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WorldPride: Madrid’s Prado museum celebrates LGTB art through the ages

Gays, lesbians and transgender people have been a feature of art -- and life -- throughout the ages, from the ancient Greeks to the Renaissance, 18th-century Japan to Native American tribes.

WorldPride: Madrid's Prado museum celebrates LGTB art through the ages
Photo: Prado Museum

That's the message conveyed by Madrid's Prado Museum, which has organised a special tour through its collection to mark WorldPride 2017, one of the globe's biggest celebrations of gay rights, taking place in the Spanish capital.

It includes a bust of Aristogeiton, who with his young lover Harmodius was feted in ancient Athens; paintings by Sandro Botticelli, accused of sodomy; and work by 19th-century French artist Rosa Bonheur, who openly lived with a woman.

“In every culture, in every era, homosexuality is very much a reality that goes hand-in-hand with the reality of mankind, despite how it may have been interpreted by morality and religion,” says curator Carlos Navarro.

Earliest chat-up line

In his book “A Little Gay History”, R. B. Parkinson writes that “same-sex desire certainly seems to have been part of human experience from the earliest recorded times”.

“In a poem from ancient Egypt, around 1,800 BC, one male god tries to seduce another by saying 'What a lovely backside you have!',” writes the Egyptologist and former British Museum curator.

“This is perhaps the earliest known chat-up line in human history, and it is between two men.”

The Prado's tour takes in 29 already-on-display or never-shown works of art, in a bid to show how the LGBT community has been depicted at times of deep intolerance or societal approval.  


One of the exhibits in the artistic tour “The Other's Gaze. Spaces of difference” organized by the Prado Museum until September 10, 2017. Photo: AFP

Cue the bust of Aristogeiton — whose sculptures are usually exhibited next to those of Harmodius, his lover as per the ancient Greek custom of sexual relationships between younger and older men.

Together they killed one of two tyrants of Athens around 514 BC, an act that eventually ushered in democracy.  

So grateful were Athenians that they put up statues of the men — the first in the classical world that didn't portray gods but human beings, and to boot “a homosexual couple feted as the founders of democracy,” says Navarro.  

Much later on, in times of persecution, the existence of such statues was a reminder that same-sex relationships had once been socially acceptable and could be again.

Sodomy trials

The Prado also wants to tell the stories of some of the personalities who created the art on show.

Botticelli's “Scenes from the story of Nastagio degli Onesti” is included on the tour, a piece by an artist who was accused of sodomy, tried and acquitted.

At the time in 15th century Florence, art from the classical world — gay relationships and all — was making a comeback, prompting a stern backlash from authorities.

After the shock of his trial, Botticelli started following Girolamo Savonarola, a fanatical preacher who “identified the recovery of the classical world with the arrival of corruption in the Christian world,” says Navarro.  

The artist had been a pioneer in painting classical mythology, but ended up destroying many of his own works of art.    

The same goes for Leonardo da Vinci, a man who had a “luminous” personality before his sodomy trial but became “introverted” soon after, says Navarro.    

But there is good news along the tour too in the form of Rosa Bonheur's painting “El Cid” that depicts a lion — an animal she loved and kept at home.  

She was a pioneer “in her sexuality, her way of life, but also in society's recognition of her. She was famous, rich, and was in charge of her life” at a time when women took a back step, says Navarro.

Next to the painting is a copy of a permission slip for “transvestism” delivered by French police to allow her to wear trousers.

Across the world

Beyond Europe, same-sex desire has long been a feature of other cultures too.

According to Parkinson, in Japan “male-male love was culturally valued,” from the samurai world to that of actors.    

He reproduces a woodblock print by the 18th-century artist Suzuki Harunobu depicting a scene of gay sex.

Another artist shows two women together, using a sex toy.    

Also on show in the book is the image on a piece of muslin of a “winkte,” a category of males whose occupations and social roles were those of women in Sioux tribes.

“History does not belong only to the 'mainstream' victors, and 'minorities' should not feel that they are marginal,” Parkinson writes.

By Marianne Barriaux / AFP

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African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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