Le Figaro Nantes
For once, it's neither a bare breast nor a woman's penis that offends a Silicon Valley giant, but... a head planted on a pike.
It is not a Revolution, sire, but a revolt - that of the Maccabees, painted by Rubens (1577-1640).
An oil on canvas by the Dutch painter, completed in 1635 and exhibited at the Nantes art museum, depicts the rebellious Jewish commander Judas Maccabeus in the aftermath of his victory over the Hellenistic general Nicanor, in 161 BCE.
Woe to the vanquished: this soldier supposed to quell the revolt is executed.
But, woe also to Rubens: for Google, its detached and bloody leader paraded at the top of the table would not be for everyone.
The American megacorporation came to seek trouble with the application of the Nantes art museum, which serves as a mediation tool for the establishment.
Rubens' painting appears in a section dedicated to "30 masterpieces" taken from the different departments of the museum, alongside compositions by Georges de La Tour, Eugène Delacroix and Judit Reigl.
But there is a problem.
A “sad” and “pathetic” decision
Google will contact the director, Sophie Lévy, in November 2023 to announce the upcoming ban on the application for children under 12 years old.
The curator, taken aback, tries to find out which work could have attracted the wrath of the panopticon algorithm;
Like other French art museums, the Nantes collections after all retain their share of female nudes that can irritate American digital prudishness.
But no, it was Rubens' painting, inspired by the Old Testament.
“Gore content
”
, for Google.
Rubens' painting tells an episode of the Maccabean revolt.
This historical conflict, also recounted in certain versions of the Bible, opposed, in the 2nd century BC.
BC, the Seleucid empire to a Jewish rebellion, in the current Israeli-Palestinian region.
Bridgeman Images
“I expected everything except that, it’s a rock and roll way to say the least of seeing the very classic painting of Rubens,”
reacts Sophie Lévy for
Le Figaro
, upset by the approach of the American giant
“at the same time funny and annoying, a little pathetic and a little sad
.
The Nantes art museum was finally asked to accept the establishment of a warning to access its application, unless it removed the representation of the painting.
The third option was to simply remove the application from the Google Play Store.
Read alsoAt the Nantes History Museum, the Genghis Khan festival
The application, downloaded more than 10,000 times, is now flanked by an orange alert indicating to minor users that the agreement of their parents would be
“desirable”
, before risking further, noted our colleagues from
Ouest France
.
The art museum makes do, waiting, perhaps one day, to be able to do without this intermediary.
“Beyond the power of platforms, I see that this story illustrates immense confusion, a blatant lack of education in reading the images that circulate freely on social networks,”
explains Sophie Lévy.
Everything is smoothed out, put on the same plane.
We replace Beauty with Good;
and, through this moral judgment, something is taken away from works.”
Since the rise of Gafam in the 2010s, multiple incidents have revealed the variable geometry censorship of works of art by algorithms.
Among the most notable cases is the case of an Internet user whose Facebook account was deactivated in 2015 for daring to share
The Origin of the World
, the painting by Gustave Courbet kept at the Musée d'Orsay and representing the sex of a woman.
Three years later, the social network apologized for having censored
Liberty Leading the People
, by Delacroix.
However, the scissors of censorship have not ceased to be idle, particularly on Instagram.
Tired, the Academy of Fine Arts stepped up to the plate in 2022 to denounce the rampant censorship of works on social networks.
No such compromise, on the other hand, inside the Nantes art museum.
Even in front of a Rubens.