A screenshot from the Musee d’Orsay’s video promotion from “Masculine / Masculine. The Nude Man in Art from 1800 to the Present Day” and its inspiration (inset) Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin’s “Jeune homme nu assis sur le bord de la mer” (1855) (via Wikipedia)
European museums have been slower than North American institutions to adopt a digital-forward way of doing things, but the Musée d’Orsay’s recent video promotion for their latest show, Masculine / Masculine. The Nude Man in Art from 1800 to the Present Day, is on the cutting edge of the online wave.
While most museum promotional videos fixate on showing us the objects in a particular show — and in the process show us too many things in frames or in darkened rooms with a calming narrative voice, often with a British accent if it’s in English — this video offers an interpretation that sparks your interest in the inspirations behind the various tableaus. As an added bonus, the video has no narration, thus appealing to a more global audience, and the museum allows the scenes that morph from one to another to speak for themselves. It was created by Tito Gonzalez Garcia, a Paris-based French-Chilean director with an intriguing Vimeo channel. As the artistic director for the video, Lorenzo Papace, explained on his blog (which also includes lots of great behind-the-scenes photos), “C’est un voyage dans l’art et dans le temps.” It’s a journey in art and time.
It certainly helps that the show’s theme, masculinity, is a sexy topic, but there are countless other shows that could benefit from selling their art historical shows with a twist. The Metropolitan Museum’s latest show Balthus: Cats and Girls — Paintings and Provocations is a perfect example of internet-ready catnip.
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA) has been doing some interesting things with their own YouTube channel, but their videos still largely tread the well-traveled territory of documentary or — when they’re being adventurous — music videos, but the art in the latter often ends up feeling more like decor than anything else.
But all is not great with the d’Orsay video. I do question the judgment of the creators about the artistic version of blackface they employ in the video in order to emulate the figure in a painting by Kehinde Wiley. While done in an unconventional way (ink spilled into a bathtub) it nonetheless taps into a much larger issue, and doesn’t really have a place in an advertisement that aims to appeal to a wide cross-section of the public. Some things may be lost in translation but this isn’t one of them.
There is 2 ways to see this issue, one, is a very negative one, unfortunately very American, and another very positive, they are using the same model to portrait different paintings, it would have been ridiculous not to paint his skin black, and knowing Wiley’s work, it’s all about black dudes, totally appropriate.
It seems to me the author of this note is not taking in consideration the video comes from Europe. I wasn’t born in America although I live here now, I didn’t even blinked when I saw the video and I couldn’t understand what was the author talking about, I had to see it again. I didn’t find if offensive at all, but beautiful and very creative.
I’m not American. I’m Canadian. And there’s a history (very prevalent) of blindness in Europe to issues of racism, and often worse (active racism), as a scandal as recent as 2011 at the French Football Federation points out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13236864
But thanks for communicating your perspective.
Hi Hrag, thank you for your reply and link. Not saying that French people (and other Europeans in general) cannot be racist, or Vogue magazine not stereotyping and using anorexic models (!), in fact Europeans can be very much racist. But I do think the race issue is a very delicate topic and not always seen the same by similar cultures as you might know. I can see how black models could have felt offended by not asking them to pose and using a white model, ok I can give you that but still there is the question of the creative not to be able to enforce his/her vision because they will be label as “racist”. In the case of the video I honestly cannot see what else could they have done without interfering the artist/ creative’s concept. Hire a black model and paint him white for all the shots but Wiley’s? Or hiring 2 models to be politically correct? You see where I am going with this? On the other hand, you are totally on your right to presenting the question and criticize them if you need to, of course. Not envying your job at all. Salut,
I think the problem here is that the model was supposed to be representing “man” in the generic sense, yet when they come to representing this painting they choose an unusually stark ink-black color change to represent a black man. The subtext is that all of the other men are neutral but this one, this one right here, this is not just a man, it is a black-man. It would seem less insensitive if the skin tone change were more subtle or really anything like the actual painting – the side-by-side comparisons at the end of the video show you just how off they were, the model is coal-black and the painting is bronze. It feels like looking through the eyes of a non-black person who has decided that black people are “other”, a whole different category of person.
