On The Whitney Biennial Controversy

Many in the “art world” are thinking a lot about the controversy at the Whitney Biennial surrounding Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket. Bear with me while I take my turn at it. (See below for links to other readings).

Does she have the right to make that painting and to show it? Yes. If we ever seriously start saying who does and does not own certain subjects we will be sliding down a step slope.

Should it be taken down? I don’t think so. Should it have been included to begin with? I don’t know –
I feel conflicted.
I feel my whiteness in this and I don’t want to lie to myself about what this is or how it works …

I am tempted to be silent rather than prove myself naïve or ignorant … but that seems contrary to my deepest ideals. I don’t want to be a coward.

For me, in strange ways, the controversy reinforces the mechanisms of privilege and power. The attention to Open Casket drowns out and distracts from the work of lesser-known artists who are also in the Biennial. Their biennial moment is being occluded, washed away. It grabs the media – the public eye – and moves it away from what else might be thoughtful, meaningful, or potent in the show …

It is an unfortunate side effect of people caring about things that matter.

But maybe this moment could be used as a magnifying glass to turn attention to the full roster of the show’s artists? Maybe it could be used as a megaphone so that conversations that don’t usually happen – happen? –
How do we talk about things that really matter?

Whitney Biennial 2017

This is an art show – an art show – an art show – it mediates and objectifies. Sometimes this gives us the distance or the emotional armor to approach real things – and sometimes it numbs and aestheticizes –

The original photograph gives us neither armor nor beauty.

Emmett Till’s murder is an example of the horror that grows from one person’s ability to dehumanize another person. It was a murder committed from an assumption that one human, because of the circumstances into which they are born, inherently deserves hate, violence and contempt. It is a piercing example of a kind of depravity that is unable to consider the value of human life that is somehow other than its own.

It is a symptom of a kind of social psychopathy that is still with us.

His mother’s grief and rage held up a mirror to those who would dismiss and diminish his suffering and her gapping loss.

However this moment came again to our attention, it is a reminder of something that is radically prescient. We can pray that we steel ourselves against those thoughts and feelings that tempt us away from a commitment to shared humanity but any ideology that reduces human beings to something “other” only propagates a living nightmare. Such ideologies assure future horrors.

I think a lot about the “they” some speak of – the confidence that those speaking have that “they” are evil. This capacity to believe that there is a “they” is terrifying.

It’s important to know where our empathy goes first.
Maybe the painting does us a favor of reminding us of its source – maybe.
And maybe Till’s murder still has some power to awaken in our social consciousness an understanding that more recent events have somehow failed to do - maybe. We can use all the help we can get.


Other Readings on this subject:

"On Dana Schutz's Open Casket: A Masterful Yet Imperfect Painting" by Paddy Johnson, Artfcity

"The Violence of the 2017 Whitney Biennial" by Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergic

"Black Artists Are Calling For An Emmett Till Painting To Be Destroyed" by Jordan Danville, Fader

"Dana Schutz’s Painting of Emmett Till at Whitney Biennial Sparks Protest" by Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, Artnet

Added on March 29, 2017

"Censorship, not the Painting, Must Go" by Coco Fusco, Hyperallergic

Our Sacred Duty ...

Image Source - America's Library - Original Draft of Declaration of Independence

As citizens – as patriots – we have the obligation to be educated and informed: to come to our civic responsibilities with seriousness, with our homework done and in a thoughtful manner. We’ve allowed our political process to take on the most despicable aspects of a sporting rivalry. Too often we don’t think, we just scream our team’s name and talk trash about the “other side.” The problem with this is that it’s the kind of thing that leads to the horrors of history. If we vilify and dehumanize one another then we run the risk of repeating those histories. We create an environment where people feel justified in participating in the Kristallnacht, the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing or the attacks in Dallas or Orlando.

Bear with me –

We’re responsible. We allow and propagate shaming and hate baiting.

If we don’t want body shaming or people derided because of how they look, then we can’t participate in that. If we say we believe in religious freedom then that means for everyone. If we want our candidate or our ideas considered on their merits – then we have to do the work.
If we ridicule Trump for his appearance we perpetuate this practice.

If we accuse Obama of being a secret Muslim, …

If we deride someone through memes or ugly pictures – we perpetuate that practice. I’ve seen terrible pictures of Melania, Michelle, Hillary and Donald.


If we demonize, if we vilify, if we use foul terms to refer to one another, if we engage in name calling and lose sight of our mutual humanity, we perpetuate, cultivate this kind of culture. When we lose sight of our individual humanity, when we demonize groups and refuse to engage in the harder work of taking us each on the content of our characters (King) – then we lose our empathy. Empathy is what holds us back from violence. Empathy knits us together and cultivates caring. Let us try to imagine into one another and understand where we are coming from.

I beg you to take a pledge to not participate in hate baiting – to be a bit more forgiving, a bit more kind …

Do the thinking. Discuss what bothers you, your fears, your hopes, how we can together achieve a better world. Do comparative research. Do the work of having real exchanges. Let us privilege a conversation of ideas and policies. Let us take seriously the future of our nation. Let us cultivate the “angels of our better nature.”

empathy

Etymology:
Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion — more at pathos
Date:
1850
1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner ; also : the capacity for this

From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Empathy

*The pictures are of my mother who I will never stop missing.


I am interested in the importance of imagining. It is impossible to really know an - other. One can only imagine. I imagine the way things are... I imagine a reality. Imagining makes into the future... it creates now.

When we lose empathy... the ability to imagine into the other... we strip ourselves and our object of humanity. This is the door of evil.

We are all narcissists in this way. We can only "know" by imagining through ourselves... the line I think is when we project onto rather than imagining into...

and in other thoughts...
It is difficult now not to believe in some brighter future. Our new president seems to be moving through a series of choices driven by an ethical imagining. I cannot help but be impressed with his courage. I am hopeful. May we do well.