Visualizing political opinion in Holland

Today the blog Islam in Europe reports from the dutch preparations for election. Here a visual compass has been created by the newspaper Trouw to assist voters with reading disabilities to find the party close to their hearts. Among the thirty issues raised are expulsion of immigrants and the right to free speech. 

As Islam in Europe notes, the illustrator has decided that no blondes (or read-heads) should be present in the Muslims crowd, while the presumably right-winged group on the left have several blondes. Another interesting feature is the way the speech bubbles seem to communicate the message that the mullah is propagating a positive message about gays, Jews, and western women, while the blond politician is giving a straight forward-speech on Muslim immigrants. For a reader not fluent in dutch, like me, the message then is "should we be allowed to talk (positively) about other groups in the society", rather than the actual "Everyone may say in public what he wants, even if it leads to discrimination".

Another image show immigrants leaving Holland. A man in a wheelchair, a woman in burka and a family. Here the illustrator is able to communicate the message well. Expulsion has grave consequences for the individuals involved, and should not be done lightly, although I'm quite sure the blond politician above would have drawn the image quite differently.  

Ways of Seeing

The 1972 BBC television documentary, Ways of Seeing, by John Berger was probably one of the earlier attempts to lift our understanding of art beyond its art-historical and aesthetic value. Although visual religion is hardly touched upon in the series, important issues in the study of visual culture are raised. Throughout the documentary, the focus is on the spectator’s ever changing perception of images.

The four program series explains how the meaning of an artwork changes with its context, in particular according to how the artwork is displayed. The same painting can be understood quite differently when it is on a museum wall, in a church or in a book, and its interpretation changes with the gender, age, education and culture of the spectator. Modern reproductions of artworks as postcards or as television images are seen as examples of how the meaning and function of art develop with its media. Here Berger is influenced by the essay "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") by Walter Benjamin in 1935. Other examples are how an accompanying text, i.e. an art historical descriptions or a commercial text, alter our perception of what is displayed. The textual, architectural, ritual, musical and social setting of an artwork determines how we grasp the message of the image.

Episode two and three in the program focus on oil-paintings and the female nude in particular; the materialization of female form in the images. It is argued that the paintings of nudes had a similar function as photos of female models in modern magazines and commercials. The images are created for the male spectator, but also become the form in which women reflect their own bodily-images. The program also focuses on the presentation of material wealth displayed in the images, arguing that the main purpose of oil-paintings was to display and enhance the owner’s social status.

Episode four talk about commercials. Berger argues here that the commercial photograph has taken the place of the oil painting. Both painting and photograph display material wealth, but where oil-paintings display the owner’s possessions and achieved wealth and status, the commercial photograph show us the possessions and status yet to be achieved.

Ways of seeing Episode 1: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Ways of seeing Episode 2: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Ways of seeing Episode 3: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Ways of seeing Episode 4: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Guinea-pigs in blasphemy?

When writing about guinea-pigs as the main course in some Peruvian paintings of the Last Supper, I came to think about a story which was reported some years ago from Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg, Germany. It took me some time to locate the story on the Internet, but I was at last able to remember that the story was retold by Peter W. Poulsen in Icon, the journal for students of religious studies at the university of Copenhagen back in 2002. It was based on a small story in Hamburger Abendblatt in 1999.

Hagenbeck zoo has a large open outdoor area for free ranging guinea pigs. It consists of a large grassy plain and a miniature alpine village where the critters roam and are their own masters. Among the buildings is also a church standing two meters tall; a monumental building for such small animals.

Way back, now about 40 years ago, a local catholic pastor was enraged when he over time observed how the critters entered the church at all times of day. Only God knows what blasphemous acts the furry animals conducted behind the walls of the church, hidden from view of the priest. The case of the sinful activities of the guinea pigs became a major topic for Sunday lectures in the church, and soon sufficient public support was raised to demand that the door of the church was shut for the critters once and for all, and so was their access to Christianity.

The case was first reopened after 30 years in excommunication, when the Catholic Church and Hagenbeck zoo in 1999 came to an agreement that the doors would again be opened. By then the zoo had received complaints from hundreds of children. Why were the doors of the other houses in the village open, but the church closed, they asked. Do not guinea pigs have access to God? The church backed down and gave the following statement:

“Of course guinea pigs should go to church. The attitude of the church to the creatures of creation has become more conscious and open. The story of creation places the animals of creation under man’s supervision”.

For the study of visual religion, and perhaps for cognitive theorists as well, it is fascinating to take note of yet another example of how animal behavior is made anthropomorphic. First by the animal-keepers when they decided to build an alpine village for animals originally living in burrows, and then later by the priest who must have judged the behavior and church-going practices of the critters by human standards. Also the children’s interpretation has this tendency. The function of the church is important as well, as children and priest alike understand the model-church as a sacred building that may be used or misused by their furry congregation.



(Photo by AMagill)