A failure of imagination

April 22, 2017 4:28 PM

Protesters showed up to physically block and voice their objections to “Open Casket” (2016), a painting of Emmett Till by Dana Schutz.

Artist Hannah Black called for the piece's removal and destruction in an open letter co-signed by other artists and curators. "Those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material."
Later in March, several news outlets published part of a fake letter purporting to be from the artist, Dana Schutz, also calling for the painting's removal.
After the Whitney Museum spent an evening discussing the controversy, with an event co-hosted by the Racial Imaginary Institute, three attendees discussed the controversy for art magazine Hyperallergic in The Possibilities and Failures of the Racial Imagination:
The other glaring failure of the white imagination that I see here — both in Schutz and in the Whitney, which is, at the end of the day, a white institution, despite having enlisted two Asian Americans to curate the biennial — is the complete inability to foresee how Black viewers might respond to that painting. This failure is so absurd, honestly, that I find myself coming to the appalling conclusion that it might never have even occurred to Schutz or the higher-ups at the Whitney that Black viewers would see the painting.

posted by bq (184 comments total)

My gut reaction is that protesting against this piece of art is absurd and missing the point. I expect to be re-educated in the comments below.
posted by 256 at 4:33 PM on April 22, 2017 [41 favorites]

I would not have seen this painting otherwise, so I appreciate the attention being drawn to it. It's a really fantastic painting.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:34 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material.

I feel like trying to limit the scope of an artist's work based upon their ethnicity is not a good idea. Who gets to be the arbiter?
posted by leotrotsky at 4:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [35 favorites]

Also, since Hannah Black is English, not American, presumably she cannot and should not possibly speak as to the American experience of race.

I mean, that's effectively the argument, right?
posted by leotrotsky at 4:41 PM on April 22, 2017 [11 favorites]

I can't argue with this "Those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material." though. Particularly not as a middle aged, middle class white woman in America.
posted by crush at 4:46 PM on April 22, 2017 [21 favorites]

I'm not familiar enough with Schutz to know: is she typically a provocateur or otherwise someone taking big cultural references and using them? Is this painting and the fairly predictable outrage it would cause normal for her work?

I feel like trying to limit the scope of an artist's work based upon their ethnicity is not a good idea. Who gets to be the arbiter?

This seems to me to get into that category error where saying someone shouldn't do something is equated with preventing them from doing something. At the very least, the painting seems to be in very bad taste, and calling it out shouldn't be dismissed as a curtailment of the domain of the artist's subjects.
posted by fatbird at 4:52 PM on April 22, 2017 [11 favorites]

Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist

...but who christened Hannah Black to be the judge of correct representations of Black America?

—those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.

If so, it's unfortunate that future representations of Christ's crucifixion should only be employed by Mizrahi Jews. That's been a relatively fruitful source of inspiration so far.

If you restrict artistic expression to only those forms which do not offend or offput anyone, that leaves you with a pretty small set of works.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:56 PM on April 22, 2017 [40 favorites]

I don't know if she's a racial provocateur, but one of her canvases involved a woman shooting a snot rocket.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:56 PM on April 22, 2017

This seems to me to get into that category error where saying someone shouldn't do something is equated with preventing them from doing something.

This seems to me to ignore that Hannah Black is calling for the destruction of the painting.
posted by thelonius at 4:58 PM on April 22, 2017 [28 favorites]

Having two small kids, I can't really take a trip to see the Biennial this year. How is it, this go-round?
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:59 PM on April 22, 2017

This seems to me to get into that category error where saying someone shouldn't do something is equated with preventing them from doing something.

I'm not sure that advocating for a self-imposed restriction is much better.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:59 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

When I was a kid, it was the prudes at the Pentecostal church calling for the destruction of art. You live long enough, you'll see anything.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:05 PM on April 22, 2017 [39 favorites]

This seems to me to get into that category error where saying someone shouldn't do something is equated with preventing them from doing something

One of the protesting artists, Hannah Black, saying that "white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights" really sounds like she's saying that free speech isn't a right for white people whose work is objectionable. I'd suspect that most of the protesters don't feel that way, but it's not a good look.

Also I am another who doesn't quite grasp what's objectionable about the painting? Emmitt Tills mother insisted on the open casket so that the violence of white supremacy could be seen, yes? And then all those black newspapers and magazines published the images for the same reason, yes? And the painting is also a depiction of that same violence, (albeit a wierd abstract one) so I totally don't understand.
posted by bracems at 5:09 PM on April 22, 2017 [13 favorites]

If so, it's unfortunate that future representations of Christ's crucifixion should only be employed by Mizrahi Jews.

Part of the problem is a non-black artist using a painful symbol to the black community for their own purpose--that's just basically cultural appropriation. The bigger problem is that Emmett Till's death is an event in the long history of white supremacy in America, and Dana Schutz is white. This whole thing is an example of an oppressed community seeing their painful symbol exploited by a member of the ruling class for her own fame.

I'm not sure that advocating for a self-imposed restriction is much better.

I think the argument is more like: if you knew or bothered to care how much this offended a large group of people, you might rethink the painting or your approach to the subject. If the shock/offense isn't the point, an artist should be able to thread the needle.

This seems to me to ignore that Hannah Black is calling for the destruction of the painting.

This seems pretty irrelevant because it's never going to happen unless Schutz does it herself voluntarily. Certainly, the Whitney isn't going to schedule a burning.
posted by fatbird at 5:13 PM on April 22, 2017 [53 favorites]

I also fail to see the necessity in Black's et al interpretation of the painting. A picture of a dead child can mean a lot of things. Schutz describes her aim as that of expressing a mother's sorrow with the loss of a child, and of course that has also a social dimension (the open casket, the violence, the shame). But this is allusion, and is open ended.

Also, let's not forget the fake letter. From it:

People who have been harmed by and are at risk of continued harm by systems of racist violence are in a much better position to know what is needed for restitution for that violence. If the removal of my painting has been called for by Black artists, writers, and activists, I can no longer protect an object at their expense. The painting must go.