I also find it notable that the model in the video looks nothing like the blond man in the Cadmus painting but there’s not effort to make him look like him. So, the question is does he look enough like him because he’s perceived to be white? I think that’s where it really becomes clear to me that there’s a problem in the representation of blackness.
EXACTLY I noticed this myself – a wig is so easy, but it doesn’t matter to this author, that distinction is unimportant.
When I say author I mean the author of the commercial, not the article. I also want to say that I don’t think any of the use of symbols that I would call is intentionally insensitive, which is what makes it so insidious. The author of the commercial actually just cannot see why this matters. I actually think the commercial is quite nice and taking on an interesting topic in an otherwise savvy way.
I appreciate both of your responses, Joseph and Hrag… however… putting myself as the devil advocate that I am, since I think the label of racism can be taken way out of context and very diminishing to anyone’s work… I have to ask myself a question, regarding what you both said. Taking in consideration both context of the work of Cadmus and Wiley… Cadmus’s The bath is depicting homo eroticism in it, right? Perhaps the bath after sex of two gay lovers… have to ask if the wig could have been that important… obviously they decided not to put another man in the interpretation, they could have very well put a young blond male, but hey that’s our interpretation, not the artist, could be very well as you said, Joseph, to let it be more universal, as the universal man, so no need of a second man… However, in the work of Wiley, if I would have seen the guy with no interpretation of the black male, I would have said, wtf this guy is not reading Wiley’s work at all, Wiley’s is all about the lack of black males through art history, it could have be even more offensive not depicting the “blackness” of the male figure in this case than depicting it.
I left a note re: this topic and your comment about cadmus and wiley but didn’t show up???
You may be right, it is totally subjective from the white-men point of view. And from this point of view, looking at two naked men from feet to the head, there is a greater optic difference between a white-man and a black man than between a brown-white-man and a blond-white-man. And painting the hair wasn’t absolutely needed for the allowing the illusion. I also agree that the blackface is a caricature, but they are caricatures of each details in the video. You are looking at this one because you want to think about it. I’m okay, this is not politically correct, but certainly not racist. As I don’t care if a man is black or white, for me, everybody is equal, so I was very far away asking to myself if I could caricature the skin color like I did with weights, clouds, shields, swords, cities, bathroom, socks, muscles, and everything else on stage. I don’t think like this, I don’t think that skin color really matter and this is why I couldn’t expect this kind of reactions. I’m sorry if it is looking racist or skin-pejorative, I swear it wasn’t our aim.
Thanks for explaining your thinking.
And of course it is followed by a man who seems vaguely primitive.
What’s the point of an exhibition featuring historical paintings beyond “showing us the objects in a particular show — and in the process show us too many things in frames or in darkened rooms”…? This video is pure camp kitsch, not that that’s a bad thing, but it is. The “objects” are the exciting thing, really. I would hope that a museum’s advertising and PR, no matter how overtly networked, should take a seat and let the objects do their own work on their own terms (stillness, exposition via stewardship) and attract interested visitors to stand and look, in attendance because they would like to be and not because they’ve been marketed to. The nude men who appear in paintings don’t get up and move because if they did they would cease to be nudes, they would cease to be paintings, I think they would just be naked men. Desiring a painting to do something that it cannot do is common, but unfair. Promoting a painting as being something that it is not is bad business practice.
On the other hand, it could be cute if every time a museum mounted an exhibition of Vermeer’s paintings, they used the movie version of “Girl with a Pearl Earring” starring Scarlett Johansson to gain exposure for the show. Actually no, never mind, that would be obnoxious and crass.
I don’t think it’s camp, I think you’re misreading what camp is. Video of objects online is monotonous and only appears to the die-hards. What I see here that is interesting is that it is an appealing video and generates interest in a show.
Fair enough, but I know what camp is.
Ok. I’d love to hear why you thought the video was camp.
I’ll reply in a bit, I’m doing laundry.
