It difficult to understand what museum curator Clare Gannaway’s real motivation was, but it appears to mostly be a publicity stunt for the promotion of the upcoming Sonia Boyce exhibit. I read the comments on the Manchester website, and did not see any actual response from Gannaway to the hundreds of comments regarding the removal of the Waterhouse piece. So much for “prompting a conversation”. Overall, the whole stunt seemed preposterous, especially considering that the removed painting in question is so tame by today’s standards.
David- As poorly as this event was handled, it is interesting that their premise is giving you a lot of thought. In particular regarding your being “a male artist who sometimes paints sexy women”. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that Gannaway would not like your sexy women paintings, no matter how well done they are. Not only that, but most museum curators are not going to like fantasy art or illustration either. Their opinions will be biased and PC, in most cases. You can’t please everyone! Still, as an artist it is important to consider what the public thinks. After all, your art is a reflection of you.
Yes, the issuing of a press release and filming of the removal are very upfront in their desire for publicity and particularly to make awareness for this upcoming show. My interpretation is that the upcoming show will have a focus on these issues, and will be in line with the gallery’s indication to consider this question for their contemporary exhibits.
Whether or not Gannaway or any other museum curator would dig my work doesn’t dismiss the merit in the points raised. My career has never been about courting museums or academic critics. Agreed on the points that an artist should not aim to please everyone and having to stand by one’s work though. Two truths that are ever present in my thinking.
I agree that the underlying idea is completely valid. We all should be aware of the objectification of women and how they are portrayed. This IS a real issue worthy of discussion. It’s great that you are giving a lot of heartfelt consideration to those points.
Unfortunately that message fell flat in the awkward way the museum used the Waterhouse painting as a pawn. They picked on, and in a way, bullied the wrong painting. It was a testament to the paintings greatness that so many people were outraged by its removal. Hylas and the Nymphs was a superbly painted and conceived, charismatic masterpiece. Apparently it’s big sin was that the nymphs are “femme fatales”, which admittedly was a thing in that period. Really? I feel sorry for anyone who has a problem with this painting for those sort of reasons. There are so many other artworks they could have chosen, that would clearly back up their premise. Ultimately the stunt came off as provocative piece of “performance art”, that completely overshadowed their message.
One good side effect is that it gave a lot of awareness to Waterhouse and his art. And I must point out that Hylas and the Nymphs is both fantasy art, and an illustration. 🙂
I wish I had more time to write out all my thoughts on this, I think I could easily match your word count Dave.
For those who care, I wrote one of the many angry screeds Dave is probably referring to over on instagram @imaginativerealism. And even though I was reacting to the Guardian article that misreported this as censorship (and was very sympathetic to said censorship) and absolutely should have dug a little deeper first, I still mostly stand by what I wrote.
The last century has been absolutely riddled with attacks on various media and art forms. Puritanism is just one of the many, many dozens of competing ideologies and individuals that have engaged in the tactic. The attacks have both appealed to emotion and sought to bolster their legitimacy with bad science. They have ranged from the absurd to the cynical to the sympathetic. And every single person involved in all of them sincerely they believed that they were different from all the rest, that their cause really, truly was just and that this time around the ends must surely justify the means.
And so even though the means weren’t as bad as they were reported and even though the ends may have validity and relevance, I still think it’s a good thing that the angry reaction essentially forced them to put the painting back.
Maybe I’m wrong on this (in fact, I probably am) But I think that there is a time for nuance and a time for condemnation. Whatever their intentions and public statement, removing the painting was not a nuanced act and I do not believe it should have been met with a nuanced response. Now, and only now, that the painting is back, and we have all agreed that removing important paintings is bad, can we start having the nuanced conversations.
Ha, I actually didn’t know that you ran that account! And my thanks for linking this post there as well.
