The plague of presentism seems to be on an unstoppable march. One might think that the exercise of projecting the values of the present day onto the past has been exposed often enough to discourage those practising it. But this is not the case: it is not only zealous activists who want to see artwork embodying one of the ‘guilty isms’ disappear but overeager bureaucrats, too.
A minor German government official was apparently so upset by the sight of a nude female statue in a Berlin federal office’s entrance hall that the sculpture was removed last year, German paper Bild learned. The historic sculpture of the Venus de’ Medici, the outlet reported, was perceived as “sexist” and was therefore returned to the Federal Art Administration last July.
The bronze statue, made in the early 18th century as a copy of a 1st-century BC marble now kept in the Uffizi museum of Florence, Italy, had embellished the entrance of the long-named Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues in the Weißensee district of Berlin.
But the Equal Opportunities Officer of the said German office made a complaint, arguing that the displaying of the statue was in contravention of the Federal Equality Act.
After Venus, or Aphrodite in Greek, the goddess of love in Greco-Hellenic culture, was banned from the Federal Office, the Federal Art Administration gave her to the Grassi Museum.
Museum director Dr. Olaf Thormann told Bild it was beyond him how “Venus Medici might be perceived as sexist. It … does not show any charismatic nudity. This alleged offence is a strange interpretation of art,” said Dr. Thormann.
“The female nude–just like the male nude–has existed in art history from the very beginning. To construct sexism from this misses the entirety of art history and, I would say, even the perspective on something deeply human,” he added.
While the worshippers of this new creed of ‘pudor’ are quick to banish art that reflects the grandeur and beauty of Greco-Hellenic culture but which, they claim, offends the sensitivities of certain groups of people, they are just as eager to impose their version of ‘equitable art’ on others, regardless of its aesthetic value. As we reported, this was the case in Florence, Italy, where an almost four-metre-high statue of gilded bronze depicting a black girl is now towering over the square, and will remain there until September, probably to remind the poor Florentines of their ’unconscious bias.’ The statue, titled Time Unfolding, is supposed to counterbalance a space dominated by ”male power.”
O tempora, o mores.