Leiden University painting removed: “Very narrow,” says creator

At Leiden University, a painting of cigar-smoking elderly gentlemen was removed from the Academy building. The 89-year-old Rein Dool’s artwork was removed after a tweet from an employee annoyed by the canvas.

Dool created the artwork in 1976. It features the university council of that period, including former rector Dolf Cohen, who went into hiding during WWII. The artwork hung on the wall of a conference room in the building for many years.

On Tuesday, a Leiden doctoral candidate in political science sent out a tweet wondering what signal the painting was sending, and noted that an ironic or self-critical note next to it would not be out of place.

To this, criminology professor Joanne van der Leun replied: “I’ve spent most of my career in academia in rooms with men and paintings of men. Besides, I hate smoking, even if it’s just painted.”

Van der Leun later posted a tweet showing the painting had been removed, commenting that action was taken immediately. The PhD student replies happily: “That’s great!” The removal caused an uproar on social media and parliamentary questions.

The artist has nothing good to say about removing the canvas. “It’s very tight. The canvas gives a good picture of the time. Only men smoking, no women. It looked blue from smoke. People were smoking everywhere at the time, I did it myself,” Dool tells Transmission in the West.

Dool says he made the painting with a wink at the time. “The painting is meant to be ironic.” The artist also claims that he has not yet been contacted about the removal of his canvas. “They should have informed me.” He says he wants the painting back when the university no longer wants it.

At the same time, Dool can also laugh at all this fuss, he says. “I have never received so much attention for my work. It is free publicity. Moreover, they get the opposite, because the removal of the painting has caused a lot of uproar and criticism of their action.”

Korean studies professor Remco Breuker of Leiden University is also having difficulty with the removal of the painting. “They’re really all older white men in the painting. But is that all they were?” he tells Nieuwsuur. “Reducing these people to what they appear to us without knowing anything about them seems to me a very unhealthy impulse. Especially in university where we are taught to look beyond.”

A spokesman for the university tells the regional broadcaster that for some time the university has been discussing existing works of art in its buildings. “That discussion has been going on since 2016. The picture was quite one-sided: with all due respect, it was mainly older men. Since then, women have had more and more space.”

The spokesperson denies that the painting was removed because of the tweet. “It was a spontaneous, playful action. To be clear: it’s not an official decision.” According to the spokesman, the painting is not intended to disappear completely. “We don’t want to hide it. It’s part of our history. We don’t want to lose it.”

It’s not yet clear what should happen to Dool’s work. “We will discuss it with our students, the artistic committee and the curator. The discussion that has arisen now is only positive. We are not running away from this, we want to continue. But we also want to show what I want to radiate”.