I went back and forth on the removal being worthwhile. It does feel easier to talk about the real stuff now that the painting is back up, but I’m finding myself appreciating the glass of water in the face all the same. If nothing else, it seems to have taken the pulse on how ready we all are for these discussions. Even if there was a lot of righteous concern and/or misplaced anger, well… they got my attention and my interest
The official statement is very reasoned and seems to genuinely want to start a meaningful discussion. However, Clare Gannaway then said on the Manchester Gallery comments section:
“We’d like this gallery to tell a different story in 2018, rather than being about the ‘Pursuit of Beauty’ with a binary tale about how women are either femmes fatale or passive bodies for male consumption. Shouldn’t we be challenging this instead of perpetuating views which result in things like the President’s Club being able to exist? The gallery doesn’t exist in a bubble and these things are connected, surely?” (http://manchesterartgallery.org/blog/presenting-the-female-body-challenging-a-victorian-fantasy/#comment-5993)
Conflating the Waterhouse piece and nudity in fine art in general with a major sexual harassment scandal in the UK (The Presidents Club scandal) and #TimesUp and #MeToo (in a later interview) made it almost immediately difficult to get back to a nuanced discussion about the many, many facets of this issue. I will defend beautiful art to my dying breath, and it is one of the reasons I continue to want to live in this world, but I take objection to being defacto associated with harassers or sexual abusers to do it.
Meaningful discussion and solutions are still needed. This was a poorly executed attempt to get the ball rolling, and may have even set the clock back.
I don’t personally see the issue being nudity, but a pattern in the narratives that diminish women when seen as a overall theme. If the entire museum collection had no images of women at all, it would be equally worthy of comment for similar reasons.
While the reality of something like the Presidents Club might feel far removed from a collection in an art museum, I think I get the thread. Not that the one is a cause of the other, but that both are independent results of a history of objectification in our culture and it’s so uncomfortable to grapple with that.
I initially felt this was a poor execution too, though I’m now seeing it more as taking a pulse on where the conversation needs to focus on
Agreed.
As a side note, and going back to the this particular piece in general, I find Henrietta Rae’s version is as “objectifying” as Waterhouse’s. Having said that, I find Rae’s painting to be comparable, if not even more beautiful, to Waterhouse’s in capturing this mythical story.
Attempting to remove either from public view would be, and will always be, a crime against humanity in my view. That is not my opinion, it is my firmly held belief.
I remember hearing about this painting being taken down. I read some poorly descriptive headlines, sighed, and thought how ignorant people can be. I’m glad they put it back and I’m glad you opened up the conversion to the people who follow Muddy Colors.
The museum handled this issue poorly. I feel if they wanted us to talk about how women have been and are portrayed in art, then why didn’t they just ask us. I don’t like it when someone pushes my buttons to just get an emotional response. They lose my respect for them. On the other hand I see why for the emotional stir; would we have gotten to the conversation we are having today?
I do respect and try my best to understand people’s opinions who are sensitive and/or are offended by these types of works. I may not be in agreement with them but they do have their a right to speak out on things that they don’t care for. All I ask is understanding from them when I speak about my views.
When I look at this painting I’m not at all offended by it. Waterhouse was a painter of his time. I don’t think we should be placing our values on person who lived before us. We can’t change history and we’re wasting our time trying so. Instead learn from the people who came before us.
With all this talk of the “male gaze” and objectifying women in art, it has me thinking have we ever talked about the “female gaze” or how men are portrayed in art? Nowadays, are women, myself included, as guilty for objectifying men?
I feel before we condemned one another or shut each other out, we need to look at ourselves. There’s plenty of hatred going on in our world right now and contributing to it is not going to do us any good. I agree with you, we need to take a pause and think about why someone said what they said or did what they did. And when I say we, I mean everyone, no matter what side your coming from. Only then can we have a meaningful discussion about issues we face today.
For what it’s worth, I’ve seen very little (besides a few snide articles) from anyone who actually finds the Waterhouse painting offensive. I’m understanding it to be the larger pattern which it fits in the gallery that they are questioning. And even that, I’m not seeing people being offended exactly, just looking for a reappraisal of how these works should be presented. If, for example, the museum had not placed importance on showing works of women artists in the past (I understand this portion of the gallery is all male artists), that’s worth considering, right?
