Critics are eyeballing a London gallery after curators placed a label on a famous painting warning about the depiction of the “male gaze,” a move that’s been decried as an empty gesture to call out misogyny.
A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, a painting by Edouard Manet depicting a female bartender staring at a male customer seen in a mirrored image, has been reinterpreted in the museum’s description as containing “unsettling” elements. This has prompted some art historians to criticize London’s Courtauld Gallery, where the painting is on display, for diminishing the presence of the female subject by drawing attention to the male character.
“This interpretation, in a woke attempt to call out misogyny, unwittingly centers the male gaze,” said Ruth Millington, an art historian who specializes in female aspirations in art. “The writer implies that the woman is unsettled by the man’s presence, framing her as a passive victim of her circumstances.”
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The relabeling was finished in advance of the museum’s reopening in November 2021, according to the gallery, which told the Washington Examiner the label reflects “the latest scholarship as is relevant for one of the world’s preeminent centres for the study of art history.”
The painting depicts a woman, Suzon, whom Manet knew and who worked at the Folies-Bergere, a site notoriously known at the time to be popular among prostitutes. Several historians have suggested Manet’s work hints at the bartender making herself available in this way to male customers.
Curators at the Courtauld have also added labels to works by French painter Paul Gauguin, who was known for depicting Tahitian subjects and several of his teenage brides, with curators noting he took “advantage of his position as a European coloniser,” according to the Telegraph.
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The labels are part of a three-year project seeking to address societal ills such as racism and sexism that may affect how artists’ works are interpreted in 2022.
Several museums worldwide have revisited how they showcase similar works, with the Picasso Museum in Paris hosting events that critique the painter’s personal life and the National Gallery highlighting Gauguin’s promiscuous lifestyle, the outlet reported.