From Black's letter asking for the removal of the painting:

Non-Black people must accept that they will never embody and cannot understand this gesture: the evidence of their collective lack of understanding is that Black people go on dying at the hands of white supremacists, that Black communities go on living in desperate poverty not far from the museum where this valuable painting hangs, that Black children are still denied childhood. Even if Schutz has not been gifted with any real sensitivity to history, if Black people are telling her that the painting has caused unnecessary hurt, she and you must accept the truth of this. The painting must go.

posted by fmoralesc at 5:16 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm not religious by any stretch, but I ran across this quote from 1 Corinthians 23:10 somewhere that seems appropriate: "I have the right to do anything," you say-but not everything is beneficial. "I have the right to do anything"-but not everything is constructive."
posted by hilberseimer at 5:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [20 favorites]

The protest has certainly been successful in at least one of its principal aims -- look at how many comments here mention the name Hannah Black.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [23 favorites]

...but who christened Hannah Black to be the judge of correct representations of Black America?

Black America is not a monolith, and Hannah Black has done nothing to suggest she's the ultimate arbiter. What she HAS done is made an argument that 34 other Black artists have co-signed. It shouldn't take that many Black artists to speak up for White America to listen, but it does make a powerful statement.
posted by zebra at 5:19 PM on April 22, 2017 [42 favorites]

The protest has certainly been successful in at least one of its principal aims -- look at how many comments here mention the name Hannah Black.

Don't be dense. Black women gain nothing positive from publicity associated with criticizing Whiteness.
posted by zebra at 5:22 PM on April 22, 2017 [60 favorites]

Hannah Black is not American.
posted by bq at 5:23 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Apologies for my denseness. But she did write the fake letter, yeah?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:23 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

"I have the right to do anything," you say-but not everything is beneficial. "I have the right to do anything"-but not everything is constructive."

I honestly don't know whether you're saying this in reference to Schutz or to her critics!

Which I think is actually part of the issue. If people want to know who is Hannah Black to be the arbiter of what Schutz can say, then one could equally ask who they are to be the arbiter of what Black can say.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:26 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

But she did write the fake letter, yeah?

There are similarities of wording, but no-one has claimed responsibility for the fake letter.
posted by bq at 5:28 PM on April 22, 2017

a white artist should not be permitted to use and profit from the image of a black man killed in a racially motivated crime

This is bullshit. By this logic the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" should be banned, since it was written by Abel Meeropol, a white Jew.
posted by w0mbat at 5:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [52 favorites]

Well, who would claim it? Who would claim that they put words in other person's mouth when the issue is that they claim that this person expressed something that they didn't have the right to in behalf of others?
posted by fmoralesc at 5:36 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's about how the art world functions and how money and status are allotted, maybe, as much as it is about this specific person and this specific painting - the fact that there's so much money and notoriety in play for so few people, so many of whom are white, and that there are so many marginalized artists who don't even have a shot at any kind of career security. And as a result, there's lots of room in the art economy for white people to make careers on the depiction of Black suffering. We don't want to listen to Black artists, generally, but we are happy to listen to white artists talk about Blackness, and as a result, Black artists get shut out both in general and in terms of the actual discourse about Black experience.

An artist of color that I know was talking about this whole thing, and she did say that there was in her experience a diversity of opinion about the painting and the situation generally among her friends, including Black artists. I say this only because she did also say that sometimes she felt weird to have white allies sort of whitesplain race and art to her, and that she felt like often white people flattened out the complexity of opinions about racial justice and art. She was also saying that she felt that white people tended to assume that all artists of color felt the same way about art and race, as if they were a monolith.

So that did sort of complicate how I've been thinking about this a bit.
posted by Frowner at 5:36 PM on April 22, 2017 [78 favorites]

Fretting about whether Hannah Black is sufficiently qualified to critique this painting is doing a whole lot of work to avoid engaging with the actual argument about the painting.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 5:37 PM on April 22, 2017 [30 favorites]

Ok I'll try to engage with a part of her argument: white people shouldnt profit from black pain. So what if it's agreed that if the painting is sold, proceeds go to a local NAACP chapter, or Negro College Fund. Why is that a less preferable outcome than the destruction and censorship of art?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:42 PM on April 22, 2017

In re the Strange Fruit example - I think we tend to forget that times change and cultural production changes, and representation changes.

Like, in the seventies and eighties in science fiction writing, very few white writers wrote characters of color at all - even left wing writers. And there were many fewer SF writers of color than there are today. So it could be a really strong, productive gesture for a white writer to center characters of color, because even though there was also a long term struggle to bring more SF writers of color into the field (and to get more publication and distribution for the writers already writing), if white writers didn't step up and write characters of color, there would be hardly any written.

Over time, as more and more SF writers of color came into the field, and as it became far more expected for white writers (especially left wing writers) to include characters of color, writing characters of color stopped being the most politically productive gesture by white writers and started being just...an expectation. The focus moved to the fact that many white writers weren't writing super realistic characters of color, and to the fact that writers of color were not being given room to tell the stories of people of color. Some white writers responded by saying "hey, look, in 1970 it was revolutionary to include characters of color, you have nothing to criticize me for", but this was pretty dumb, because it wasn't 1970 and the political conditions of 1970 no longer obtained.

If no one but a white artist is available to speak a truth about racism, then it's their job to speak up. If artists of color are getting pushed aside to make way for white artists talking about racism, then it becomes the white artist's job step back and to lift up the artists of color. Times change, what is politically possible changes. If you're focused on racial justice, you can't just say "forever and ever what was revolutionary in 1930 or 1970 will obtain".
posted by Frowner at 5:46 PM on April 22, 2017 [124 favorites]

my gut reaction is that anonymous art has its good points, especially seeing as credited art seems to be a western invention
posted by pyramid termite at 5:47 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm glad to have seen this painting. There's always room for more representations of black American history.
posted by CyborgHag at 5:53 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

BTW, if we're going to be cynical about Hannah Black here, what about Schutz herself? She's not actually harmed by this controversy, is she? And now that painting is far more significant because it has controversy attached to it. I really doubt this caught Schutz by surprise, so how should we interpret her motives in this?
posted by fatbird at 5:55 PM on April 22, 2017 [8 favorites]

Maybe to avoid offending anyone else, each of us should just sit alone in the corner of our own private room, gazing at our own face in a mirror.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:56 PM on April 22, 2017 [29 favorites]

The shirt saying "“Black Death Spectacle” pretty much says it all.
posted by ignignokt at 5:57 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Ok I'll try to engage with a part of her argument: white people shouldnt profit from black pain. So what if it's agreed that if the painting is sold, proceeds go to a local NAACP chapter, or Negro College Fund. Why is that a less preferable outcome than the destruction and censorship of art?