When we get into gazes and objectification, I begin to feel a bit out of my depth, but I do believe that objectification is a natural human action? And by that measure I don’t see it as something to assign guilt or blame. It doesn’t have to be “objectification = bad.” The problem that I see here is just that it’s extremely one sided in representation, and has been for a looong time. To whatever degree one is inclined, I’m 100% for women creating objectifying art!
Hello David
Nice rational article.
As a European I miss the point at what actually is the problem with nudity and in extension sexy girls. The thing I am wondering about is if the puritanism is the voice for all womenhood? I hardly doubt it and I even dare say there are many women that actually like being/feeling sexy/pretty. Just check out how much work they put into looking good, or have a look at how many dress in a way to accentuate their female bodies.
In making illustrative art pieces, we strive to create an esthetically appealing image, and let’s be honest, a good looking sexy dressed woman is just pleasing to look at. I have no problem admitting looking at nicelooking women/girls. Does that make me a sexist male swine, I don’t think so. I genuinely believe it is part of my male nature.
Now back to painting, why is depicting a sexy girl such a problem? I don’t see it …
If the situation is appropriate.
In the case of the listed waterhouse painting, I believe the nudity is entirely appropriate. However, I will refrain from depicting chainmail bikini warrior women, because it just seems as silly to me as a male knight running around with naked bum and exposed abs, just to say something (I don’t know what women are attracted to in guys).
Yet I still believe dressed in a normal warrior kit, you can still have the heroine look sexy. So searching for an esthetically pleasing image, it certainly is an option. In fact, I believe the heroine will dress up in some femenine way.
To me it has nothing to do with making the women an object of lust, but to create an estethically pleasing piece to look at. I don’t see any reason as a man to no longer paint a good looking women, as long as it is appropriate for the situation/story. And that appropriateness is all the distinction I am willing to make.
I also believe I am not the only one feeling like this. I don’t know all your works, but I cannot remember any of your works which are inappropriate, so I don’t think you need to feel uncomfortable..
Please understand me that I don’t believe nudity to be the issue here. And in theory, sexual themes are not problematic either. I believe the issue is more to do with a museum collection which shows women exclusively in either decorative or threatening roles.
You mention that a fully armored woman can still be sexy, and I agree. But the artist must make a choice as to which is the priority: arousal or the (presumably non-sexual) action of the character. One thing must be of greater importance than the other, even if both are present. Neither is “bad,” except if, as you say, used thoughtlessly or inappropriately.
Unless specifically creating erotica (and that’s totally fine!), I do believe it is worth being mindful of how often one might default to placing arousal at the higher priority, being as it’s so culturally ingrained that it’s easy to do it automatically
Very thoughtful and balanced article.. I’m glad that at least one person managed to have some fruitful internal debate! I must second @Craven lovelace with the recommendation of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. His presentation of major themes in art history (especially the nude and the male gaze) is really the bedrock of art fluency and sometimes I forget that not everyone is familiar with it. That’s why I was so surprised by many of the comments regarding female objectification, etc; I thought we were all on the same page at this point, but clearly not. Many people seem to be caught up in the narrative portrayed within the painting and fail to see how the painting itself is operating in our society, in its own time and now. It’s really the museum’s fault for failing to communicate clearly and failing to assure everyone that no old paintings are headed for a bonfire… They did succeed in drumming up a ton of publicity however.
We can still love old pieces of art while at the same time acknowledging that the cultural values portrayed in said works do not necessarily align with contemporary values. But it takes education to make clear what is actually problematic about those works.. I don’t think this incident did much but make people dig their heels in deeper.
so well said, thank you!
Sorry, but I can’t agree with your comments here. There certainly was an implicit criticism of the painting in it’s removal and the comments about it. The curators expressed “embarrassment” at the way it had been presented (in a room of similar pictures under the title “The Search for Beauty”–a title that the artists themselves would no doubt have approved of). In saying that the art needed to be presented in a way that is “relevant” to today’s viewer, they are suggesting that the paintings, at least as presented, were irrelevant. They said that they were uncomfortable that these works portrayed women as “passive objects or femme fatales”. That is a criticism. Perhaps you missed that because you agree with them? Fine. That’s your right. But it isn’t the job of curators at a public, government-funded museum to stick their political hangups between the viewing public and the great works of art they were hired to present.
