Content warnings at Tate

Warning: This blog post contains strong and sometimes challenging imagery, including depictions of slavery, violence and suffering.

Baroque Britain

When I visited the Baroque Britain exhibition at Tate Britain I was surprised that there was a Content Warning at the entrance to the second room. This warned us that some of the images were disturbing and might upset visitors. Specifically, a massive painting by Benedetto Gennari the Younger which shows black people in collars and chains. Slaves, in other words.

Portrait of Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin by Benedetto Gennari the Younger (1674)

A handful of other paintings show rich people – men and women – being served or accompanied by black servants, but this is the only one where the black people (all boys, I think) are wearing very obvious metal slave collars round their throats.

William Blake

This is the second warning notice I’m aware of Tate putting up. The William Blake exhibition last year also warned visitors, in these words:

The art of William Blake contains strong and sometimes challenging imagery, including some depictions of violence and suffering.

That’s putting it mildly, seeing as Blake illustrated Dante’s Divine Comedy with its extensive descriptions of thousands of sinners being subjected to all sorts of tortures and torments in Hell, and Milton’s Paradise Lost which opens with Satan and the fallen angels languishing in agony in a lake of fire. Presumably it was these images of fire and brimstone which the warning was talking about.

Satan, Sin and Death: Satan Comes to the Gates of Hell by William Blake (1807)

Although when you actually look at Blake’s images, they are pretty inoffensive, aren’t they? Is an image like the above really thought to be so scary that visitors to an art gallery need a warning about it?

I wonder if the curators have ever seen a Hollywood film? Or even an average episode of Eastenders? Chock full of threat and violence. I can think of plenty of other Tate exhibitions which were full of much more genuinely upsetting images.

Notes and queries

Maybe visitors do need to be warned that art galleries and exhibitions contain images of slavery or violence or threat, but this new trend obviously raises a few questions:

Slavery 1 – black slavery

There must be thousands of images of black slavery scattered around the art world. Will every single one of them eventually require a Warning? For example, the huge memorial sculpture to slavery by Kara Walker currently on display in the atrium of Tate Modern. I don’t recall there being a warning for visitors about to encounter this. Should there be one?

Much more appalling and upsetting than any painting is actual period photographs of black slaves, which survive by the tens of thousands. I suppose if there’s an exhibition about slavery, or about these kinds of photographs it will be self-evident but, presumably if they’re included in exhibitions focused on other subjects – like the American Civil War or American history – presumably any photos of slavery will require a warning, as well.

Slavery 2 – white slavery

Most pre-modern societies had some form of slavery: ancient Rome and ancient Greece were based on slavery, and the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings traded in slaves (it’s estimated that at the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066, 1 in 10 of the British population were slaves).

The Mayans and Aztecs kept slaves in the Americas, as did the Sumerians and Babylonians in the Near East. The Egyptians employed huge numbers of slaves, including Israelites, Europeans and Ethiopians. Slave armies were kept by the Ottomans and Egyptians.

In Imperial Russia, in the first half of the 19th century, one third of the population were serfs who, like the slaves in the Americas, had the status of chattels and could be bought and sold.

In fact the English word ‘slave’ is derived from Slav, the white ethnic underclass of Eastern Europe that provided the bulk of medieval-and-later slaves, not only to Europe but to the Turks, Arabs and Tatars.

SLAVE – late 13the century, ‘person who is the chattel or property of another’, from the Old French esclave (13c.), from Medieval Latin Sclavus ‘slave’ (source also of Italian schiavo, French esclave, Spanish esclavo), originally ‘Slav’; used in this secondary sense because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples. (Etymological dictionary)

Will any gallery displaying any images of slaves from any of these historical cultures, from any period of history, from anywhere around the world, require there to be warning messages for visitors?

‘Trade negotiations in the country of Eastern Slavs by Sergei Vasilyevich Ivanov (1909)

If not, why not?

Violence 1 – secular

Human history is more or less the ceaseless history of wars and empires, human history is saturated with conflict and violence. Will notices warning of ‘strong and sometimes challenging imagery, including some depictions of violence and suffering’ have to be placed outside every gallery which includes any images of conflict and war?

The first VC of the Great War won by Capt Francis Grenfell of the 9th Lancers at Audregnies, Belgium on 24th August, 1914 by Richard Caton Woodville

Violence 2 – religious

Christianity is saturated with violence. Its central image is of a man being tortured to death, and is closely accompanied by the stories and images of countless thousands of other Christian martyrs, most of whom died blood-curdling deaths.

Will all of these images require a warning notice? They would have to be put up in every gallery which includes images of the Passion of Christ or of the saints and, if we follow this logic through, outside every Roman Catholic church in the world.

Crucifix at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama, USA

Why now?

Why now? The painting by Benedetto Gennari the Younger has existed for 340 years and been sporadically on public display throughout that period, the Blake images for over 200 years during which they have featured in numerous books and exhibitions.

Why are these warning notices making their appearance now?

It’s not as if we are suddenly more opposed to slavery – the Campaign to Abolish the Slave Trade got going during the 1780s, 240 years ago, and used as many images of atrocities against slaves as it could find. Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest international human rights organisation, was founded in London in 1839 and is still very active. I.e. graphic images of slavery have been in the public domain for over 200 years.