I don't think this is just about money, though. It's also about the economy of prestige. Getting a work in the Whitney Biennial is a huge deal. It's a career-making honor that also gives an artist a huge amount of exposure. Schutz doesn't have to sell the painting to profit. And it's typically been a career-making honor that was much more likely to be bestowed upon white artists than black artists.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:57 PM on April 22, 2017 [35 favorites]

If no one but a white artist is available to speak a truth about racism, then it's their job to speak up. If artists of color are getting pushed aside to make way for white artists talking about racism, then it becomes the white artist's job step back and to lift up the artists of color.

there will never again be a shortage of artists of color who have points to make about race in the US, frowner. Which is great! But does that mean that white artists should no longer engage racial topics? Does their whiteness preclude them from understanding the racial injustices of the past and present? And if those artists go ahead and create it anyway, should people make a concerted effort to keep it from being seen?

Independent of the shoulda and should nots in this story, this painting is literally the only piece of art from the biennial that I have seen or heard about. If its protestors are hoping to provoke a discussion, they've done it. If they're hoping to actually keep people from seeing it, they have really failed.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 5:57 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

I really doubt this caught Schutz by surprise, so how should we interpret her motives in this?

Ask her.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:59 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

But does that mean that white artists should no longer engage racial topics?

I personally would love to see White artists reflect upon Whiteness, which is also a racial topic.
posted by zebra at 6:00 PM on April 22, 2017 [55 favorites]

[insert stock rant #11 variant b, title: "speech acts and works of art must be understood in terms of their effects on the world and in terms of their conditions of production." Include quote from Walter Benjamin on politicizing aesthetics rather than aestheticizing politics. Remember to add reference to casting of Hamilton generating a long-term shift in who can plausibly become a Broadway actor; it's a good analogy. Refer to the Whitney's missed opportunity here. Note that everyone should listen to Frowner. Close with encomium to direct action in general that may not actually make sense. ]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:00 PM on April 22, 2017 [25 favorites]

I find it odd that the post does not include, nor do any of the comments mention, the excellent profile of the artist by Calvin Tomkins in the April 10 New Yorker. If anyone wants to go beyond hot takes and engage with her background, process, and thoughts, I recommend it. Here's a paragraph about the painting in question:

Schutz had worried that the appalling aspects of Till’s murder might overpower any attempt to deal with it visually. I’d wondered about that, too. Violent images have appeared in a number of her paintings, but within a context of humor or irony or inspired sappiness that neutralizes the shock—her self-eaters clearly suffer no pain when they bite off a finger or two. Emmett Till’s murder was implacably real. Trying to deal with this atrocity in visual terms had seemed almost beyond imagining, and “Open Casket” is a very dark picture—but it’s not grotesque. The horror is conveyed in painterly ways that, to me, make it seem more tragic than the photograph, because the viewer is drawn in, not repelled. “There was so much uncertainty with this painting,” Schutz said, quietly. “You think maybe it’s off limits, and then extra off limits. But I really feel any subject is O.K., it’s just how it’s done. You never know how something is going to be until it’s done.”

posted by languagehat at 6:01 PM on April 22, 2017 [35 favorites]

Is nobody else disturbed by the call for destruction here? The letter literally begins with:

"To the curators and staff of the Whitney Biennial: I am writing to ask you to remove Dana Schutz's painting Open Casket and with the urgent recommendation that the painting be destroyed."

All of the criticisms and arguments being raised above are perfectly valid for whether a work of art like this should be displayed in public or endorsed by a museum, but that's not what's happening. There is literally an open letter with 34 signatories calling for the physical destruction of speech they disagree with. To me that's so far beyond the pale I have trouble reconciling it with their entirely sensible critiques of the use of black pain and suffering in the art of white people.

Again, when they say at the end of their letter "the painting must go," they're not saying the painting must be taken down, they're saying the painting must be burned. Which, to me, prompts an entirely different conversation.
posted by Ndwright at 6:06 PM on April 22, 2017 [87 favorites]

Fretting about whether Hannah Black is sufficiently qualified to critique this painting is doing a whole lot of work to avoid engaging with the actual argument about the painting.

From the linked article: "the protesters maintain that any conversation should not center on the painting itself, but rather on its content and the implications of who made it."
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:07 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Katherine McKittrick: "analyses of blackness can... overtax the suffering black body. The underlying intention
of this article is... to insist that our racial pasts can uncover a collective history of encounter—a difficult
interrelatedness—that promises an ethical analytics of race based not on suffering, but on human life." (source)

I think rather than trying to defend the artist's good intentions, we need to imagine how she could have engaged with these themes, even with the particularities of Till's death and funeral, without resorting to the spectacle of black death.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:07 PM on April 22, 2017 [8 favorites]

This all just strikes me as a tragic missed opportunity to re-engage with the death of Emmett Till and the ongoing movement that event sparked. As a white Canadian, I learned about Emmett Till from a very famous white Jew, which led me towards a deeper consciousness (at least to the extent possible given my distance from the event, in multiple dimensions) of civil rights and the violence done to people of colour through the ages.

But people are allowed to be wrong. And sometimes the loudest voices are not the most representative ones. I believe that the rights of artists are near-inviolable, and necessarily so. I also believe that the rights of people to protest are near-inviolable. So all I can really do, personally, is try to feel the pain on both sides of this and learn something from it, if there is anything to be learned.
posted by klanawa at 6:09 PM on April 22, 2017 [8 favorites]

"I have the right to do anything"-but not everything is constructive."

While I understand the outrage about the desire to censor the artist's work, my sympathies like with her critics. From a White perspective, I see this image and I'm reminded of a horrific moment in our nation's history. I think about the violence visited on Black communities. And maybe some people think that's the virtue of such a work. But do we think that the issues of race in the USA exist because White people haven't seen enough shocking images of Black people in pain? Is that what the artist thinks--that another mutilated Black body is suddenly going to fix the issue of centuries of racism built into the structure of our society? The photo of Alan Kurdi shocked the world and brought attention to an aspect of the refugee catastrophe that many had previously been able to ignore. Yet even this novel showcase of trauma has not been enough to stop the wave of anti-refugee sentiment sweeping the world. So why do we think this unoriginal, utterly banal illustration of racism will do the job?