Let’s face it. Most of the people in the art world today hate artists like Waterhouse, have contempt for beauty, and, frankly, would hate fantasy illustration too. They are particularly unhappy with paintings such as “Hylas and the Nymphs” because it offends their feminist sensibilities, and they are eager to repackage such popular paintings in a way that tells people what to think of them, rather than leaving the judgement up to the viewer. I was angry, and I’m saddened that a site like yours is siding with the curators. The angry response led to the paintings quick return to its rightful place. And I’m glad I was a part of that response.
what, then, do you feel is the job of a curator?
The job of a curator in a museum such as this is to present the great art of the past to the public. Of course most museums have more art than they have room to hang. So curators must select the best and most representative works to display. It is most certainly NOT their job to politically purge the art of past eras.
But in this case they didn’t replace the painting with another “better” work. They left the wall blank, with a message about it’s removal, inviting comment. They also removed images of the work from their gift shop. This was a politically motivated stunt–not curation.
I would say that the curator should be sacked, but she probably had approval to act as she did, so maybe the head-rolling should move to individuals of greater authority. Hopefully this was a learning experience for the museum, and hopefully they’ll think twice before showing disrespect to great works of art in the future.
ok, you’ve missed that this museum also shows contemporary artists. And that this whole event is directly connected to their contemporary art exhibit programming. And that they stated clearly that it was temporary. And that the curator likes Hylas and the Nymphs and describes it as one of their most popular pieces. And that the action was done with support and coordination of the staff because they felt raising these questions supports the mission of their museum
Yes, it’s a very popular work with the public. I guess I missed the curator’s comment about loving the piece herself. I’d be interested to see where she ranked it among her favorites in the museum… ; )
As far as their action supporting the mission of the museum, clearly a large number of people felt that it did not. I don’t believe that it does. The museum’s rating on their Facebook page fell like a rock during the incident, and I’m guessing all the public complaint played a part in the speed of the painting’s return. I’m travelling to England later this year, and intend to visit this museum. If, by chance, I’d shown up and it had been in storage due to some pitiful contemporary art stunt, I would have been extremely disappointed.
I agree, just a bunch of feminist idiots trying to exploit a beautiful work of art to invite people into their political views, disgusting and pathetic.
ZZXX,
Your viewpoint would be much better received if you omitted the word ‘idiot’ from your comment.
Instead, you’re immediately presenting your opinion as biased. It’s insulting, ineffective and makes people disregard any point you’re trying to make.
We have a no-consorship rule here on MC, but we also have a no trashtalk rule. If you can’t refrain from insults, I will ban you.
You are totally capable of making a good point without the name calling.
This is an excellent take on this discussion, though I wouldn’t expect less from you!
I’m honestly surprised it’s not more common to look up the original news source before engaging in conversation about it. I always do so because I don’t want to end up defending something I don’t agree with, and certainly don’t want to bash something unnecessarily or assume things incorrectly. In todays world, especially with the internet, information is always being filtered through opinion and bias.
I do wish the museum was more clear about when they were going to return it, because I think that uncertainty caused a lot of panic and anger which distracted from the conversations they wanted to be having. When I engaged with people about it, I found myself having to defend ‘why have this conversation in the first place’ instead of actually having that conversation.
There’s without a doubt a lot to learn on this topic, though, even for someone like me who discusses and ponders topics about gender on a regular basis, as I am a transmasculine nonbinary person. I don’t ever see people like myself in art galleries anyways, so I just never stopped to consider how different the experience might be for others. I’m much more used to addressing these things in relation to modern media – we can’t change the past after all, but we can learn from it and argue for a more inclusive future.
(Also, as an interesting note to anyone who assumes objectification is natural to everyone, I want to mention that as an asexual it isn’t for me – I see the nude body the same way I’d see, say, a pretty flower. On that note, I can be a bit out of my depth discussing objectification.)
