arts, literature

emma ydiers: pentimenti

Eighteen young Flemish and Dutch authors drew inspiration from the collection held by the Mauritshuis in The Hague. They looked at seventeenth-century paintings through the lens of an alternative history which they then brought to life in short but powerful texts. emma ydiers wrote a piece in response to Frans Post’s painting View of Itamaracá Island in Brazil. ‘regret requires the ability to imagine alternative outcomes’

pentimenti

with my face pressed to the screen I scroll round View of Itamaracá Island in Brazil. I’m looking for pentimenti, small revisions made by the original painter during the creative process. pentimenti derives from pentire, to regret. regret originates in the desire to correct the present state of affairs. regret requires the ability to imagine alternative outcomes that with hindsight feel more desirable than the current situation, which arose from a decision. only very eagle-eyed observers can spot pentimenti. Frans Post left no traces of regret. ⁽¹⁾

I broaden my gaze instead of restricting it. underneath the painting I read that Post was one of the artists who accompanied Johan Maurits to Brazil, that this landscape is Post’s first known painting and the first made of Brazil by a European painter. looking at it this way I do find traces of revision: ‘A white memory recalls whatever perpetuates its own history and forgets all the rest. White remembering works like a pencil and an eraser at the same time. It erases in order to plant a flag or write a name.’ ⁽²⁾

I zoom out even further. as part of the writers’ residency for which I’m writing this, deBuren entered into a partnership with the Mauritshuis because ‘

              ’⁽³⁾ deBuren asks us to view a painting from an ‘alternative historical’ perspective: what if a particular event in history had never taken place?

I try to widen my gaze even – I erase. I’m looking for – I erase. even the horses are complicit because without them the Portuguese – I erase. the trees were cut so the Mauritshuis could be – I erase. the sea has already claimed countless bodies of – I erase. I could decide not to focus on suffering black bodies so as not to reproduce racial violence just like – I erase. imagining alternatives is a black feminist strategy against the normalisation of colonial violence and applying this to a colonial work in a colonial museum verges on the complete erasure of – I erase. this feels – I erase. this isn’t about me or maybe – I erase. ⁽⁴⁾

my gaze is navel-gazingly narrow and full of pentimenti. everything I’ve written is already dripping with regret. regret is less acute when a decision can be justified. I try to set my mind at rest: there’s no alternative to this assignment, because even writing nothing at all would be an act of protest, because nobody so far has refused it, and even then the Mauritshuis and deBuren would benefit because by welcoming criticism they cultivate a progressive image. this voice silences the voice that says I wrote this text out of self-interest. I know that writing this can’t be justified, but I did it anyway and put my name to it.

notes

⁽¹⁾ Frans Post accompanied Johan Maurits to Brazil. there, Maurits added cultural exploitation to economic exploitation via sugar plantations. the exoticism depicted in Post’s paintings enhanced Brazil’s appeal in Europe, thus constructing and legitimising overseas colonialism.

⁽²⁾ the quote is from Herdenken herdacht: Een essay om te vergeten’ (2019) by Simon(e) van Saarloos (translated into English as ‘Take ‘Em Down: Scattered Monuments & Queer Forgetting’, translated by Liz Waters).

⁽³⁾ this is where I intended to highlight deBuren’s position on its choice of assignment. however, deBuren has only addressed the matter in response to an email from two writers in residence who problematised the task. until deBuren makes its position public, this quote will be illegible and I will summarise it as follows: working with the Mauritshuis is good for 1) the writers in residence because the assignment presents an artistic challenge and creates public visibility, 2) deBuren because they have positive experiences with the director following earlier collaborations with the Rijksmuseum, 3) the Mauritshuis because it wants to ask itself critical questions.

⁽⁴⁾ to anyone wanting to complete these sentences, I recommend reading the work of Katherine McKittrick, including Mathematics Black Life (2014) and On Plantations, Prisons, and a Black Sense of Place (2011). if I were to end this note here, I would be doing exactly what McKittrick decries in Dear Science and Other Stories (2021), namely that works by black researchers are referenced differently (briefly and insufficiently studied), as if the reference is enough in itself: if i cite (…), I am, theoretically, ‘doing’ race and blackness. it is a paradox to be writing this in a footnote as they’re so rarely read. I have two reasons for this: 1) this text has a maximum word count of 500 and footnotes are often not included in this figure, 2) in Dear Science McKittrick argues in favour of a politics of referencing that highlights the relationships between ideas and in so doing creates a collective web of stories of emancipation. without this footnote you wouldn’t know how, where and thanks to whom I know what I know. it might look as if the ideas are mine in the way I present them on paper. it might also look as if I wrote this text all by myself. but I did so with the input of other writers in residence, in particular Helen Weeres, Lin An Phoa, Naomi van Kleef and Wietse Leenders.

*Notes spoken by Theo Cosaert

• deBuren
• emma ydiers
• Frans Post
• Mauritshuis