White people have been creating art that showcases Black pain for decades on decades--and yet it's 2017 and someone like Sessions is Attorney General and Black kids still have to receive The Talk about how to behave around police to not get shot. So there are a lot of Black people who are sick of this. They're sick of White people getting patted on the back for pieces of art that do nothing but offer the White viewer an opportunity to gawk at Black trauma, cluck their tongues, and then go out to Starbucks for a latte.

It's really easy to produce violent images that shock people. It is harder to force the viewer to re-evaluate their relationship with the victim, and how the viewer's own behavior might contribute to that victimization.

By this logic the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" should be banned, since it was written by Abel Meeropol, a white Jew.

"Strange Fruit" is actually a great example of art that forces White listeners to contextualize Black trauma in the context of their own Whiteness, rather than simply illustrating Black pain. "Strange Fruit" is less about lynching itself as it is about the context in which it occurs. It first invokes the White-created historical fantasy of the Gallant South: gorgeous plantations, polite people, men who invoke the brave knights of storybooks and women who embody lovely, delicate princesses. And it then destroys that fantasy by reminding the listener of the rank, animalistic violence that forms the backbone of real history. It is about White hypocrisy and the willingness of White people to paint over the reality of American race relations in favor of a vision of America that has never existed for Black people.
posted by Anonymous at 6:15 PM on April 22, 2017

I would suggest (to my fellow non-Black folks) that we don’t need to fixate on the specter of censorship or the stifling of artistic creativity (that gets continually brought up in the cultural appropriation threads too).

Instead can we ask, what is the concern? What could be different here? Why are other artists rejecting Schutz’s representation of black death, no matter how moving? Especially after years and years of videos of police killings and beatings of black people in America, the fact that this artist felt that the way to manifest her worry is through the depiction of a dead black youth means that we are remaking the story of Black America yet again as a litany of suffering. As someone who recently reproduced this long list of suffering in my rush to point out how placemaking and urban design fails to engage with Black Lives Matter, I know that having one's blind spots pointed out in political and artistic and scholarly engagement is no fun. But we need to make that space to listen.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:18 PM on April 22, 2017 [26 favorites]

A mistake that I notice white people often to make: We push racism into pastness. We talk about Emmett Till but we don't talk about Rekia Boyd or Tamir Rice; we talk about how we've found out that the woman who accused Emmett Till lied, but we don't understand how likely it is that the white people in contemporary police shootings have also lied and lied.

Another thought: We think that we look out at the world to perceive racism and the marks of racism, and that this is our political task, when we ought to look - to detourn something said upthread - into a mirror. It's easier to look at a picture of Emmett Till than to look at our own complicity.

And I do mean complicity. When I was reading about abolitionist movements, I read a lot about boycotts of slave-produced products, mostly sugar and cotton, and I was thinking "how repulsive it would be to wear a dress made of cotton grown by slaves". And then, yes, it occurred to me that I routinely buy stuff made by people of color who are slaves, or nearly slaves. I buy that stuff when alternatives are available, some affordable and convenient, some expensive and difficult. I am complicit in slavery, just like someone buying Carribbean sugar in 1820. I could do without these things but I don't. How am I better than white people in slavery days?

That's a question that white people can confront - one of many, but a point where a political intervention might actually go somewhere.
posted by Frowner at 6:18 PM on April 22, 2017 [85 favorites]

Also: in fucking nineteen thirty-six a Jewish person might be forgiven for feeling they had a lot more in common with Black people than those who counted as White.
posted by Anonymous at 6:19 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think we'd do better to focus on the questions raised by the picture, the context of its creation and the objections to it, rather than getting exercised about what we should think of the various people involved, their views about how the picture should be treated and their views on freedom of speech more generally.

The objections being raised are real and valid. Painting any subject without their consent​ inevitably raises ethical issues - which is not to say that it's always wrong, but it does require justification, and sometimes it is wrong. In this context, those issues are further complicated by the facts​ of racial oppression and privilege, facts which frequently result in the bodies, images and ideas of Black people being treated as the property of white people and white culture. At the same time, it is important that white people do not simply ignore these issues. But it's vital that the contribution of white artists is actually justified, and, given the context, strong justification is needed.

I think that Schutz's justification or explanation of the work is pretty weak. She doesn't seem to acknowledge that, in order to make worthwhile art about this, as a white person, she has to engage with her own complicity in violence against Black people, and the fundamentally problematic aspects of her making that art in the first place. If her art reflected those issues, I'd see more point in it, and it might (or might not) justify the use of the image. Without that self-awareness, it seems inevitable to me that the fundamental problems of appropriation overwhelm any argument that we need another white person's take on violence against Black people. White people need to listen to Black people's voices, both about the fact of racial violence and oppression, and about the issues that make white people's representations of that problematic.
posted by howfar at 6:20 PM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

I'm disturbed. I just don't have the words to articulate it properly.

If someone here supports destroying the painting could you say your preferred method? Paint over it? Rip it apart? Burn it? The burning could be it's own art event.

The protesters' experiences of being overwritten by white culture are very valid. But there's an essentially vapid authoritarian streak behind all calls to destroy art and I don't see these protesters as being exempt from that.
posted by CyborgHag at 6:23 PM on April 22, 2017 [22 favorites]

I would suggest (to my fellow non-Black folks) that we don’t need to fixate on the specter of censorship or the stifling of artistic creativity (that gets continually brought up in the cultural appropriation threads too).

Except it's not just a "specter", the protestors are directly calling for this piece's destruction and declaring that white people's free speech isn't a natural right. This isn't some theoretical abstract people are bringing into the discussion.
posted by Sangermaine at 6:25 PM on April 22, 2017 [18 favorites]

They're sick of White people getting patted on the back for pieces of art that do nothing but offer the White viewer an opportunity to gawk at Black trauma, cluck their tongues, and then go out to Starbucks for a latte.

Then the focus of the protest should be on the curators of the exhibition who selected this piece over a different one by an artist of color, and not on the frankly idiotic demand to destroy the painting.
posted by Behemoth at 6:25 PM on April 22, 2017 [21 favorites]

Like, I think a just a painting of white people looking at a painting of Emmett Till would say more about race relations than this does.
posted by Anonymous at 6:25 PM on April 22, 2017

For what it's worth, I don't read the letter as asking the curators to destroy the painting. They ask the curators to remove the painting from the Biennial and recommend that it be destroyed. Presumably, the only person who could decide to destroy it would be the painting's owner.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:26 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

But there's an essentially vapid authoritarian streak behind all calls to destroy art and I don't see these protesters as being exempt from that.

