the rijksmuseum is quite literally the rich's museum
The last time I was at the Rijksmuseum, I overheard an actual tour guide share two juicy facts about Dutch still life. She explained that 1) to show the opulence of the Dutch empire, most of the food shown in these paintings was imported, and 2) that during the Golden Age, each Dutch upper-middle-class household had at least 1 of these paintings. I quickly listened to my audio guide hoping to find more information, but all of the explanations were limited to “symbolisms” of death, and the textures of the paintings. I was not surprised. The whole reason I was there was because a month prior I read John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and its analysis of the history of art and class made me wonder what overarching narratives museums like the Rijks tell.
One narrative that the museum has been trying to correct is that of the history between the museum and slavery. In my visit, I noticed that lately, the museum has added white boxes next to some of their paintings with the title of X and slavery (example: the church and slavery), in some late and vague attempt to incorporate the dark history of colonization and slavery of the Netherlands. Took them more than 200 years, but better than nothing— I suppose. Some of them try to historicize the paintings by explaining how the painter, the event, or the figures depicted were connected to slavery.
What I found funny nonetheless is how none of the other paintings have a historical context since a great majority of the subjects depicted are members of the government, military, or, just, the bourgeoisie. When reading John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, I was shocked to find out that THE Frans Hals struggled so much through poverty. I have seen his portraits of wealthy citizens so many times at the Rijks, yet not a single time is his background mentioned. Berger explains that art historians have purposefully “mystified” his paintings, giving the example of a reading of Hal’s Regents of the Old Men’s Almshouse. During the winter of 1664, Hals was starving to death, and he had to apply for “public charity”. Those standing in front of him in the Regents of the Old Men’s Almshouse paintings were the administrators of such charity. As Berger cites, art historians swear that to read any resentment or bitterness from Hals in these pictures would be incorrect, even when Hals boldly depicted a drunken regent. For art historians, the inhibited face of the regent must have been facial paralysis, his reversed hat must have been how fashion at the time worked, etc, etc, etc. I wondered as I walked past Hals’ portraits of the bourgeoisie, how else did his painting techniques mock the rich and why is that being left out from the explanations of his great “genius”?
While at the museum, I walked through a handful of other portraits of the rich and powerful—the majority representing them in very serious settings and enhancing them with their lighting techniques, angles, and polished details. That is what the by-then mastered tradition of oil painting had come to in the 16th century. Yet, the “geniuses” who defied those traditions, and changed the political state of the art, are barely even recognized as geniuses for doing so—Rembrandt being one of the greatest examples. Passing through all the serious portraits of the powerful, a certain dissonance is glaring when seeing The Nightwatch. The officers quite literally refused to pay him because of how offended they were by it. The motion, the lack of polishment, the lighting—none of these give the sense of seriousness and pride the militia wanted in their portraits. Berger claims that throughout his career, Rembrandt defied the techniques that capitalism dictated for its oil paintings (a reification that celebrated the materialism in everything). He argues that this is why even though Rembrandt had pupils, he had no real followers. Needless to say, none of this is mentioned in the audioguide of the Rijksmuseum.
In literary criticism, the New Criticism School claims that analyzing anything external to a work of art is wrong. While I normally would argue that different approaches bring out different aspects of a piece of art—none necessarily being right or wrong—I think that when we exclude history from museums that have the purpose of highlighting Europe's Great Art, we glorify it and forget that this is the continent that created capitalism and slavery. Take the section of the Gallery of Honour full of what is known as the genre picture—a genre that vulgarized the impoverished. In these paintings, poor people are painted, by the rich, as caricatures—always drinking, fighting, and lazing around. The audioguide often describes these paintings as “cautionary tales” (what they are though, and always have been, is propaganda that attributes common folk’s morality as the reason for their poverty). The background of these bourgeoise painters is not mentioned. Nor is the background of even the exceptions of this genre, like Adriaen Brouwer. He struggled through poverty for most of his life, his father even died because of it when Brouwer was fifteen. Because of his background, he never moralized his paintings of the poor, he painted them with crude realism—which is why his pictures were never bought. The Rijksmuseum audioguide, however, emphasizes that he was a funny storyteller, puts him on the same level as the other painters, and never mentions his working-class background. Not acknowledging the genre's political implications prevents us from understanding the myths created by the rich to justify their position as well as the peasants’ and proletarians’ resistance to it—and in my opinion, this is why the same myth keeps appearing once in a while (because who hasn't seen Instagram's motivational posts that imply that the rich are rich because of time management) and we keep collectively falling for it.
After scavenging through the Gallery of Honour and realizing that I was not going to find a nuanced and contextualized explanation of any of the paintings, I decided to do a fast tour of the museum instead. I took the “Birth of the Republic” tour, which promised that at the end, I would find out “how the Netherlands became one of the richest most powerful countries in the world”. Imperialism was barely mentioned. I went to the east wing, and this time the audioguide told me I was going to learn everything about the wealthy citizens in the new Dutch republic. I passed through a room full of ships, a room full of Amsterdam’s important figures—like their mayors and respective families—and of pro-government messages. I went to the first floor to see the only room that has some nuanced explanations, 1.17, Netherlands’ overseas. They do not do an in-depth analysis of colonialism, but I would say that the explanation as a whole seems to denounce the Dutch Empire. I do wish that they would at least give the same level of analysis in the rest of their exhibitions.
I have been to the Rijksmuseum perhaps more than 15 times, I have been in every room, I have learned everything they want me to learn. This quick walk of the museum I took was to see the bigger picture, to see the narrative that it was telling. I have learned so much about the Spanish War, and the English one, and the French takeover, and the important Dutch figures, and their mayors, and their governments, etc. But guess who I know nothing about? The common people that lived the everyday life—the peasants, the fishermen, the factory workers, etc. In Ways of Seeing, Berger argues we are being deprived of the history that belongs to us. He says:
“the art of the past is being mystified because a privileged minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes”
I do not think that criticizing art and enjoying it are diametrically opposed. I am not advocating for the burning of the Rijksmuseum and for the replacement of it with art that aligns with my political views. On the contrary, I think that its importance lies in the fact that it can teach us so much about the history of Dutch capitalism and imperialism. I enjoyed the museum more after having read Ways of Seeing and googling more information about the painters’ lives and context. I passed through the still life section, admiring it, but also understanding to whom those products depicted in the paintings could belong. I passed through various landscape paintings and could see how progressively, nature became increasingly depicted as property, and commodified and admired only by what it could produce. Most importantly, I finally understood how oil painting in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries manufactured a static way of seeing the world, “ultimately determined by new attitudes to property and exchange”.
As a last stop, I went to the gift shop because I wanted to see if Berger's Ways of Seeing was there as it has been in any other museum I have seen in the city. It wasn’t.