The video is camp. It replaces the art it advertises with theatricality and artifice, it cheats its “inspiration” by making much out of overly Stylish mimesis, posing. The inspiration is also its client, however. Tito Gonzalez Garcia seems talented but I’m assuming that he didn’t decide to make this video from out of no where, (is he a commercial artist? if so: camp) I’m assuming he was hired by the museum after some consulting and so on. But that’s neither here nor there. These “paintings come alive” are probably already considered camp or kitsch when viewed normally because they feature Beaux Arts styles, decorative styles above all, sometimes viewed without seriousness as being kitsch, featuring beautiful nude men to boot, suspicious of homoerotic tells.
Anyway, I don’t know if I care that its kitsch, I probably don’t, but as a fan of “conventional painting,” that is, painting that consciously forgoes attempts to jazz itself up with irritating gimmicks, I’m guessing that I might like this show without having to read a lot of praise and critique for a glorified exhibition announcement. Since when do we feel like critiquing PR when there are paintings we could be looking at.
I don’t fault your point of view, however, I concede that this video probably does get the people of Paris interested, which is a nice thing.
“But that’s neither here nor there. These “paintings come alive” are probably already considered camp or kitsch when viewed normally because they feature Beaux Arts styles, decorative styles above all, sometimes viewed without seriousness as being kitsch, featuring beautiful nude men to boot, suspicious of homoerotic tells.”
What? So Beaux Arts are kitschy now? Either you don’t know the meaning of the world kitsch or your syntax is terrible or you are terrible ignorant, sorry don’t want to offend but I didn’t get why this viideo is kitschy??.
About commercial artist: You are clearly not taking in consideration that many artist have to do commercial art to survive, as oppose to the occasional millionaire sunday painter who move to laguna beach or any other rich beach community and all they do is paint and criticize anything that is not a traditional landscape or figurative work. I have nothing against traditional painting, btw, I am trained academically and very formally in painting and drawing but putting other’s works down just because the person happens to do commercial art is incredible ignorant from your part. Commercial artist many times have made a smooth transition to the art world even making movements… ex. the majority of the pop artist, and photo realist were graphic artist, including Rosenquist, Thiebauld, Estes, Cottingham, Wharhol. Painter John Register too. (Only to name a few that I remember)… so
Kitsch is not an insult its a category of visual style. I don’t think I was using the word as an insult, i was trying to say that the decorative and commercial arts have a direct line/connection to camp and/or kitsch because of the legacy of prominent homosexual men who’ve championed these arts as “valuable,” and they possess an inherent theatrical function or use-value as opposed to being art for art’s sake as a matter of “pure” aesthetic philosophy. Jean Hippolyte-Flandrin [above] happened to decorate the ceilings of Beaux-Arts architecture with murals, a commercial art (survival), I obviously do not view that as “less than.”
What I am actually trying to discuss here is the fact that this video is the PR horse before the Art Show cart, and it should remain that way, because yes I find the paintings to be of interest. As a matter of opinion the paintings possess more merit than the campy, gimmicky video. What I’m saying is that its possibly a waste of time getting excited over this particular piece of kitsch and/or splitting hairs over “problematic” advertising because although it may raise public interest it’s also really familiar and twee. Thanks for putting the “hyper” in “hyperallergic.”
kitsch is an insult to any artist since it implies an imitation of art, it’s not a category of visual arts, if you call an artist’s work kitschy you are saying that this person is imitating art and not being able to make art from it, it’s very insulting
“i was trying to say that the decorative and commercial arts have a direct line/connection to camp and/or kitsch because of the legacy of prominent homosexual men who’ve championed these arts as “valuable,”
what?
“What I’m saying is that its possibly a waste of time getting excited over this particular piece of kitsch and/or splitting hairs over “problematic” advertising”
I think is very diminish of you not to give any conceptual (and creative) value to the artist who created this video. Yes it’s commercial but also it’s a creative work from an artist, don’t you think so?
I agree, it is a creative work from an artist and you are correct, I am diminishing it. I am not, however, diminishing all kitsch, because there is good kitsch out there. I want to diminish this video in particular because I don’t like it, it’s not that good, it is an advertisement for works of art that are superior to it, even though some of said paintings are probably kitsch. To recap: this video is a creative work from an artist and a kitschy gimmick at the same time.