Even if that's the case, I think that the huge emphasis being placed on it in this thread, at the expense of discussing the actual issues raised about the painting, is functioning more as a tone argument than anything substantive.
posted by howfar at 6:27 PM on April 22, 2017 [32 favorites]

White people have been creating art that showcases Black pain for decades on decades--

If we are talking about actions that produce real change, well, people have been demanding art be banned and destroyed for decade upon decade too, yet controversial art continues on.
posted by Jimbob at 6:28 PM on April 22, 2017

recommend that it be destroyed.

By whom? Their deliberate use of the passive voice is telling.
posted by Ndwright at 6:28 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

is functioning more as a tone argument than anything substantive.

Tone matters. It's a fundamental aspect of how humans communicate, how they trust each other, how they judge each other's motivations.
posted by Jimbob at 6:30 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

That open letter is quite something. It uses a form of coercive, uncompromising and violent language that makes an exchange of perspectives almost impossible.

So I am grateful to Frowner, schroedinger, howfar and others for their comments, they help make sense of the issue and face my own shortcomings.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:30 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

Then the focus of the protest should be on the curators of the exhibition who selected this piece over a different one by an artist of color, and not on the frankly idiotic demand to destroy the painting.

I mean, I'm sure if you asked the protesters themselves they'd say the larger issue is the structure of an art world that believes this art is superior to anything that could've been produced by, say, a POC. But I suspect the worst thing that will happen to this painting is that it might get taken down--and I suspect the protesters know that too. I'm not going sit around telling a group of Black people that the way they're being angry about racism is wrong.
posted by Anonymous at 6:31 PM on April 22, 2017

Even if that's the case, I think that the huge emphasis being placed on it in this thread, at the expense of discussing the actual issues raised about the painting, is functioning more as a tone argument than anything substantive.
howfar

Calls for violent censorship and removal of rights is substantive. It's disingenuous in the extreme to pretend otherwise or ask people to ignore points made directly by the people involved in favor of ones you'd rather be discussed. No one forced that letter to be written, no one forced them to make the statements they did. You're responsible for what you choose to say.
posted by Sangermaine at 6:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]

I’m not trying to backseat plan-a-protest, but from a strategic and rhetorical standpoint I’m super bummed that the call for the paintings destruction has put the focus on censorship. But then again, maybe the letter writer was just that pissed. Or thought that the best way to get coverage would be to stage of a kind of spectacle of destruction that critiques the spectacle of black death. I mean, in reality, the painting is not going to be destroyed. Personally I don’t want it to be destroyed. But I am totally okay with the writer calling for its destruction. Why?

We can feel “don’t take away our freedom of speech” and get all het up, but I definitely don’t want to make my feelings about the protesters’ feelings more important than their actual feelings. Of despair and frustration and this is not just one painting but this is the 98th depiction of black death this year.

This painting doesn’t exist in isolation. Like how that thread about how Asian Americans might be grouchy about being asked “where are you from” devolved briefly into a “but I just ask that of everyone, why wouldn’t you give me the benefit of the doubt” before a bunch of us had to explain that your well-intentioned question is part of a lifetime of having my right to be here questioned or my alienness assumed.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:37 PM on April 22, 2017 [44 favorites]

Calls for violent censorship and removal of rights is substantive. It's disingenuous in the extreme to pretend otherwise or ask people to ignore points made directly by the people involved in favor of ones you'd rather be discussed. No one forced that letter to be written, no one forced them to make the statements they did. You're responsible for what you choose to say

So what is there to say about it, other than "censorship is wrong and this painting should not be forcibly destroyed"? Why is it the thing that so many people feel it's vitally important to discuss?
posted by howfar at 6:39 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

Tone matters. It's a fundamental aspect of how humans communicate, how they trust each other, how they judge each other's motivations.

Tone matters, and yet focusing on tone is frequently the tactic of someone who wants an excuse to ignore the complaints of someone being victimized.

I think it says it all that people are interpreting this letter as saying "white people can't talk about race ever" and not "white people whose entire artwork is focused around images of mutilated Black people aren't bringing anything to the table except exploitation of their subjects."
posted by Anonymous at 6:39 PM on April 22, 2017

the call for the paintings destruction has put the focus on censorship

what an amazingly random happenstance

next thing you'll be telling me that issues of appropriation, etc. are well-trod and nuanced and familiar in their general form and not inherently remarkable, whereas literal calls for censorship are so bizarre as to be shocking and newsworthy
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:41 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

I think it says it all that people are interpreting this letter as saying "white people can't talk about race ever"

People are interpreting this letter as saying "speech we disagree with should be destroyed" because the letter says "speech we disagree with should be destroyed".
posted by Ndwright at 6:43 PM on April 22, 2017 [28 favorites]

honestly feeling a little physically ill that people are acting like "someone wants a painting destroyed" is the scariest topic in this room
posted by reprise the theme song and roll the credits at 6:48 PM on April 22, 2017 [51 favorites]

So what is there to say about it, other than "censorship is wrong and this painting should not be forcibly destroyed"? Why is it the thing that so many people feel it's vitally important to discuss?
howfar

That's an excellent question for the people who chose to explicitly start and frame the discussion in those terms.
posted by Sangermaine at 6:53 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

honestly feeling a little physically ill that people are acting like "someone wants a painting destroyed" is the scariest topic in this room

People burning Ice-T records outside a religious retirement community in my hometown in 1992 also made me ill -- granted, you don't want to be downwind of melting wax.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:55 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

dylan: hurricane

to me, there is no invalid source of inspiration. if this creative act means many more suburban whites know of emmet till, well, good.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:00 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

While this art comes from a good and heartfelt place, I understand the reaction to it too. Like yes artist you feel awful about the tragedy and want people to understand it, but black people in the US are trying to get people to listen to them, and well meaning white people inserting themselves as explainers and proxies of what happens to black people is for many taking the attention and legitimacy away from those the violence is aimed at.
posted by zippy at 7:04 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

It's also disingenuous to compare the phrase "the signatories are recommending the work be destroyed", an expression of opinion that humans have said about things they don't like across all of history, to literal book-burnings and complain that you don't like its tone. And it is in incredibly bad faith when it is placed in the larger context of an essay whose primary focus is on explaining the ethics of race in art.
posted by Anonymous at 7:05 PM on April 22, 2017

Wow this is a very heated discussion.

