Why do we feel embarrassed sometimes? Why do people blush? An exhibition at the German Hygiene Museum explores the phenomenon.
Image: courtesy of the artist
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Why do people feel shame?
Blood vessels dilate - and you blush, and wish the ground would swallow you up. But why do people feel shame? An exhibition at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden explores the phenomenon.
Image: courtesy of the artist
The fig leaf
In 1857, Britain's Queen Victoria received a copy of Michelangelo's "David" from an Italian duke. Shocked at the sculpture's nudity, the queen had David's genitals covered by a fig leaf. Bruce Richards' "Grand Tour," above, is a stainless steel replica of the fig leaf commissioned for the Italian statue. Since Adam and Eve's fall from grace, the fig leaf has stood for shame.
Image: Courtesy of the Artist and Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA USA
A codpiece
The codpiece accentuated the crotch of men's trousers in the mid 16th century, like this detail of a knight's armor at the German National Museum in Nuremberg that dates to about 1550. Shame is a universal feeling, but it reflects the norms of various times and cultures, as well as interpersonal relationships.
In the 17th century, scold's bridles demonstrated shame and guilt. Nagging women were forced to wear masks with huge mouths, while gossips wore masks with huge ears. A scold's bridle to punish men was often formed like a sow's head or snout. People were forced to wear the contraptions in public.
Shame can protect, but it can also destroy. A healthy dose of shame can shield a person's dignity and integrity - it's part of the fabric of the cultural code of ethics. According to the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, shame is a result of anxiety, and a reaction to being exposed, a "sexual barrier" against voyeurism and exhibitionism.
Image: Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik Berlin
X-ray exam
With the discovery of the X-ray, man became transparent, losing the protection of the outermost layer of skin. People are easily embarrassed by people they depend on, feel the urge to flee the situation, but are paralyzed, unable to budge. Respecting a person's dignity and self-respect and avoiding embarrassment were key for this doctor examining a patient in 1896.
Image: Deutsches Röntgen-Museum, Remscheid
Intrusions
These secret glimpses under women's skirts came to light in a 1963 criminal investigation. They violate a silent agreement and document the loss of a sense of honor. They are immoral because they ignore the boundaries of women's sense of shame, boundaries that regulate human relationships, often without being put in so many words.
Image: Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin
Body performance
More voyeurism: In downtown Munich in 1968, Austrian artist Valie Export invited people to touch her naked upper body in a performance she called "Tap and Touch Cinema." She was protesting against a consumer society, and the presentation of female bodies in pornography and popular culture.
Image: Die Künstlerin und sixpackfilm, VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2016
'My daddy'
Berlin filmmaker Jörg Buttgereit has become a legend with his punk trash movies. One of his early works, the anarchist Super 8 film "Mein Papi" ("My Daddy"), was to win awards later in his career. The merciless video of his own father is part of a section of the exhibition that looks at gender roles and notions of shame and shamelessness.
Image: courtesy of the artist
I am ashamed
"Box of Shame": In 1992, a 24-year-old artist by the name of Christian Jankowski presented people in Hamburg who publicly, by sitting in his shop window, owned up to things they were ashamed for. "I'm ashamed of people's endless ruthlessness and narrow-mindedness," one of the placards read.
Image: courtesy of the artist
Animal performance
Joanna Rytel assigns her audience the role of voyeur. In a series of early works like this 12-minute video in 2002, the Swedish-Polish performance and video artist dances for animals. She danced and stripped in front of animals in captivity: who was watching whom, and why?
Image: Joanna Rytel, Foto: Björn Kjelltoft
Monkey business
What does the 2011 interactive installation by Ralph Kistler and Jan M. Sieber have to do with shame? A computer-operated toy monkey imitates the observer's movements. It shifts, it fidgets and it gets the audience to make the oddest contortions, begging the question: who is in control, who is pulling the strings?
Image: Ralph Kistler & Jan M. Sieber
The Vagina Kayak lady
Two years ago, Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi skirted the very limits of her culture's sense of shame when she sold 3-D printer data of her vagina in order to finance construction of a vagina-shaped kayak. Igarashi was arrested and punished with a fine - which she refused to pay, arguing that there is nothing obscene about female anatomy. The public sided with her.
Image: 6d745 a.k.a. Rokudenashiko
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Eyes averted, head bowed, a hand in front of one's mouth: These gestures are a typical part of Japanese communication, established ways to express modesty, servility and even shame.
Is shame only determined by history and culture? If a person's definition of what's "shameless" influenced by environment and traditions? Do we live in a culture of shamelessness because nudity and sexual freedom are no longer taboo?
Or is the aptitude for shame an important social regulating tool, part of human nature? Could shame be essential for human communities?
Shame is human
Adam and Eve suddenly felt ashamed of their nakednessImage: Oliver Killig
These are questions the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden asks and attempts to answer in the exhibition "Shame. 100 reasons to blush." The phenomenon is examined from a scientific, artistic and historic point of view.
There are endless reasons to feel embarrassed, and the Dresden exhibition has highlighted 100 of them. Visitors suddenly find themselves standing on scales, or are confronted with a public projection of how they were looking at a sculpture. Shame is existential when visitors examine objects detailing mankind's cruelties and realize that they belong to a species that is capable of mass murder.
Shame and humiliation on the internet
The internet abounds with cruelty these days. Tyler Clementi, a young American violinist, committed suicide as a result of his roommate's cyber-mobbing attacks, a case that made headlines worldwide.
Donald Trump survived his sexist "grab-them-by-the-pussy" comments unscathed, where the life of White House intern Monica Lewinsky was in ruins after her affair with President Clinton became known. "Bill Clinton is regarded as one of the most popular US presidents of all time, Monica Lewinsky will always be remembered in relation to the scandal," said Andrea Köhler, a correspondent for the "Neue Züricher Zeitung" newspaper.
Two-faced shame
Shame is fundamentally duplicitous, says the exhibition's curator Daniel Tyradellis. It's a social, group feeling, but it's also personal and individual. Human babies can even feel shame as early as 18 months of age - and it only becomes worse during puberty.
Although no one likes to feel embarrassed, shame has a necessary, community-building function. "It shapes private, personal relations just as much as the professional, institutional ones," says Tyradellis.