Fake News & Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic

2018-9-1_p1_2019.png

Rich, colorful print with a queen under a tree with an angel trumpeting above her. She is attended by maidens and has a long procession of knights on horseback coming toward her
Jan Saenredam, Allegory of the Flourishing State of the United Provinces, 1602. Engraving with hand coloring. Museum purchase through the Robert and Sonia Carringer Art Acquisitions Fund. 2018-9-1

kam_dutch190618-017-m.jpg

Claes Jansz Visscher (publisher and perhaps printmaker, Dutch 1587–1652), The Far-famed House of Nassau or Orange, ca. 1628–1629. Engraving. Museum purchase through the John N. Chester Fund 2019-7-9
Claes Jansz Visscher (Dutch 1587–1652), The Far-famed House of Nassau or Orange, ca. 1628–1629. Engraving. Museum purchase through the John N. Chester Fund 2019-7-9

kam_dutch190618-023-m.jpg

Willem Jacobsz. Delft, (1580–1638) after Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt (1566–1641). Portrait of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547–1619), 1617. Engraving. Museum purchase through the John N. Chester Fund L2019.45
Willem Jacobsz. Delft, (1580–1638) after Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt (1566–1641). Portrait of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547–1619), 1617. Engraving. Museum purchase through the John N. Chester Fund L2019.45

kam_dutch190618-006-m.jpg

Romeyn de Hooghe (Dutch, 1645–1708), Marriage of William and Mary, 1677. Etching. Museum purchase through the John N. Chester Fund 2019-7-7
Romeyn de Hooghe (Dutch, 1645–1708), Marriage of William and Mary, 1677. Etching. Museum purchase through the John N. Chester Fund 2019-7-7

2020-2-2_p1_2020.png

Image of a map that features a Dutch colony with enslaved people working on a highly automated (mechanical) sugar plantation. The land, its products, and people were considered Dutch property.
Joan Blaeu (1596-1673), Dutch,Pernambuco North, 1662 edition, engraving with hand coloring, Robert and Sonia Carringer Art Acquisitions Fund; Maureen Warren and Allison Hansen. 2020-2-2

Exhibition

On view
Aug 25, 2022 to Dec 17, 2022
Main Level, East Gallery

Comedians, editorial cartoons, and memes harness the power of satire, parody, and hyperbole to provoke laughter, indignation—even action. These forms of expression are usually traced to eighteenth-century artists, such as William Hogarth, but they are grounded in the unprecedented freedom of artistic expression in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. This exhibition explores the myriad and complex visual strategies early modern printmakers in the United Provinces used to memorialize historical events, lionize and demonize domestic and international leaders, and form consensus for collective action.

The exhibition will be on view at Krannert Art Museum (KAM) in Fall 2022, before traveling to three other venues in Spring 23, Fall 23, and Spring 24. It consists of 100 prints and illustrated books (55 in the traveling version), with with allegories, satires, cartoon strips, portraits, maps, and “news prints” (images of current events). 

The Dutch Republic had much to offer artists: an influx of wealth and innovative ideas from religious and political refugees; new knowledge and commodities from global trade and exploration; new art markets; and more. However, the Dutch had no means of effectively censoring the media. Printmakers exploited this unprecedented freedom to criticize leaders at home and abroad and to try to shape political policy and action. The decentralized nature of the Dutch government also led to chronic infighting between rival factions, as well as to international conflicts about sovereignty, trade routes, and territories.  This volatility only provided more fodder for printmakers to create images, which numerous audiences relied upon to stay informed, celebrate victories and mourn defeats, and to stoke the fires of partisanship.

Dutch printmakers experimented with graphic visual language in a daring and subversive fashion. They supplemented conventions and tropes inherited from medieval and Renaissance maps, city views, book illustrations, news prints, and polemical prints and established new forms of expression. While some of their prints employ visual puns and humor that even the illiterate could enjoy, others were captioned in Latin or French as well as Dutch, enticing educated elites across Europe to explore the relationship between text and image. Through mercantile and diplomatic channels, Dutch political prints transcended national and temporal boundaries to make a lasting impact.

