Rubens nudes have entranced those visiting the world’s great art galleries for some 400 years. Contemporaries on whom the Flemish master is said to have had a profound impact include Van Dyck and Rembrandt … but none of this has passed muster with Facebook’s censors.
In a move that has prompted a semi-playful complaint to the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, it has taken down a series of promotions on social media for the Belgian region of Flanders because they feature works by the artist famous for his Baroque paintings of voluptuous women and cherubs.
Advertisements containing sexually oriented content, including artistic or educational nudes, apart from statues, are prohibited on the site.
In an open letter signed by most of the museums in Flanders, the Flemish tourist board, Toerisme Vlaanderen, has written to Zuckerberg to ask for a rethink. “Breasts, buttocks and Peter Paul Rubens’ cherubs are all considered indecent”, the letter says. “Not by us, but by you … Even though we secretly have to laugh about it, your cultural censorship is making life rather difficult for us.”
Posts removed have even included an advert featuring Rubens’ The Descent from the Cross, in which Jesus is naked in his loincloth.
The Flemish tourist board has pushed its point by releasing a short video in which the “nude police” drag away visitors at the Rubens House in Antwerp to stop them from gazing at the implicated paintings.
The tourist office is currently running a two-year programme promoting the Flemish masters Rubens, Pieter Bruegel and Jan van Eyck.
The office’s chief executive, Peter De Wilde, said: “Unfortunately, promoting our unique cultural heritage on the world’s most popular social network is impossible right now.”
Facebook said it had accepted an offer from the tourist office to talk about the issue, and insisted that the paintings would not be prohibited in normal posts, but only in advertisements.
The German government recently condemned Facebook after Zuckerberg announced that it would not remove posts containing Holocaust denial, on the basis that his customers had a right to free expression.
