Sometimes I google images for inspiration to various topics in my teaching. Visual material is my prime analytic tool when defining research questions, so it is also a way for me to see if there are any new angles in a topic that can challenge my perception and preconceptions. This time the  results was quite unexpected and made me wonder if I'm living in a parallell universe...

Earlier this week I had a seminar on Taste and Aesthetics in a course on design history. So I quite simply googled the word "aesthetics" (though in Swedish: "estetik"). I'm not sure what I was expecting. Perhaps som portraits of Immanuel Kant, some images that might have been used to define beauty... What I got was 10 pages of images illustrating plastic surgery. Both of beautiful young women in commercials or in more instructive images used as information of various treatments (I guess thats the chosen terminology), and of celebrities known for their perhaps not so successful facelifts, use of botox and implants. The above image is one of the top results and comes from an advertisement of a Swiss clinic.

OK. I was not trying to get all moralistic about it, even if I felt a slight sense of panic. Plastic surgery is getting more widespread in Sweden, but still it is not common. I went to my male colleague next door and asked him to do the same google search, since the result might be influenced by gender. But no; the same images in a slightly different order.

I'm confused. What does it mean when the philosophical concept of aesthetics in popular use now seems so strongly identified with plastic surgery? Have beauty nowadays turned into a question of (female) good looks and charm?

An "update": When discussing this issue with a colleague who is doing an inventory of popular trends and future buzzwords, I may have found another key for understanding why aesthetics is so connected with plastic surgery. According to some predictions Western culture is turning into a "transformation culture", where we transform various aspects of our lives. House make-overs, changes in life styles with exercise and diet are obvious examples, so why not also the growing industry of plastic surgery?

The status of images were debated by medieval theology as there was a fear of the possible seductive character of images. Among the common people of the parishes images were far more popular than texts — and far more accessible — so in order to gain control over this powerful emotional trigger a lot was written on how to create, read and use images in churches. She is a bit "late", but this quote by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) would have been a good read for both Gregory the Great (540-604) and St. Bernard (1051-1153). Both suggested quite a strict use of art and images in Christian devotion and favored the use of "mental images".

"I had so little ability to represent things in my mind, except for what I could see. I could profit nothing from my imagination, [unlike] other persons who can see things in their minds wherever they pray...for this reason I was such a friend of images. Unhappy those who by their fault lose this good! It surely seems that they do not love the Lord, for if they loved him, they would delight in seeing his portrait, just as one is still happy to see someone one loves dearly" (quote from J. Kienschnick, "Material Culture" in The Oxford handbook of Religion and Emotion, 2008, p. 227)

This portrait of Teresa of Avila is according to Wikipedia made by an unknown artist, but Bernini made a famous sculpture of The Extacy of St. Teresa of Avila in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. I guess it is fair to say that she herself became a loved image.

In February I was browsing through an archive with clips from Scandinavian newspapers and accidentally found an almost heartbreaking story about a Virgin lost and found. 

In September 1961 the police wanted information on a sculpture of a Madonna from Steninge parish church in Halland that had been lost for 38 years (!). The church was now restored and the parish wanted their precious artifact back. The photo reminds of the ones used for missing persons with such a sad expression on the Virgins face (the sculpture is in fact a Pietà as you can see below). It was taken in 1923 during an inventory — the same year that the Virgin mysteriously disappeared from a museum exhibition in Gothenburg. 

Then, in 1974, the Madonna is reported to be found, but this caused new problems for the parish. A discussion over who should have the custody over the Virgin was being raised. The parish wanted her back as it was her original home, as if talking of a real person. The museum thought the Virgin was too valuable and too fragile to be placed back in the church, taking no responsibility over the fact that it was stolen from their care in 1923, and claimed the sculpture in a matter of public interest.

I would have to consult other archives to reveal all the details to this history, but these two pieces of the puzzle are interesting on their own. Why did the police chose to publish a detail photo of the Virgin's head? Wouldn't it be easier to recognize if it had been a photo of the whole sculpture? It really looks as if it is a missing person rather than an image, also the text is describing how the parish wants "her" back. Still it is not a religious argument behind this claim, but a question of cultural heritage. A desire of making the church whole again by bringing together artifacts of its medieval history. But why call it a "madonna"?

The museum quite naturally also discusses the matter based on cultural heritage, but probably want to preserve it for other reasons. Making it more accessible to scholars and keeping it in a safe environment. This is a common debate during the mid- and late 20th century when parish churches wanted medieval sculptures, altarpieces and baptismal fonts back from museums. There was a growing interest in Christian medieval history and it gave the church and the parish a new attraction and possible authority.

Today what is left of the sculpture is back in the church, which is probably the best solution. It is not restored to its former glory, but perserved in the state it was found in the beginning of the 20th century after some hundred years of neglect.

Just a quick update - the guide to the art works and the architecture on Umeå university campus have now been released in English. It is called Art Trail at Umeå university and is now sold for a bargin price of 100 SKR. You can find the book at the university shop, at BildMuseet and at Visit Umeå/ Umeå Tourist Center.

"The art pleases by reminding, not by deceiving."

