Do Museum Wall Labels Hide Artists’ Misogyny? Gauguin and Picasso Protested at Met – 博物馆墙上的标签掩盖了艺术家的厌恶吗?高更和Picasso在会议上抗议

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08 Nov 2018

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Do Museum Wall Labels Hide Artists’ Misogyny? Gauguin and Picasso Protested at Met

8 Nov 2018

Artist Michelle Hartney has created #MeToo-inspired wall labels to call out the abusive actions of art history’s icons

Paul Gauguin, Two Tahitian Women, 1899. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Do Museum Wall Labels Hide Artists’ Misogyny? Gauguin and Picasso Protested at Met - 博物馆墙上的标签掩盖了艺术家的厌恶吗?高更和Picasso在会议上抗议

Paul Gauguin, Two Tahitian Women, 1899. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

On the evening of Saturday 3 November 2018, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art became the site of a guerilla performance project, zoning in on the abusive behaviour of the male artists that line its walls. Artist Michelle Hartney’s Performance/Call to Action (2018) subverted displays of artists such as Balthus, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso, by applying her own series of wall plaques across the galleries to highlight their misogyny. While Hartney stressed that she is not advocating censorship of artworks, she argues that museums must do more to educate the public about the darker side of the artists that they venerate. The museum removed Hartney’s texts when they were discovered by staff.

Hartney produced her own wall texts to accompany paintings by Gauguin, who infamously took several indigenous teenage girls as his wives on moving to the South Pacific islands of Tahiti and Hiva Oa in the 1890s. Gauguin’s native brides were aged just 13, 14 and 14 – he infected them and other locals with syphilis. To accompany Gauguin’s work Two Tahitian Women (1899), depicting two topless figures, the museum’s text describes the artist’s focus ‘on the beauty and serene virtues of the native women.’ In Hartney’s intervention, she posted up a label quoting from Roxane Gay’s article ‘Can I Enjoy the Art but Denounce the Artist?’ (2018), in which the latter wrote: ‘We can no longer worship at the altar of creative genius while ignoring the price all too often paid for that genius.’

Courtesy: Instagram

Do Museum Wall Labels Hide Artists’ Misogyny? Gauguin and Picasso Protested at Met - 博物馆墙上的标签掩盖了艺术家的厌恶吗?高更和Picasso在会议上抗议

Courtesy: Instagram

Hartney’s intervention at the Met also drew attention to allegations of misogyny and abusive behaviour towards women by Picasso. While in his 40s, the artist had an affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom he met when she was just 17. Alongside Picasso’s The Dreamer (1932), which takes Walter as its subject, Hartney added a piece of text quoting from comedian Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix show Nanette (2018), which drew critical acclaim this year for its fusion of social commentary, memoir and art history.

In Nanette, Gadsby argues: ‘The history of Western art is just the history of men painting women like they’re flesh vases for their dick flowers.’ Considering Picasso’s comment that ‘Each time I leave a woman, I should burn her. Destroy the woman, you destroy the past she represents,’ Gadsby concludes that the artist ‘suffered the mental illness of misogyny.’

Hartney created a similar performance earlier in the year in which she applied her own wall texts to Balthus’s Girl With Cat (1937), on display at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Titled Correcting Art History: How Many Crotch Shots of a Little Girl Does It Take to Make a Painting? (2018), she called out the artist’s ‘lifelong obsession with young girls.’

Hannah Gadsby, Nanette, 2018, film still. Courtesy: Netflix

Do Museum Wall Labels Hide Artists’ Misogyny? Gauguin and Picasso Protested at Met - 博物馆墙上的标签掩盖了艺术家的厌恶吗?高更和Picasso在会议上抗议

Hannah Gadsby, Nanette, 2018, film still. Courtesy: Netflix

The #MeToo era has pushed renewed scrutiny within the art world around issues of display, and the power of museum’s wall labels to either conceal or acknowledge artists’s sexual misconduct. Art collective The Guerilla Girls recently created wall labels imagining what a proper response from museums might look like, reacting to allegations of sexual harassment against the artist Chuck Close. ‘The art world tolerates abuse because it believes art is above it all,’ the collective’s labels read, ‘and rules don’t apply to ‘genius’ white male artists.’

Some museums have begun to actively revise their captioning to highlight problematic histories, in light of current concerns. In June, the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts added new labels to paintings contained within its early American portraits gallery, to identify figures from history who had profited from the slave trade. ‘These paintings depict the sitters as they wish to be seen […] Yet a great deal of information is effaced in these works, including the sitters’ reliance on chattel slavery,’ the museum’s new introductory label states.