I am disturbed at the artists call for the destruction of the art in question because as PoC, I am sure they are acquainted with how the destruction or suppression of art that PoC made is significantly more common because racism is real.

That said, I'm all for the Whitney taking the painting down and returning it to Schultz because I STRONGLY feel that this individual, having lead a privileged white life has NO IDEA about the pain she brought with her ignorance and kind intention to start dialogue. THAT piece is offensive to me, as a gringo, because one of the ways cultural appropriation is carried out and justified is through ignorance, and I believe the artists are in every way shape and form justified in calling for the removal of the painting.

The suffering endured by every black American, both past and present is very real. Because of that realness, and the reality of the impact of censorship, I understanding a lot of the heated emotion here.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 7:10 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Mod note: Hello, let us not Godwin the thread until it's at least 3 hours old! Try hard to make your points without Nazis.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:12 PM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]

People burning Ice-T records outside a religious retirement community in my hometown in 1992 also made me ill -- granted, you don't want to be downwind of melting wax.
(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates

But shouldn't you have ignored the burning and engaged them on the substance of their disagreement with the record?
posted by Sangermaine at 7:13 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

if this creative act means many more suburban whites know of emmet till, well, good.

If the art establishment gave more exposure to works by artist of color, though, then suburban white people might come to know about things like the murder of Emmett Till (which seriously: any adult American should know about already) in a way that didn't center white perspectives. And further, are suburban white people really learning about things from the Whitney Biennial? How many suburban white people actually go to the Whitney ever? And finally, who says that suburban white people are the most important audience anyway?

The Bob Dylan thing is interesting, because Bob Dylan and Emmett Till were exact contemporaries. They were both born in 1941, and they were both 14 when Till was murdered. And I think that's an event that meant something very different for white 14-year-old Americans like Bob Dylan, for whom it was a terrible injustice, and black 14-year-old Americans, for whom it was a terrifying and terrorizing reminder of their own absolute vulnerability to racial violence. And I guess that I wonder if white and-or non-American people would have a fuller understanding of that event if their exposure to it came from the latter perspective, rather than the former.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:15 PM on April 22, 2017 [31 favorites]

I'm glad that this thread has been put to the good use of preventing​ a picture burning that was definitely going to happen without it, instead of discussing the entirely theoretical possibility that a deeply problematic piece of art was displayed.
posted by howfar at 7:15 PM on April 22, 2017 [24 favorites]

It's also disingenuous to compare the phrase "the signatories are recommending the work be destroyed" (emphasis added)
schroedinger

I just want to point out that that phrase isn't part of the letter, it's from the description above the letter. The first line of the letter reads:

I am writing to ask you to remove Dana Schutz's painting Open Casket and with the urgent recommendation that the painting be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum.

It makes no bones about where it stands.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:16 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

you people are doing a crap job of listening to frowner and frankly i'm disappointed.

A bit back one of y'all said something along the lines of "if its protestors are hoping to provoke a discussion, they've done it" and I was like "yes! so you get the point of the intervention!"

but then there were more sentences after that and I was all "sad face."
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [16 favorites]

I think it says it all that people are interpreting this letter as saying "white people can't talk about race ever" and not "white people whose entire artwork is focused around images of mutilated Black people aren't bringing anything to the table except exploitation of their subjects."

The engage in art criticism. Engage in making art in response and opposition. Jumping in with 'this must be destroyed' has an impact and it they didn't want that to be part of the discussion they could have wrote a different letter.
posted by Jimbob at 7:21 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

> I just want to point out that that phrase isn't part of the letter, it's from the description above the letter. The first line of the letter reads:

I am writing to ask you to remove Dana Schutz's painting Open Casket and with the urgent recommendation that the painting be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum.

It makes no bones about where it stands.

Okay now read it in terms of its effects. They could have written something like: "we would like to raise a discussion about whether or not hanging this piece is a proper use of the whitney's institutional status and also don't you think it's a super screwed up that white people can make a living painting art about Black people but Black people who want to make a living as artists get froze out?"

The effect of this statement would have been a sort of wet thud. If you want to actually enact a discussion rather than simply mentioning the need for one, you have to do something that draws public attention.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:22 PM on April 22, 2017 [8 favorites]

This isn't tone policing, it is directly adressing a main, deliberate part of the story.
posted by Jimbob at 7:23 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

I have a problem with the notion of a "problematic piece of art" - debating over who gets to call for the removal or destruction of a work of art is already into territory I object to.
posted by twsf at 7:31 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

The effect of this statement would have been a sort of wet thud. If you want to actually enact a discussion rather than simply mentioning the need for one, you have to do something that draws public attention.
You Can't Tip a Buick

But you can't have it both ways. If you want to provoke discussion using inflammatory language, then you have to accept that the discussion so provoked and the public attention so drawn will be to the language you've used.

"Talk about what we've said except for what we've said" is absurd. The tactics they've used have enacted a discussion: this is it. Telling people to ignore what was explicitly stated, and not just as a random aside but as the opening salvo, comes across almost as operating in bad faith.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:32 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]

This isn't tone policing, it is directly adressing a main, deliberate part of the story.

That would be a more plausible were it not manifesting as addressing the main, deliberate part of the story that negatively affects the white people involved, to the nigh on complete exclusion of the main, deliberate part of the story that negatively affects the black people involved.
posted by SometimeNextMonth at 7:34 PM on April 22, 2017 [30 favorites]

Here's the problem for me, I guess. Why can't we all bring attention to negative things? Inherently, wouldn't it be better for a multitude of voices to consistently bring attention to injustice? We can all be on the same side, why make sides and say that this person is permitted to point out injustice and this person isn't? She has said that she isn't trying to profit from this work, that the intention is essentially to highlight this injustice. This should be applauded.

I understand criticism about white privilege and that there are these larger forces at work, but saying to any artist, or even activist, really, that you can only point out injustice if you are directly part of the affected demographic is a kind of one true Scotsman fallacy that is entirely counterproductive to larger goals of justice, in my opinion.

We can all work together towards greater justice. We are all one people.

I think this entire approach is counterproductive.
posted by MythMaker at 7:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [18 favorites]

But you can't have it both ways. If you want to provoke discussion using inflammatory language, then you have to accept that the discussion so provoked and the public attention so drawn will be to the language you've used.