As to images of threat or violence, my God what have most movies for the past 100 years been about, plenty of plays and countless hundreds of thousands of art works not to mention millions of photographs taken of every war since the Crimea or the Indian Mutiny.

What is it in contemporary society which suggests that art lovers, old and young, native and foreign, have, for the last 300 years or so, been able to confront and process images like this without any kind of warning… but now they can’t.

Re. the slavery images, is it because the black population of the UK has reached a kind of tipping point where images like this are no longer acceptable, even in an obviously academic and historical context?

Have changes in social attitudes across the British population suddenly made images of black people in chains unacceptable?

But what about the warning about Blake’s pretty harmless cartoons? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Or is it not British society, is it the attitudes of art curators which have changed?

Is it not the British public that the curators are concerned about? Is it the art curating profession which has been swept by progressive views, and whose modern woke training has told them that images like this are objectionable.

When they envision visitors being offended, is it really themselves and their progressive cohorts who they are envisioning?

Conclusion

So I’m not belittling the impact that images of black slavery might well have on black, or any other, visitors to an exhibition like this, or the emotional impact of images of threat or violence might have on gallery goers more broadly.

But up until a year or so ago, curators of pretty much every gallery and museum in the world were happy to assume that gallery visitors were grown-up enough, adult enough, to take images like this in their stride. To be shocked, maybe, maybe even to have an emotional response, but to be able to cope with it.

I’m genuinely curious to know 1. what has changed and 2. where this new trend will go.

And 3. am I going to have to put warnings at the top of every one of my blog posts which is about war or slavery or violence or conflict or threat? Because that’s most of them…

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Reviews of other Tate exhibitions

• British Baroque: Power and Illusion (February 2020)
• Dora Maar @ Tate Modern (December 2019)
• John Opie @ Tate Britain (November 2019)
• Mark Leckey @ Tate Britain (November 2019)
• Nam June Paik @ Tate Modern (November 2019)
• Kara Walker @ Tate Modern (November 2019)
• William Blake @ Tate Britain (October 2019)
• Natalia Goncharova (August 2019)
• Art Now: France-Lise McGurn: Sleepless (July 2019)
• Mike Nelson: The Asset Strippers (July 2019)
• Frank Bowling (July 2019)
• Franz West @ Tate Modern (May 2019)
• Van Gogh and Britain @ Tate Britain (May 2019)
• Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919 – 1933 @ Tate Modern (April 2019)
• Dorothea Tanning @ Tate Modern (March 2019)
• Don McCullin @ Tate Britain (February 2019)
• Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory @ Tate Modern (February 2019)
• Christmas slugs @ Tate Britain (December 2018)
• Turner Prize 2018 @ Tate Britain (December 2018)
• Anni Albers @ Tate Modern (December 2018)
• Edward Burne-Jones @ Tate Britain (October 2018)
• Aftermath: Art in the wake of World War One @ Tate Britain (September 2018)
• All Too Human @ Tate Britain (March 2018)
• Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will be Taken Into the Future (January 2018)
• Red Star over Russia (December 2017)
• Impressionists in London @ Tate Britain (November 2017)
• Giacometti @ Tate Modern (September 2017)
• Soul Of A Nation: Art In The Age Of Black Power @ Tate Modern (July 2017)
• Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 @ Tate Modern (June 2017)
• Queer British Art 1861-1967 @ Tate Britain (April 2017)
• The Radical Eye @ Tate Modern (March 2017)
• David Hockney @ Tate Britain (February 2017)
• Robert Rauschenberg @ Tate Modern (February 2017)
• Paul Nash @ Tate Britain (December 2016)
• Painting with Light @ Tate Britain (August 2016)
• Georgia O’Keefke @ Tate Modern (July 2016)
• Performing for the camera @ Tate Modern (March 2016)
• Frank Auerbach @ Tate Britain (February 2016)
• Every Room in Tate Modern (January 2016)
• Every room in Tate Britain (part one) (January 2016)
• Every room in Tate Britain (part two) (January 2016)
• Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past @ Tate Britain (January 2016)
• Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture @ Tate Modern (December 2015)
• The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop @ Tate Modern (November 2015)
• Agnes Martin @ Tate Modern (September 2015)
• Fighting History @ Tate Britain (August 2015)
• Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World @ Tate Britain (August 2015)
• Sonia Delaunay @ Tate Modern (May 2015)
• Salt and Silver @ Tate Britain (April 2015)
• Sculpture Victorious @ Tate Britain (April 2015)
• Conflict, Time, Photography @ Tate Modern (March 2015)
• Late Turner @ Tate Britain (January 2015)
• Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian art @ Tate Modern (August 2014)
• British Folk Art @ Tate Britain (June 2014)
• Ruin Lust @ Tate Britain (March 2014)
• Richard Deacon @ Tate Britain (February 2014)
• Paul Klee – Making Visible @ Tate Modern (January 2014)
• Art under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm @ Tate Britain (December 2013)
• Lowry and the painting of modern life @ Tate Britain (September 2013)
• Lichtenstein: A Restrospective @ Tate Modern (March 2013)
• Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian avant-garde @ Tate Britain (September 2012)
• Damien Hirst @ Tate Modern (September 2012)
• Picasso and Modern British Art @ Tate Britain (July 2012)
• John Martin @ Tate Britain (December 2011)

Posted by Simon on March 3, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/content-warnings-at-tate/