12/09/24 - 09/11/24
Andrea Büttner
Shame Punishments

Installation view Andrea Buttner at Jan Mot 2024

Andrea Büttner, Shame Punishments, installation view at Jan Mot, 2024. (Andrea Büttner, Schamstrafen (Shame Punishments), 2022-23, screenprint with fluorescent paint on Finn cardboard, 27 parts, dimensions variable). Photo: Mina Albespy.)

“Andrea Büttner is an expert on the subject of shame. Images of shaming and experiences of being ashamed are pervasive in her oeuvre. She has attended to it as a concept and affect infesting and besetting art production in her numerous writings, not least in her PhD dissertation at the Royal College of Art in London (2008)…

For her, visual and shame culture are virtually indistinguishable and they, in unison, afflict the allegedly egalitarian sphere of the aesthetic all the more vehemently because of the close link between visuality and shame (which is inconceivable without the notion of being witnessed, be it real or imaginary).

(…)

What the collection of images in Shame Punishments conveys is the longue durée of weaponized shame. It puts into relief how shame as a penalty, contrary to popular belief, is hardly the preserve of religious pietism and has strived with secularization. It provides a vivid illustration of the continuity – despite the historical and geo-political changes of norms, mores, and values, as well as of beliefs and modes of media representation – of the social indictments and indignations in being publicly humiliated and visually exposed."

The artist recently reflected on her previous academic work around the notion of shame:

"What has changed since I began writing this text over fifteen years ago? What are the current perspectives? Cultures and technologies of visibility have made great advances in a number of ways. Political shaming, for instance, is more common now than it was ten years ago. There is a new culture of the pillory, of public exposure. ‘Shaming’ has become a new term in German to describe a mass phenomenon on the internet and in social networks, by which the widespread hatred of others (frequently of strangers) manifests itself through the aggressive exposure of a subject, and wherein ‘doxing’ is the new tar and feathers.”

– excerpt from André Rottman, “Feelings, Fears and Feathers. On Andrea Büttner’s Shame Punishments”, Newspaper Jan Mot no. 143 (August 2024)

1 Martin Schongauer, Crucifixion, c. 1475–1485, engraving, 19,7 x 15,1 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

2 Quentin Massys, Ecce Homo, c. 1515, oil on panel, 160 x 120 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

3 Lucas Cranach t. E., Ecce Homo from The Passion, n. d., woodcut, 24,7 x 16,9 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

4 Quentin Massys, Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1510–15, oil on panel, 83 x 59 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

5 Alexamenos-Graffito, Severan Age (late 2nd–early 3rd century AD), 39 x 35 cm, Capitoline Museums, Rome

6 Queen Mary Master, page from the Queen Mary Psalter, 1310–20, manuscript: Royal 2 B VII, f. 256v, England, Bridgeman Images

7 Hendrik Bary, A coffin hangs from a gallows, 1657–1707, engraving, 13,2 x 8,2 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

8 Illustrated defamatory letter from Paul Nawber, Ingolstadt, against Heinz von Guttenberg, 1490, type printing and coloured ink drawing, 27,2 x 25,1 cm, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, inv. HB2527

9 Two studies of a man suspended by his left leg (pittura infamante), 1529–30, drawing, red chalk on white paper, 20,6 x 19,2 cm, The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth Settlement Trustees / Bridgeman Images

10 Illustration of a baker being drawn to the pillory with an underweight loaf tied to his neck, from Liber de Assisa Panis, 1293–1438, London Metropolitan Archives / Bridgeman Images

11 English School (18th century), Woman on a Ducking Stool, woodcut from a chap book, in William Andrews, Bygone Punishments, London: William Andrews & Co, 1899, The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images

12 Taddeo di Bartolo, Fresco of Hell, 1393–1413, detail showing sodomites being punished in hell, Alinari / Bridgeman Images

13 Adultress in Pillory from Coutumes de Toulouse, 1295–97, colored ink drawing on vellum, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9187

14 Mobile iron cage, in Jacob, P. L. Moeurs, usages et costumes au moyen-âge et à l’époque de la Renaissance, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1872. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library

15 Carl Simon, A man in a cangue, China, 1910s, Hand-colored glass slide, United Archives GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

16 American School (18th century), Boston citizenstar and feather a tax collector in resistance to the 1764 Stamp Act, color lithograph, Peter Newark
Pictures / Bridgeman Images

17 A woman wearing a scold’s bridle, etching in Ralp Gardiner, England’s grievance discovered in relation to the coal-trade, London: R. Ibbitson and P. Stent, 1655, Wellcome Collection, London

18 Charles Turner Warren, Prostitutes in Bern being punished by collecting night-soil in the streets, in Thomas Bankes, A modern, authentic and com[plete] system of universal geography, London: C. Cooke [c.1790?], vol. 2, before p. 887, 12 x 17,6 cm, Wellcome Collection, London

19 A culprit exposed to public resentment in the pillory, engraving, 27,2 x 25,1 cm, in Thomas Bankes, New and Authentic System of Universal Geography, London: C. Cooke, ca. 1788–90, Wellcome Collection, London

20 French School, School pupil being punished with a donkey cap, late 19th century, Épinal Print, Stefano Bianchetti / Bridgeman Images

21 “Canadian mother makes children walk four miles to school with ‘shaming sign’ for being rude to bus driver”, Facebook, reported by Tom Barnes in The Independent, March 11, 2018

22 “A husband and wife who stole more than $255,000 from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office restitution fund will spend 10 years on probation with a litany of conditions, a judge ruled Thursday”, reported by Brian Rogers, Houston Chronicle, July 8, 2010 Photo © Melissa Philip, 2010

23 Pieter Bruegel t. E., Justice, from The Seven Virtues, c. 1560?, engraving, 26,1 Å~ 34,6 cm Kunstmuseum Basel, Department of Prints and Drawings, Amerbach Cabinet 1662

24 “The great wall of shame: Chinese city displays photos of residents who refuse to pay off their debts on massive bus stop posters”, reported by Kelsey Cheng, Daily Mail online, June 29, 2018

25 Opernplatz, Kassel, Crowd around concentration camp with donkey, April 1, 1933, A donkey fenced in wire enclosure symbolizing a concentration camp and marking those who shop in Jewish-owned businesses as donkeys. Photo © Carl Eberth / Stadtarchiv Kassel

12/09/24 - 09/11/24Andrea BüttnerShame Punishments

12/09/24 - 09/11/24
Andrea Büttner
Shame Punishments