I think it's possible that you and I aren't the people among whom they hoped to provoke discussion, though, and that their intended audience is a little more comfortable with deliberately provocative speech than you seem to be.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:39 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Good lord y'all type fast. Here's some slow thoughts for a fast-moving thread.

I teach at an art school, I work on aesthetics and philosophy of art, and I teach courses on the visual in relationship to violence. So I've had a lot of conversations about this painting, and a lot of colleagues who want to pin me to an assertion about whether the painting is good or bad, right or wrong. (The term 'the Schutzstorm' has been thrown around a bit.) I stuck, still stick, to this: art is complicated; correct judgment of art is difficult; nonetheless there are considerations that can move judgment one way or another.

Here's a few thoughts on considerations that I think matter to this, without completely determining it one way or another. I am avoiding the question of censorship because I don't think it's the primary question here, and the call for it can't be fully discussed without thinking about the painting itself, anyway.

Schutz herself is...not great in talking about the painting and why she felt driven to make it. I've read the article languagehat links and I don't think she comes off well there. I actually agree with her in the blockquote above: "But I really feel any subject is O.K., it’s just how it’s done. You never know how something is going to be until it’s done." But in agreeing with her, I also take her at her word: any subject is in principle okay, if you do it right. It's not clear to me that she has.

This is to say that I have a mild disagreement with Black's letter—I don't think that Schutz's whiteness precludes her from making art that engages with racism in America, or even from making art about black suffering in America that might use some iconic images of that suffering. What I do think is that she hasn't done a very good job of it, and that this is what people are responding to. She seems to think that she could just feel her way to a good painting about white shame, and then she made this painting, it made her feel feelings, and then she responds to the complex, angry, and thoughtful reaction to it as oh, it's a difficult subject, people are uncomfortable because it's difficult. (Literally, in the WaPo article above: “it’s a problematic painting and I knew that getting into it.”)

I think this is unacceptably and even culpably naive; I think this while also thinking that she's probably telling the truth in everything she says about her intentions at confrontation, empathy, response, etc. The concluding quote in the New Yorker article is just so, so helpless:

“I knew the risks going into this,” Schutz told me. “What I didn’t realize was how bad it would look when seen out of context. Is it better to try to make something that’s impossible, because it’s important to you, and to fail, or never to engage with it at all? I just couldn’t do it any other way.”

Well, okay—sometimes art is difficult, sometimes it's hard to use the words or forms that would reach someone. But there is a lot of work on the difficulties of representing violence without reproducing it, especially violence like lynching or necklacing that trades on the visibility of the broken and vulnerable body as part of the violence itself; there is also artwork and theoretical work on the difficulty of representing charged subjects exactly like this one, where the language or image that seems the right size for the horror of what one's dealing with is also the language or image that seems most guaranteed to alienate, to fail to start the conversation one wanted to have. There is also a lot of other work that deals with white shame and violence towards black people that she could have learned from.

(Seriously, the fine art world that she's a part of is so fucking smart about theory and history these days it's tough to get a toehold without being fluent in all of that, so that just adds to the sense of the incredible naivete of this painting. Incidentally, the Whitney is itself an engine for that theory-driven intelligence, not least through its Independent Study Program, the very "Whitney ISP 2013-14" that Black names in her signature. I don't think it's been acknowledged that she's criticizing from within her association with the institution, and the disappointment that comes with having your alma mater let you down on one of the very things it prides itself on, the very reasons you might have gone there in the first place—its promise to "examine the historical, social, and intellectual conditions of artistic production.")

As a point of comparison, take Kerry James Marshall's "Heirlooms and Accessories," a triptych about white participation in violence towards black people that deals with it rather differently than Schutz has here. Here's another link where you can see the details a bit more: it's a reproduction of a famous lynching photo from the 1930s, but with most of the original greyed out until it's almost unrecognizable. It almost ceases to function as a photograph and becomes instead a reference to its original, and thus comes as close to a photograph can to naming the lynching without reproducing it. The part of the photograph that remains are the faces of three white women witnessing the lynching, each one given her own panel where she alone stands out, framed in a locket on a chain. There's a lot going on here, and Marshall has a nice and approachable discussion of the work and its themes in a brief video about the work here. For my current purposes I'd just point out some of what this work does that Schutz's work doesn't do: it focuses the viewer on the participation of the white viewers, making it about their complicity (heirlooms and accessories, inheritors of this act and participant/accessory to the murder); it keeps us from forgetting the horror of the original photograph while also not foregrounding the original spectacle. Schutz's work doesn't have anything like this degree of control over the viewer or the confrontation. I don't think that she has to do what Marshall did, but his work gives an instance of what it can be to engage in a complex and thoughtful way with images of violence, acknowledging their power and actively shaping the viewer's encounter with the structures of viewing and violence.
posted by felix grundy at 7:40 PM on April 22, 2017 [162 favorites]

This is all very complicated. I believe I have filled out my praxis™ card correctly and the results are as follows:

1. The Whitney Fucked Up. Again.
2. Hannah Black + and her cosignatories are either: "daring activist provocateurs" or "small minded advocates for authoritarianism" depending on the value of box C7 "privilege valence of burning others' art."
3. Dana Schutz does not understand Black people.
4. Everyone understood Parker Bright and his T Shirt.

posted by ethansr at 7:42 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Jezebel post with discussion comments from back in March: 'The Painting Must Go': Artists Ask Whitney Biennial to Remove a Painting of Emmett Till
posted by cadge at 7:44 PM on April 22, 2017

What happened, Dana?: A conversation with Curatorial Fellow for Diversity in the Fine Arts, Kelli Morgan, on the recent controversy surrounding the 2017 Whitney Biennial, by Matthew Herzog and Abby King (Velvet Glove)
posted by Kabanos at 7:49 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

The Whitney Fucked Up. Again.

obviously

Hannah Black + and her cosignatories are either: "daring activist provocateurs" or "small minded advocates for authoritarianism" depending on the value of box C7 "privilege valence of burning others' art"

a buck's worth of red paint would take care of that painting - it would also take care of the career of any artist who chose to do that - it might ruin it - it might be one of the great acts of performance art in our times

don't talk about it - do it

Dana Schulz does not understand Black people

let's put it this way - as a songwriter and musician, i'm not real inspired to write a song about emmett till - i'm not really sure it's my place to do so and i sure as hell had better do it with more taste and ambition than she did

Everyone understood Parker Bright and his T Shirt

he made his point well

oh, and i think as a piece of art, it's a crappily drafted piece of shit, no matter what the subject matter is, but i'm a philistine when it comes to modern art, so who cares what i think

still, if no one knew who had done this painting, i still have to wonder what the reaction would be
posted by pyramid termite at 7:57 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

I think it's possible that you and I aren't the people among whom they hoped to provoke discussion, though, and that their intended audience is a little more comfortable with deliberately provocative speech than you seem to be.