Thanks so much for that perspective!
“I found myself having to defend ‘why have this conversation in the first place’ instead of actually having that conversation”
yes, 100%!
Nice, nuanced response Dave. The problem is “nuance” is not the way this world works anymore. They were heavy-handed in their execution; it’s really no surprise that people were equally (or surpassingly) heavy-handed in response. “These are telltale signs that I have misunderstood the problem, because I’ve been fortunate enough to not know that problem. Because confronting this problem is uncomfortable and threatening”. Nuance. I wholeheartly applaud you, but unfortunately, it seems like people who think like this make up approximately 5% of the population. Haha. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Maybe. (Scary!) The truth is perhaps this WAS necessary; sometimes if you don’t ‘shout’ your grievances, they can be easily ignored, trivialized, or worst yet (as is generally the case today),… ‘shouted down’. Personally I find the whole fiasco silly, and I’m a little bit sad that the current state of our society necessitates it; you’d think a quarterback kneeled on the football field or something… 😮
Nice article, thank you! Some new perspectives offered.
Sadly in this case I think the action they undertook was blatant and gives little incentive to analyse deeper. They tried to jump on a (very full) bandwagon and achieved the exact opposite of what they set out to do. Not sure if anything was achieved at all, to be honest.
The painting is back, the discussion will die down soon in our fast world. Good!
What really gets me in this whole situation, is that it’s so easy to pick an easy mark – a classical painting of a painter long gone to “fight objectification” and completely ignore the elephant in the room – popular culture or whatever you call what they put on tv and media. You can scroll and scroll MET’s facebook page and not find a single post with painting of a nude, because, gosh, Titian’s Venus is so demeaning! While no one dares challenge pop culture because there are real people with money and lawyers. But it’s so easy to make an example of classical art. It won’t fight back.
And now you just went and explained it all, and explained it all away, like there are nuances to this, and that makes that ok, what they did.
You don’t have to scroll very far on the MET’s facebook before finding nudes of both sexes.
And I think this entire stunt is a challenge to pop culture, and pop culture is being challenged more today than ever.
Hi Dave!
This is such a great article about this issue! Thank you for this!
I don’t like this “artistic performance”, and I’ll explain why later, but I was incredibly disappointed at all the articles that, for the sake of sensationalism, talked about censorship and nude figures and the curator being “embarrassed” (totally out of context).
The problem with encouraging discussion with an act like this is, in my opinion, that the act of “removing a painting” speaks more loudly than every reasonable question you want to ask. So yeah, it sparks a discussion, but not the discussion you were looking for. And, even worse, it creates a dangerous connection between “talking about the representation of the female figure in art” and “taking paintings down”. Nobody wants that!
But I do believe those are very important and relevant questions: I have no right or wrong answers, but it’s good to be asking questions because too often we very uncritical about what we see as established, and we keep repeating it without asking ourselves if it’s still ok, now and here. Asking if we are putting things in the right context and what story are we telling about it is extremely important and I’m sad it has been shadowed by an act so strong and universally perceived as “wrong” as removing a painting.
High culture takes down a great work of art to make a statement. Meanwhile, in pop culture a new Fifty Shades movie is in the works. I shake my head in wonder at the selective, ever shifting censorship of the politically correct.
Thank you for your more balanced take on this subject. In my opinion, this was almost purely a publicity stunt, even if not fully intended that way. A discussion involves two sides, and making a unilateral move does not promote this. I imagine removing 3-4 images throughout the gallery, with a range of contexts/responses to the ideas of gender and sexuality would have been more productive. Most provoking in my opinion, would be to replace the image with a photo reconstruction of the scene with genders reversed: a nude, attractive woman being lured into a swamp by 6 Hylas clones. What would your gut reaction be to a woman being lured by a group of men for lascivious purposes, even if everyone involved looks pleased by the scenario, compared to the current image?
I don’t think their publicity stunt was well executed. I would assume a museum curator would understand work like Waterhouse’s beyond ‘It’s just beautiful women’, since he did strive to tell stories with his work, not just depict the female body like an object. So I can either assume the curator is not fit for her job, as she chose poorly or didn’t know what she was doing, or that her attitudes towards work that doesn’t seem any more or less salacious for its time is a little bit hostile.
