Flanders tourist board chides
firm for removing ads featuring the Flemish master’s works
Daniel Boffey in Brussels
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.