October 5, 2017

Louvre bans Dutch artwork for its sexual content

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 8:37 pm

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The Louvre museum in Paris France is refusing to accept an installation from the Netherlands, claiming ‘explicit or sexual’ content. It’s amusing to note that the Louvre has tons of explicit material in its museum that children have seen for years, but putting something like this from the Dutch Atelier Van Lieshout outdoors is all of a sudden a no-no.

The large-scale artwork entitled ‘Domestikator’ was set to go on display at the Tuileries garden, a children’s playground adjacent to the Louvre as part of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC) on 19 October, but the museum was reportedly worried about the sculpture being seen by children.

Most young children are not going to get the joke and those who will should be old enough to understand what they’re seeing. And there’s enough naked men and women and sex and what not in the museum already, why is this a problem? There’s enough racy advertisements in France to make this look tame.

Domestikator was the centrepiece of the grounds of Ruhrtriennale, an arts festival in Bochum, Germany, around since 2015. The Germans had no issues with it, but surprisingly the French are going to censor this. Free publicity for Atelier Van Lieshout.

UPDATE: The Centre Pompidou in Paris will show Domestikator.

(Link and photo: expressandstar.com)

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May 23, 2015

Very rare copy of Mein Kampf on display in Amsterdam

Filed under: History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 5:28 pm

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After having been prosecuted for selling ‘Mein Kampf’ and getting a slap on the wrist for it, the Totalitarian Art Gallery in Amsterdam is back in the news with a ‘very rare’ signed copy of Hitler’s controversial book.

The local Anti-Facist League is demanding the book be confiscated and that the gallery be closed down, but the police told them they cannot legally do either of those things. ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My Struggle’) can easily be found on the Internet since about 1998, but the book version is still banned. As well, the copyright on the book will run out in 2016, making it even more difficult to control any distribution of the work.

Gallery owner Michiel van Eyck is currently displaying the book in his shop, not selling it, and there’s nothing illegal about that. There’s an appeal currently ongoing on the original verdict against Van Eyck. However, banning a physical book that can be found easily and for free is ‘mopping the floor with the faucet running’, as the Dutch would say.

(Link: www.parool.nl, Photo by Adam Jones, some rights reserved)

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April 16, 2015

Rabobank kills book containing accusations of art theft

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:05 pm

rabobank-ben-kraan-architectenThe court of The Hague has rushed to the aid of Dutch bank Rabobank when it censored the book ‘De Verpanding’ (The Pawning) last Friday.

The book, subtitled ‘Art Disappears Where Rabo Appears’, describes the dealings of two ‘art entrepreneurs’ (as Volkskrant calls them) with the Special Cases department of Rabobank.

The authors claim Rabobank stole art works and chased the art collections of art traders, says NRC. Interestingly, the book was published in March with almost no publicity (at least none that I could find), but Rabobank thought it important to sue the publishers nevertheless. The court of The Hague ordered the book to be taken off the market with the goal of protecting the privacy of Rabobank employees who were named in the book. An anonymised reprint may be in the works. The publishers have asked buyers to return the book for a refund.

Meanwhile De Verpanding has been scanned and made widely available through the Internet. In an age where bankers are considered unconvicted criminals by many, such a response should have been foreseen by the bank.

The court of The Hague told 24 Oranges it expects the written verdict to be available from rechtspraak.nl somewhere in the course of next week.

(Photo by Ben Kraan Architecten, some rights reserved)

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January 16, 2015

‘Jesus and Hitler may offend, but Stalin is fine’

Filed under: Photography by Orangemaster @ 3:57 pm

Art student Dirk Hardy of Rotterdam’s Willem de Kooning academy has had two of his photographs censored from an exhibition at the town hall of Binnenmaas, South Holland. The mayor ‘vetoed’ a photograph of Jesus and one of Hitler, saying it could be offensive to some. However, a photograph of Stalin was no problem.

The exhibition entitled ‘Clay’ was a series of six images: Jesus, Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Tom Cruise and himself. The town suggested Hardy come with two other photographs to ‘fill in the gaps’.

Someone who thinks Hitler is offensive, but has no issues with Stalin doesn’t know their history at all. Although very different, Stalin is responsible for killing some 30 million people (yup, Jews, too) and Mao probably killed the most ever at around 78 million. Hitler comes in third with 17 million people killed. If you’re going to be a moron and censor Hitler, you also need to remove Stalin or else you’re an inconsistent, ignorant moron. And censoring Jesus is, as some Dutch friends would say, ‘a bit boring’.

(Links: imgur.com, Photo of Lenin in Ukraine by covilha, some rights reserved)

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June 21, 2014

Store keeper prosecuted for selling ‘Mein Kampf’

Filed under: History,Science by Branko Collin @ 2:44 pm

mein-kampf-adam-jonesThe Totalitarian Art Gallery in Amsterdam lives up to its name and trades in ‘totalitarian memorabilia’.

As far as memorabilia go, things don’t get much more totalitarian than Adolf Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My Struggle’). That book is said to be illegal in the Netherlands and if it is not, we will soon find out.

