Posted on 02/05/2024 1:16:31 PM PST by nickcarraway
The Lenbachhaus museum in Munich has redacted part of the title of a 112-year-old August Macke painting depicting Native Americans, a decision that has spurred controversy in Germany.
The Macke work, previously titled Indians on Horseback Near a Tent (1911), has been in Lenbachhaus’s collection since 1964, and has hung ever since with that name. But the museum recently changed it so that the word “Indians” now appears as “I******” in its English label, with a similarly styled version for its German counterpart.
The right-wing tabloid Bild accused the museum of “woke madness” in its display copy for its story about the redaction.
Manuel Petzl, the parliamentary leader for the Christian Social Union, told Bild, “Everyone should speak as they want. However, I am against adapting historical works to the current spirit of the times. Intervening in the work of an important artist who can no longer defend himself borders on censorship.”
On Monday, Lenbachhaus issued a lengthy statement denying that it had censored the Macke work’s title.
“As a public museum, we are obliged to critically reflect on the Blue Rider and his work in a historical context,” the institution wrote. “Dealing with the history and art of the early 20th century requires dealing with historical sources whose language and images can sometimes contain derogatory or even racist elements.”
The statement also clarified why the title had been restyled: “The work title given by Köhler is sometimes perceived as racist by our national and especially international guests, which is why we do not want to reproduce it on the title plate without comment. Replacing the letters of the so-called I-word with an asterisk (I*******) allows you to clearly identify which word it is. At the same time, people affected by the foreign name are not immediately offended by the word. In the booklet and the text next to the painting, we wrote out the word in quotation marks because the term is critically contextualized there.”
Macke was one of the artists involved in Der Blaue Reiter, an early 20th-century avant-garde movement whose members sought to portray nature via colorful abstract forms. Lenbachhaus’s holdings related to the movement are particularly rich, and are set to constitute the bulk of a Tate Modern show devoted to Der Blaue Reiter this year.
In its statement, Lenbachhaus said that Macke had never titled the painting in question. Instead, its former owner, Bernhard Köhler, lent the work its name.
At the time that this painting entered the Lenbachhaus collection, the offending term in its title was utilized to refer to Native Americans and was widely used by the general public. Today, it has fallen out of favor and is generally viewed as racist when used by non-Indigenous people.
The retitled Macke work, a painting that shows figures with headdresses on horseback near a teepee, is not one of the artist’s most well-known pieces, but it is not the only one he painted depicting Native Americans. In an essay on these paintings, art historian Marie Watkins noted that Indians on Horseback Near a Tent contains “romanticized and stereotypical imagery” and that with it, Macke had “misread Native American society.”
"When American GIs poured into Germany in 1945, they were astonished to discover that German children, after 12 years of Nazi rule, could be found decked-out in buckskins and feathers and playing 'Indians'. Every spring in Radebeul, a quiet Dresden suburb, tens of thousands of grown-ups do the same. The explanation for both these phenomena is Karl May (1842-1912), a Saxon weaver's son, jailbird, self-described linguist—and the man who single-handedly invented the wild west for generations of Europeans. Long before the Lone Ranger, May was giving unruly cowboys what-for, befriending Winnetou, a great Apache warrior, and generally bringing peace and order to the frontier. "
Ich bin ein Cowboy The Economist, 24 May 2001
Let's go burn some books.... < s a r c >
I’d change it to Injuns.
I am Scots/Irish and Ani-Yun-Wiya...Not just Indian, but DRUNK Indian....
“Indian” for the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas is not racist, and “Native American” honors an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci. Anyway it’s offensive to have a horse in the painting—that’s cultural appropriation. The Indians didn’t have any horses until the Spanish brought them over.
Karl May visited the USA but apparently never went west of St. Louis.
It still amuses me that many of our friends in Germany, who’d grown up on the many books, thought Karl May some kind of authority about “the West.”
Reminds me of the military 1967 when the B-52 engine department wanted a cartoon mascot they chose a cartoon American Indian riding on an “Engine”.
I hope the guy did not visit Indiana.
Lol.
If King County, Washington, originally named for an obscure Vice President who died in office after serving less than two months in 1853, can be renamed for Martin Luther King, Jr., then Indiana can be renamed for India. Of course by the time they get around to that, India will demand that everyone call it by the Hindi version of the country's name (whether they can pronounce it or not).
What about PETA?
They object to using the name of animals in titles.
The title should be “I***** on H*********”...........
These people are insane.
There is no other word for it.
It’s a mental illness.
It must be contagious.................
Not gonna happen...........
If I had a print of this...I’d buy it and hang it in my house. I love it.....
They didnt have little pointy roofed cabins either.
Now we know that the war band burning this farmstead were likely post Spanish influence and likely before English control.
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