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新闻/新闻/2018年11月08日高更和毕加索在2018年11月8日在Met..........Met.......的抗议活动中,艺术家米歇尔·哈特尼(Michelle Hartney)创作了受MeToo启发的墙壁标签,以唤起艺术史图标的滥用行为。保罗·高更,两个塔希提女人,1899岁。礼貌:维基媒体共享WPA6021602IMG保罗·高更,两个塔希提妇女,1899。礼貌:Wikimedia Commons 2018年11月3日,星期六晚上,纽约大都会艺术博物馆成为游击队表演项目的场地,聚焦于围墙两旁的男性艺术家的虐待行为。艺术家米歇尔·哈特尼的《表演/行动呼吁》(2018)颠覆了巴尔蒂斯、保罗·高更、巴勃罗·毕加索等艺术家的画展,她把自己的一系列墙牌横跨画廊,以突出他们的厌恶。虽然哈特尼强调她不主张对艺术品进行审查,但她认为博物馆必须做更多的工作来教育公众关于他们崇拜的艺术家的阴暗面。当工作人员发现哈特尼的文章时,博物馆就把它们拿走了。19世纪90年代,哈特尼为高更的绘画创作了自己的壁画,高更娶了几个土著少女为妻,搬到南太平洋的塔希提岛和希瓦·瓦岛。高更的土生土长的新娘只有13岁、14岁和14岁——他感染了她们和其他人。患有梅毒的猫科动物。为了配合高更的作品《两个大溪地妇女》(1899)的描绘,博物馆的文字描述了这位艺术家对“当地妇女的美丽和安详美德”的关注。在哈特尼的介绍中,她贴出了一个标签,引用了罗克珊·盖伊的文章“我能安乔吗?”艺术,但谴责艺术家?“我们不能再在创造天才的祭坛上崇拜,而忽视为创造天才付出的代价。”“礼貌:Instagram Do Museum Wall Labels Hide Artists’ Misogyny? Gauguin and Picasso Protested at Met - 博物馆墙上的标签掩盖了艺术家的厌恶吗?高更和Picasso在会议上抗议 Courtesy:Instagram Hartney的介入。”MET的注意力也引起了Picasso对女性厌恶和虐待行为的关注。在他40多岁的时候,这位艺术家与玛丽·泰斯·沃尔特发生了婚外情,他17岁时就遇到了他。除了以沃尔特为主题的毕加索的《梦想家》(1932)之外,哈特尼还添加了一段引用喜剧演员汉娜·加德比的《奈奈特》(2018)的文章。今年,这部喜剧集社会评论、回忆录和艺术史于一身的《奈特》广受好评。在《纳奈特》一书中,加兹比说:“西方艺术的历史就是男人们把女人画成肉花瓶来献给她们的鸡蛋花的历史。”“毁灭女人,你毁灭了她所代表的过去,”盖茨比总结说,艺术家“患有厌女症的精神病。”哈特尼在今年早些时候创作了一场类似的表演,她把自己的壁画文本运用到巴尔蒂斯的《带着猫的女孩》(1937)中,并在学校展出。芝加哥艺术学院。标题:修正艺术史:一个小女孩要画多少张画?(2018年)她大声疾呼这位艺术家“终生痴迷于年轻女孩”。礼貌:Netflix WPAP6024602IMG汉纳·加德比,Nanette,2018岁,电影仍然。礼仪:Netflix#MeToo时代推动了艺术界对展示问题的重新审视,以及博物馆的墙壁标签隐藏或承认艺术家性行为不端的力量。艺术集体游击队女孩最近创建了墙标签,想象博物馆会做出怎样的适当反应,以回应对艺术家查克·克洛斯的性骚扰指控。“艺术界容忍虐待,因为它相信艺术高于一切,”该团体的标签上写道,“而规则并不适用于‘天才’的白人男性艺术家。”一些博物馆已经开始积极地修改其字幕,以突出有问题的历史,考虑到当前的担忧。六月份,马萨诸塞州的伍斯特艺术博物馆在其早期的美国肖像画廊中增加了新的标签,以识别从奴隶贸易中获利的历史人物。博物馆新推出的标签上写道,这些画描绘的是人们希望看到的[…]然而这些作品中却抹去了大量的信息,包括人们依赖动产奴隶制。新闻/Paul Gauguin Balthus Pablo Picasso大都会艺术博物馆新闻


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