Is it ever okay to apply a modernday filter to art of the past?
We asked Ashleigh Wilson, arts editor at the Australian, to weigh in É
Afew years ago, a storm erupted over a small oil painting by Balthus, the enigmatic Polish-French Modernist known for making art about adolescence. The work is called Thérèse Dreaming, and it hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It shows a girl, no more than 13 years old, lost in thought, her eyes closed and her skirt raised to reveal white underwear beneath. The picture dates back to 1938, but how does it speak to contemporary viewers? A picture of innocence or vulnerability – or something darker? In late 2017, two New York sisters were shocked by what they saw. They launched an online petition calling on the Met to remove or contextualise the work, saying it “romanticises the sexualisation of a child”.
Their petition coincided with a period of self-reflection across America. The news about Harvey Weinstein had broken two months earlier, and powerful men were being called to account. The Met, though, held firm: “Moments such as this,” the gallery said, “provide an opportunity for conversation, and visual art is one of the most significant means we have for reflecting on both the past and the present and encouraging the continuing evolution of existing culture through informed discussion and respect for creative expression.”
This was far from the first time contemporary audiences felt the need to re-evaluate work from an earlier age – and it won’t be the last. We find ourselves at an interesting juncture, with new questions being asked about power, culture and the cost of making art. But has something changed? Have we started to understand less and to condemn more?
It’s not just the work. Artists themselves are being scrutinised like never before. From Picasso to Michael Jackson, Donald Friend to Chuck Close, the line has been drawn: no longer is creative genius an excuse for offensive behaviour. About time, right? But when it comes to artworks falling out of favour, these questions are harder to resolve. Looking back through history – especially to works that draw on empire, crown or church – it’s easy to find paintings and books that jar with modern sensibilities.
Sometimes it’s just a question of taste. To consider the history of the Archibald Prize, for instance, is to experience almost 100 years of Australian taste-making, from serious white men in serious suits to the visual spread we see today.
Sometimes we feel uncomfortable for a reason. The art world would be more inclined to describe Arno Breker as a master sculptor were it not for the fact that his best-known works glorify the Third Reich. The cultural stereotypes in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado sit uneasily with some opera lovers. Mark Knopfler, the lead singer of Dire Straits, knows it’s not enough to say he was being ironic with the use of a homophobic label in Money for Nothing. And when Bing Crosby dressed in blackface during Holiday Inn (1942) – well, that’s a problem, too.
Critics of the day were alarmed when they first encountered Manet’s Olympia in 1865. James Joyce’s Ulysses is one of the great novels of the 20th century, but don’t tell that to the authorities who called it obscene. They also gave Nabokov a hard time over Lolita a few decades later.
In more recent years, the work of Melbourne photographer Bill Henson became entangled in moral panic after it was seized by police from a Sydney gallery. Kevin Rudd, the prime minister at the time, called Henson’s portrayals of nude adolescents “absolutely revolting”. In response, one prominent Henson collector, Malcolm Turnbull, argued for the importance of artistic freedom. More than 10 years on, the reputation of one of Australia’s most celebrated artists remains stained, fairly or otherwise, by tabloid scandal.
Cultural appropriation is another flashpoint. In 2016, Lionel Shriver caused consternation at the Brisbane Writers Festival when she gave a speech about identity politics and fiction. But where one writer sees censorship, another might see arguments for respect, tolerance and community.
Of course, some works just feel out of date. The other day I watched Cocktail and found the casual misogyny of Tom Cruise’s character hard to take. But I still laugh at Delirious and Raw, Eddie Murphy’s stand-up specials from the 80s, even though I cringe at the way he wraps his jokes around countless slurs.
Fashions vary, as next month’s 60-year anniversary of Vogue Australia attests. But instead of reaching for the delete key, the challenge is to find a way to engage. Art will endure, and these conversations will continue to evolve. Instead of banning Mark Twain, we might want to reflect on why the N-word appears 219 times in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Instead of banning Eminem, we could ask what his lyrics reveal about the music industry in the late 90s. And if certain photographs, like Sam Haskins’s work from the 1960s, feel risqué now, we might take a moment to ask ourselves why.
Ashleigh Wilson is the arts editor of the Australian and author of two books: On Artists (2019) and Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing (2016).