Sgarbi: Facebook hires art historians to block censorship and promote art instead of bullshit

Famed critic, art historian and TV personality Vittorio Sgarbi makes a proposal to Facebook: hire art historians. According to Sgarbi, it could be a way to prevent many works from being mistaken for pornographic or erotic images and thus censored by the social. The proposal comes after the most recent cases, namely the censorship of the advertising campaign for the exhibition on Natalia Goncharova at Palazzo Strozzi(Instagram censored afew days ago a female nude of the Russian painter used by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi to promote the exhibition) and the blocking of a communication campaign of an agency in Treviso that had used as an image the famous group Amore e Psiche giacenti by Canova(here an in-depth study on the work).

“The point,” Sgarbi explained in a note released by his press office, “is precisely the algorithm: companies overflowing with money, such as Facebook, cannot entrust the control of advertisements on art to an algorithm. The algorithm does not think, it executes. The algorithm does not possess knowledge; it applies blocks that disregard evaluations of merit. This is why a Canova sculpture is compared to the ass of any Valentina Nappi: an aesthetic horror. It is an outrage to our artistic heritage.”

The solution? Here it is: “It would be enough to hire young art historians. Facebook would do a meritorious work, and it could boast of promoting art instead of the bullshit (not to mention hoaxes) posted every day by millions of nothing users. The paradox of social networks is that they block works of art but not fake news.”

Sgarbi also announced legal action against Zuckerberg’s social. “Unacceptable,” said Sgarbi, "that popular, wealthy, and technologically advanced social networks like Facebook and Instagram have still not managed to date to find a solution to distinguish a porn image from a work of art: for this reason, considering that censorships are repeated again and again, I have decided to promote legal action for the damage that this gap causes to the art world and to all the operators (including artists) who work there. It will be what in English they call a class action."

Sgarbi: Facebook hires art historians to block censorship and promote art instead of bullshit

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