Maybe there is a third, but why would she pick something like Waterhouse? Just because its popular and well-liked? Well what kind of response and discussion would you expect then? There just seems to be no good reasons, and no positive outcome from any of this. Furthermore, by picking on art before the Modern art movement, she’s just punching down. It wasn’t so long ago that it was near impossible to learn to do beautiful, technical art without getting lucky and finding places to learn; the modern and post-modern art movements made sure of that. The curator’s choices seem to ensconce her with those who see little value in the skill and care artist’s like Waterhouse displayed. A poor look, and doomed their little experiment from the get-go.
A thoughtful post, Dave—and hardly a surprise that it’s received more reader comments than usual. Given today’s climate in which art and artists are routinely under attack (for reasons either right or wrong), I think it’s natural for people to respond defensively. For my part, I’m all for conversations about art, past and present as long as they’re both honest AND respectful, as long as both sides listen and are heard. Curator Clare Gannaway’s tactic of removing the Waterhouse came off (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not) more like a one-sided declaration and polemic targeting certain types of art than it did the first step in a debate. Her interview comments didn’t help her position. Was it an honest (if, IMO misguided) attempt to prompt dialogue, or little more than a publicity stunt (as other’s mention) or a projection of contemporary outlooks and standards onto the past as an attempt to elevate the new? I don’t know, but I imagine that she and artist Sonia Boyce were taken aback by the immediate backlash. I think the conversation—the debate—Gannaway said she wanted could have taken place without a fuss from anyone with the Waterhouse hanging in place;t by removing it, they sent the (perhaps unintended) message that the only view that mattered, the only voices that should be heard…was Gannaway’s and Boyce’s. As such the tactic became the topic and the negative reactions understandable. All interesting, just not in the ways the Manchester Gallery anticipated.
There was a time when people trying to censor and control were the conservatives.
Today, the young and “”””””””progressive”””””””” crowd are the ones trying their best to censor, especially the female body, if it is in any way attractive or idealized, the same people who made this stupid prank to make people start to discuss about “victorian fantasies”, what a damn joke.
Two points:
1- No reaction is possible to the initial statement since it didn’t actually make any points, certainly not in any concrete or dialectical way. It was just wafty ‘let’s discuss this’ psychobabble.
2- If censorship was not intended why was the painting removed, if only temporarily? Replacing intellectual debate with post-it stickers is simply juvenile.
The whole affair is merely self-regarding pseudo-intellectual posing.
Let’s say it wasn’t a PR stunt, and it is perfectly fine for anybody who happens to take charge of any museum to use any art in that museum to make political points in any way they see fit including as part of somebody else’s art or through removal and storage.
The choice presented, then, is actually quite simple, as far as moral questions go…
If you choose to accept the terms of the debate as laid out by the postmodernists involved, you are accepting the premise and validity of the debate; which is that the depictions in Waterhouse’s, Frazetta’s, Elvgren’s art and Your Own Art are “problematic” and incontrovertibly so.
That you have been passionate about such art means, therefore, that you have an inherently problematic moral nature of which you were heretofore ignorant. Now that you have become morally aware of your inherently problematic nature and taste, your love for such work must be equally compromised.
The question then becomes; while you may not be able to change your nature, will you now give up your simple, unbridled love of some of your favorite paintings because they are problematic and morally compromised as cultural products? If you refuse to censor your enjoyment of such work, will you be able to live with being considered “problematic” and possibly even reprehensible by the people who have forced this debate into your life? Additionally, it is conceivable that, given the erotic content of your current work, that you yourself will be questioned if you continue to produce it. What then? Maybe you will need to give up such work entirely, right? Otherwise your reputation can be irreparably harmed.
So the question has gone through a metamorphosis. “Do you love this art?” has been converted to a question of character “Are you a moral or immoral person?” which then translates into a political and financial matter, “Are you willing to face the consequences of continuing to produce erotic work from the male perspective?”