I went to the Rijksmuseum to see rhino Clara. She toured Europe in the 18th century. Clara became famous, because hardly anyone had ever seen a rhino there. Previous images were based on verbal information, so they usually didn’t add up.
I looked at a funny porcelain figurine. A clumsy rhinoceros with a male in Turkish costume on his back. The rhinoceros and the male are about the same size. The sign next to it reads: ‘The clichéd Turkish man and the rhinoceros are both archetypes here. For the European buyers of this type of porcelain figurines, they mainly emphasize ‘being different'(…) There is no real interest in a rhinoceros or in Turks. The man is depicted much too large in relation to the rhinoceros.’
I thought mine. Namely: how can you determine centuries later who had a ‘real interest’ in rhinoceroses or Turks? Why the word “archetypes” where “stereotyping” is meant? And do they really think I don’t know how big a real rhinoceros is?
Annoyed, I drifted off to the familiar Dutch and Flemish masters. Look, that wonderful still life by Pieter Claesz, from the 17th century. That pie, you’d bite into it. How did Claesz do that? Just look at the caption.
‘The spices in these pies were often obtained by the VOC through violence and slavery. (…) The Ambonese had to harvest the cloves with workers enslaved by the VOC. Nutmeg came from the violently captured Banda Islands in 1621…’ Yes, I already knew. (Note, there is no spice on the entire painting.)
And through! Another wonderful still life, this time of oysters and a salt shaker. “Enslaved people had to chop the salt from the salt pans. Day after day they stood barefoot in the salt water and in the blazing sun. This salt (…) ended up in luxurious silver salt cellars like the one pictured here.’
‘The one’? What kind of brokerage language is that? And what can we expect in museums? A tirade about the animal suffering of the turkey in the pie? That the painter’s wife had to do the housework and couldn’t develop herself as an artist? The cobalt in visitors’ smartphones from child labor in toxic mines? Their clothes, made by underpaid women in incendiary sweatshops? The climate-hostile chicken satay in the canteen of the Rijks?
I don’t want to be spoken to like a retarded child, in crooked Dutch.
Then I might as well stay home, I’ll get it there for free.