Last Friday at noon exactly a pair of detectives entered The Totalitarian Art Gallery at the Singel canal in Amsterdam and ascertained that, yes, store keeper Michiel van Eyk did indeed own a copy of Mein Kampf and yes, he did intend to sell it. The detectives proceeded to confiscate the book and to hand Van Eyk a summons, AT5 reports.

Last January Van Eyk was interrogated for “about an hour” at an unnamed police station about his motives for selling the controversial book. He told AT5 back then: “I don’t want to defend myself, I want this to go to court.” His wish is now granted, a first session has been planned for 26 August. Van Eyk will get to defend himself against charges of hate speech.

Mein Kampf’s legality is yet to be tested in the Netherlands, but hasn’t been much of an issue so far. The copyright to the book is held by the government of the state of Bavaria in Germany and will only run out in 2016. In 1997 Winnie Sorgdrager, then Minister of Justice, told parliament that the act of selling the book would expose a person to prosecution on the basis of article 137e of the Dutch criminal code, which forbids hate speech. She added that a publication was conceivably legal in a “scientifically responsible publication”, which she interpreted as “a publication in which the publisher or editor […] distance themselves of the contents of the original text”. That must have been the dumbest take on science that I have seen in at least a week. (Yes, it’s been a slow week).

(Photo by Adam Jones, some rights reserved)

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January 15, 2014

Bookshop owner to go to court for selling Hitler’s memoirs

Filed under: History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 8:42 pm

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Michiel van Eyck, owner of the Totalitarian Art Gallery in Amsterdam was questioned by police for an hour recently on the sale of Adolf Hitler’s memoirs Mein Kampf.

You see, the sale of Mein Kampf is banned in the Netherlands under anti-discrimination laws. Sure, you can just score it online instead, which is legal and makes the ban absurd and not very useful.

Van Eyck feels that selling the famous memoirs is not inciting hatred, as he also sells books written by Stalin, Mao and the likes. He hopes to go to court to have what he feels is an outdated ban overturned.

(Link: www.amsterdamherald.com)

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February 9, 2013

No fees for freedom of information requests says Dutch Supreme Court

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 5:05 pm

Municipalities can only charge fees for personal services and responding to a freedom of information request is not such a service because it serves a common good.

That is the conclusion the Dutch Supreme Court reached yesterday.

In the past years municipalities often charged considerable fees for dealing with freedom of information requests in order to derail the process. RTL Nieuws refused to pay these fees and was sued by several local governments in reponse. According to De Nieuwe Reporter the municipality of Landgraaf lost its case, but Leerdam won. The Supreme Court was asked to provide clarity.

Municipalities can still charge fees for the form in which it responds to a freedom of information request (WOB-verzoek in Dutch), i.e. for photocopies and such. The Supreme Court made a point of mentioning this even though nobody had contested the issue.

Reporter Brenno de Winter sees the verdict as a starting point to get his money back: “It took me hundreds of hours to get rid of these fees. This lost time represents a lot of money to a freelancer like me. I am going to ask back fees that I had already paid and charge the municipalities for the time I lost. […] I am also studying options to criminally charge four civil servants because they threatened me with costs [of up to 30,000 euro] if I were to persevere with my information requests.”

De Winter was declared Journalist of the Year 2011 by the Dutch Association of Journalists NVJ because of his scoops concerning the bad security of both the OV transport card and government websites.

(Photo of journalist Brenno de Winter by Roy van Ingen, some rights reserved)

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September 29, 2012

How Iran censors a Dutch newspaper

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 11:15 am

Jan-Dirk van der Burg curated an exhibition called Censorship Daily which is on display now at the Persmuseum.

It shows the handiwork of Iran’s censors with regards to Dutch newspapers. NRC has a selection at their Inbeeld website.

Van der Burg is a photographer whom we wrote about before.

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October 19, 2011

American writer Bukowski told Dutch library how it is

Filed under: Literature by Orangemaster @ 2:30 pm

In 1985, following a complaint from a local reader, staff at the Public Library in Nijmegen decided to remove Charles Bukowski’s book, Tales of Ordinary Madness, from their shelves whilst declaring it “very sadistic, occasionally fascist and discriminatory against certain groups (including homosexuals).” In the following weeks, a local journalist by the name of Hans van den Broek wrote to Bukowski and asked for his opinion. It soon arrived.

Look at a picture and read the entire poetic response here.

“If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women it is because of these who I met were that. There are many “bads”–bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even “bad” white males. Only when you write about “bad” white males they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are “good” blacks, “good” homosexuals and “good” women?”

I think that whoever complained just couldn’t read English or between the lines properly.

(Link: lettersofnote.com, via @ejpfauth on Twitter)

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April 20, 2010

Seven men arrested for wearing the number 1312

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 1:44 pm

AT5 reports that seven fans of Amsterdam’s Ajax football club have been arrested for wearing shirts that sported the number 1312 before the match against Heracles last Sunday.

Police officers apparently were insulted by numbers, as they seem to believe the outcome of 1312 is “all cops are bastards.”

Football blog footballculture.nl—presumably fearing that if the police keep up their censoring ways, fans will have to go naked at this rate—came up with a completely innocuous T-shirt (photo) sporting an apple, some kind of citrus fruit, a member of the Ananas family, and a banana (Dutch names: appel, citroen, ananas, banaan).

See also:

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