The quote by artist John Constable (1776-1837) stuck a chord in me when I found it in E.H. Gombrich's classic study Art & Illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial representation (org. 1960) while preparing for a seminar earlier this autumn. Why? Partly because I am trying to dig deeper into possible perceptions of art in a medieval context. Images were to a large extent used in the Christian context as a way to both remember and experience (relive) the biblical scenes. Various techniques were used to fill images with a vividness that made them evidence of that the events in biblical stories were the truth.

In the book by Gombrich the above work by Constable, Wivenhoe Park, Essex (1816), is a recurrent example throughout the study of the perceptions of art. It is a landscape painting of a park with a grand house in the background. We can see some cows belonging to the estate in the foreground and a lake with men in a boat fishing close to a pair of swans. It is a sunny summer day, but clouds are gathering and it might start to rain in a while. Even if we probably never have been to the actual place we believe it is realistically depicted since it follows established conventions of landscape painting. But Constable needed to translate his experiences into the medium of paint and he had to make some negotiations with the truth to make the painting believable. It basically looked better with some minor adjustments.

It seems like one of the greatest fears of experiencing art today is to be deceived. Occasionally voices are raised that want art to stay close to the truth and not lie to the audience or it will automatically loose its credibility. But what would happen if we thought of art more as remembrance? What Constable was trying to explain was that art makes sense when we can understand it from our own experiences. If it is reminding we can more easily connect the experience to our own lives, as something from our history or as a point of reference to personal beliefs or moral values. It will not always work, because we do not want some experiences — but so what? Art can never please us all.

A local incident have put the spotlight on the (not so) noble art of censorship. Let's begin with the context. The above image is a film still from a video message from Håkan Juholt, former leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, to a local leading loud-mouth politician from the same party, Lennart Holmlund. It was shown at a big event as part of celebrating Holmlund as he is about to leave politics. It is very tongue-in-cheek and as you can see Juholt chose a statue of a naked women as background to his 30 second long film. And so, the controversy begun — and it is a very interesting and multilayered problem that presented itself. The local TV-channel contacted me to make a statement, but I want to dig a little bit deeper into this than what a 5 minute interview cut to 10 seconds on the air can afford. Situations like this one happens all the time, I just wish politicians or bureaucrats could call me first for some good advice.

So where to start? Let's start with the response from the organizer of the event when they saw the video. Their immediate reaction was that this film cannot be shown as it might come across as sexist, and Umeå has an ambition of being aware of issues of gender and also has a proud feminist tradition (soon a museum focussing on women's history will open). They were probably right, but instead of communicating this to Juholt it was decided that the sculpture of the naked woman should be blurred from the image. So  it looked like this...

When a local newspaper published the original film on its website, the controversy begun. Juholt was offended both because he had not been informed of the manipulation and because the sculpture of the woman was made by his maternal grandfather, Arvid Källström. He could not understand why an artwork depicting a naked woman in this day and age should offend anybody so much that it lead to censorship — especially in Umeå, The European City of Culture 2014. It was not even offensive in 1954 when it was made. His opinion was supported locally and the organizers apologized, said that Juholt should have been contacted and that they did not realize it was a piece of art... As if not art can be offensive ever?

I can fully understand why the organizers saw a potential discussion of sexism in this film. Naked women in art are common goods, especially in Swedish public art in the 1940s and 1950s. A beautiful female nude was considered as something that most people could understand and appreciate as good art. Today discussions of objectifications of the female body does however problematize this conception of the female nude, and Juholt also missed other aspects of his inclusion of his grandfather's work. We don't see the whole sculpture, just the parts of it that inevitably focus our gaze on the breasts and the curve of the hip. I would call it a sexualized fragmentation of the sculpture and together with Juholt's speech the whole staging with this naked body comes across as very "guy-ish". When it was first shown the audience it also lacked other information on the context such as where it is placed, who made it and when. It is not as familiar to us as it is to him. Of course I can understand his intention to celebrate Holmlund by including an art work as a "secret message" to the city of Umeå (and perhaps give himself some "cultural credibility" at the same time) but this gets lost in this presentation. If the organizers' had contacted Juholt this could easily have been clarified, but instead they acted on instinct (and I don't know how much time they had to make this decision) and created a new problem. The fact that if you try to hide something, you often turn the attention to it and your act will backfire completely.

Call me next time, because you clearly need some art historical competence! Art historians do not just know the names of numerous artists and the titles of various art works. We also know about the perception of art, visual culture, we can also explain historical contexts as well as contemporary readings and a whole lot more.

Back from the summer vacation I have been doing guided art tours for a number of times: on campus, in the city center and in Umedalens Sculpture Park. As some of you probably know I love it! On many levels it is the ideal way of introducing students, art lovers, and others to art and art history. But on the Welcome Fair for new students last week, where my department organized a guided tour, a female student of twenty-something looked at me and asked kind of sceptic: "Why should I do that?". Before I could answer her she was gone to some other activity. I guess we all need a reality check occasionally, for — lo and behold — what one takes for granted is not what everybody else might consider fun, important or necessary. I just wish she could have stayed just a few more minutes, so that we could had a longer talk. Most likely it would have been an important lesson for me.