Organized in six sections, the exhibition explores the continuity and development of tactics and themes used to picture political beliefs and events. These include: Dutch Lions and Other Political Animals (animal satire); Founding Fathers/Fallen Fathers (murdered politicians); Spoils of the Seas (Dutch East and West India Companies, seafaring, naval warfare); Face of the Enemy (war crimes, criminals, etc.); Men of Action/Women of Honor (Dutch men, women, and children); Romeyn de Hooghe: Propaganda Master (arguably the most important political printmaker in seventeenth-century Europe).

Thanks to several recent and substantial purchases, KAM has one of the best collections of Dutch political prints outside Europe. These prints shaped collective memory, played a part in propaganda campaigns, and caused even international incidents. But their impact goes beyond the seventeenth century to resonate with contemporary visual culture. Dutch printmakers used trolling tactics long before the invention of the internet; they concealed damaging information, told outright lies, and ridiculed public figures using an array of strategies akin to those of today’s cartoonists and comedians. These prints stoked collective unrest, scorn, and even violence—functions images continue to serve.

Curated by Maureen Warren, Curator of European and American Art

 

 

This exhibition will be on view at University Galleries, University of San Diego from Feb 10 - May 12, 2023.

 

Ricker Library of Architecture and Art has developed a library guide with details about this exhibition, as well as supplementary materials and curator-recommended readings: Fake News & Lying Pictures Library Guide

 

The exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly publication designed and produced by Lucia | Marquand, with Maureen Warren as lead author and editor. 

Publication and Ordering information are available here: Paper Knives, Paper Crowns

Co-sponsored and supported by the College of Fine and Applied Arts, Communication at Illinois, Department of French & Italian, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, History at Illinois, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, School of Art + Design Visitor Series, European Union Center.

Exhibition and publication are made possible with grant support from the Getty Foundation through its initiative, The Paper Project: Prints and Drawings Curatorship in the 21st Century; as part of the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York; Ambassade De France, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States; and by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; The Samuel H. Kress Foundation; the Netherland-America Foundation; Historians of Netherlandish Art; Association of Print Scholars; and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. Additional funding is provided by the Rosann Gelvin Noel Fund.

Publication is made possible in part by a grant from Furthermore: A Program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund and a gift from Elizabeth Warnock to the Department of Art History at Northwestern University.

 

 

Portfolio: Fake News & Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Republic [Exhibition 2022]

Comedians, editorial cartoons, and memes harness the power of satire, parody, and hyperbole to provoke laughter, indignation—even action. These forms of expression are usually traced to eighteenth-century artists, such as William Hogarth, but they are grounded in the unprecedented freedom of artistic expression in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. [Curated by Maureen Warren, Curator of European and American Art. With loans; at KAM Aug 25, 2022 through Dec 17, 2022; traveling exhibit]

Records 1 to 59 of 59

Remonstrant Exodus

etching and letterpress on laid paper
Frederick Henry

etching, engraving, and letterpress on paper
Amalia van Solms

etching, engraving, and letterpress on paper
Magdalena Moonsia

engraving on verge type hand-laid paper
Plate I

etching and engraving on paper
Brazil

etching on verge type hand laid paper
Tea, Coffee, Cocoa

etching on verge type hand laid paper
Pepper, West Indian

etching on verge type hand laid paper
Cinnamon, Nutmeg

etching on verge type hand laid paper
Japanese Lacquer

etching on verge type hand laid paper
Hottentots

etching on verge type hand laid paper
Self-Portrait

etching and engraving on laid paper
Massacre of Maastricht Citizens in 1579

etching and engraving on hand laid paper
Records 1 to 59 of 59

[[1668492000,1683954000]]
[[1675317600,1703224800]]
spiral bound page that has a grid of red markings with two circular fields, one gold and the other red and white. On each field is a rectangle.
  1. Feb 2, 2023 to Dec 22, 2023
[[1677736800,1703224800]]
A graceful plum tree in full flower sits under a full moon. The sky is inky black but the moonlight makes each blossom seem to glow with inner light.
  1. Mar 2, 2023 to Dec 22, 2023
[[1679720400,1684904400]]
Three students sit at desks in a middle school classroom. They are making art through a program that celebrates Latina culture.
  1. Mar 25, 2023 to May 24, 2023