In 2003, Barbra Streisand sued a photographer who had published an aerial image of her Malibu home. The artist wanted privacy, but she lost the lawsuit and the photograph in question was one of the most sought after and viewed of the season.
The anecdote also served to give a name to a phenomenon, the Streisand effect, which occurs when someone threatens legal action to have a photo or text removed from public space and with this action causes exactly the opposite, that the information they want vetoing becomes popular.
Who remembers the poster for Holy Week in Seville last year? And the one from the previous year? These types of drawings have traditionally been for local consumption. But the poster that Salustiano García has painted on behalf of the Council of Brotherhoods and Brotherhoods of Seville for this year’s celebrations has not gone unnoticed at all.
On Saturday, García presented his resurrected Christ at the Caja Rural del Sur Foundation. The work, which he showed inserted in a light box, represents a “young and beautiful” Christ. “Young man as a metaphor for purity and beauty, in the Platonic sense, because beauty and goodness are the same thing,” explained the Sevillian artist, who has included in the poster two representative elements of Holy Week in his city, the cloth of Christ of the Expiration of the Brotherhood of the Cub and the Powers of the Christ of Love.
The artist also recounted what the process of creating his resurrected Christ had been like: “I was tempted to represent a recumbent Jesus Christ, but I soon discarded that idea when I realized that in my work I have always positioned myself on the most serene and enlightened side.” of life and things.”
And he also told who he had been inspired by to put a face to his Christ. “My brother and my son Horacio have been my models.” “I was 12 years old when my brother died. My mother asked me to go into the room where his body rested to say goodbye. I was terrified, but when I saw his face and the serene gesture of his hands crossed on his chest, I was shaken by such beauty.”
García’s explanations about his working method and his artistic inspiration did not convince the many detractors of his poster. A few minutes after the drawing was made public, social networks were filled with criticism. “He is a sexualized, effete, laser-haired Christ.” “An inadequate and irreverent image.” “He is neither man nor woman.” “It looks like an LGTBI propaganda poster.” “It is a hypersexualized and offensive representation with the intention of hurting feelings.”
Criticisms of this type occurred between Saturday and yesterday on various social networks. The Institute of Social Policy (IPSE) went a little further. The entity described García’s Christ as “effeminate”, assured that “it has nothing to do with Holy Week” and asked all the brotherhoods to demand the removal of the poster for being “offensive to Catholics.”
In addition, this entity demanded that “apologization be made” for the image and threatened to take the matter to court, considering that “it could constitute a hate crime and a serious attack against religious feelings.”
The Streisand effect is already underway. The controversial poster was the most talked about on the networks yesterday and was present in all the news. The defenders did not take long to appear either: “Wonderful and groundbreaking.” “Let them tell Michelangelo, Botticelli or Mantegna.” “You have to know a little about art history before criticizing.” “Controversial pazguata”. “Stale and self-conscious.”
Salustiano García himself tried to settle the controversy in an interview with Efe: “If someone sees this sinful Christ, they are sick and need help. “If someone sees something dirty in my painting, it is their own internal dirt that they are projecting,” said the artist. And he added that the criticisms “are the result of lack of culture, of not knowing anything, of never having been to a museum.”