Really? Because I thought their audience was the elites and that their provocative speech was intended to draw attention to itself. Or maybe that the audience isn't the point at all and that the essay was written in anger.

I find these conversations interesting, because, to some degree, the defense against tone policing is a way of denying agency and professionalism to the writers. They could have thought of something better, but you fools would just have dismissed it anyway! They could have written something better, but they were angry! They could have written something better, but they weren't educated enough to know better! To some degree, it doesn't matter how Black wrote the letter, because (just as tone policers would criticize her no matter how polite she was) her apologists will insist everyone is taking her statements out of context.

I think pyramid termite is right. If they wanted to declare that the art should be destroyed, then someone ought to have destroyed it. If declaring the art should be destroyed is an act of hyperbole, then it's hard to take any of the subsequent statements literally, either.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:08 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

We can all be on the same side, why make sides and say that this person is permitted to point out injustice and this person isn't?

Addressing common humanity is extremely out of fashion.

I think pyramid termite is right. If they wanted to declare that the art should be destroyed, then someone ought to have destroyed it.

Yep, I'm cool with this.
posted by Jimbob at 8:12 PM on April 22, 2017

It's interesting to see so many commenters unironically instantiating exactly the "principle" which the signatories frame as white free speech. Are we really supposed to believe that artists have a natural right to not have their work destroyed? If we include artists of color in the analysis, no, that's a privilege taken for granted by white America.

The argument over destroying the painting is clearly beside the point, but it's at least point-adjacent.
posted by emmalemma at 8:13 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

I think this painting will be seen as a monument to White understanding of racism in the future. It takes a seminal event in the history of civil rights and contextualizes it for a white audience. Rather than deal directly with the image of Emmit Till's brutally disfigured face, the artist abstracts the image, diluting its reality so it can be viewed in comfort by the largely white audiences who will see it.

"Look at this." The painting says. "Racism is bad. But I know you don't want to think about how bad it really is. So I am here so you can look at me without getting uncomfortable. Now, you can move on to the next painting, pretending you understand deeply, when really you have done nothing at all."

I declare it a masterpiece.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:18 PM on April 22, 2017 [22 favorites]

I'm surprised there hasn't been any mention in this thread of Henry Taylor's "THE TIMES THEY AINT A CHANGING FAST ENOUGH!" (portraying the death of Philando Castile), which also appears at the Whitney this year. When compared to "Open Casket" there are considerable parallels and differences in theme, content, artist intent, and artist history, as well as the reactions provoked. I've seen it cited elsewhere by both (all?) sides to support their arguments!

(Really I'm just bringing it up here for no greater reason than to call attention to this strong piece).
posted by Kabanos at 8:25 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]

Emmett Till (which seriously: any adult American should know about already)
you are overestimating what adult americans know

are suburban white people really learning about things from the Whitney Biennial?
I didn't go to the whitney, and yet, now i know about this because it's on the blue.

who says that suburban white people are the most important audience anyway?
so far, no one in this thread has asserted that.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:30 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

Engage in making art in response and opposition.

Has this not happened, with the form of this protest (and maybe the fake letter, which if by Hannah Black is actually brilliant imo)?
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Appropriating this source material is deliberately provocative, so people are "provoked" .....but I bet the protesters probably have things they'd rather be doing than standing in front of this painting. Power structures sure are terrifyingly resilient.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:54 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Felix Grundy and Frowner have done a better job of saying the things I'd thought to say, so I will just add this:

Context matters. This isn't just about a white person making a painting about black suffering. It is also about a curatorial and gallery world that has traditionally underrepresented or shut out both women and people of color. The Whitney Biennial is particularly fraught in that regard.

The 1993 Whitney Biennial is famous both for provocatively addressing issues of identity and representation, and for being outright panned by (mostly white and male) critics.

Subsequent biennials pulled their punches, and issues of diversity have haunted the Whitney since. Last time around, in 2014, just nine of 100+ artists were black, and one of those nine was a white man representing himself as a black woman.

This isn't just a question of who is allowed to say what in the abstract. It's a question of who we value, who we put on the wall, who we respect as an authority, and what they need to do to obtain that status. It's also, despite Schutz's stated intent to not sell this particular painting, a question of money. Schutz's paintings sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in an art world where values are based as much on speculation as anything else, anything that elevates her name is liable to have a direct impact on that market, whether she intended to profit or not.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:08 PM on April 22, 2017 [26 favorites]

Re: the destruction of the painting - uh, call me back when somebody actually does? The Whitney ain't. I could argue a few different angles about the painting - ultimately it seems like Schutz just didn't produce a work worthwhile enough to override the baseline opposition people were going to have to her doing it - but if it's not okay for artists to make somewhat inflammatory requests in an open letter I don't know what it's okay for anybody to do anywhere.
posted by atoxyl at 9:14 PM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]

I think it's quite curious (a euphemism for 'maddening') that most responses quickly abstract the issue into "censorship", which is such a safe and comfortable issue to debate over. The path of least resistance for a critique seems to me to read Hannah Black's passage, only pick out the call for the painting's destruction, and to weave some neat words around "identity politics", rather than enter into the actual task of wading through the difficult and murky morass of lived experience, social context, and cultural history.

Let's say we were talking about a male artist who painted lurid, sexualized, male-gaze-objectifying pin-up nudes of women to "highlight sexual violence". You know, the kind of images so prevalent everywhere. I think we would and should be having a healthy discussion whether or not re-propagating visual tropes can be harmful, regardless of the intent behind of it, and how to contextualize historic conventions of representation and sex and gender. Now, imagine the guy who comes along and and says "It should be free speech whether or not the artist can show off 'sexy women'! Why should the work be censored?"

Sure, he's not 'wrong' per se about free speech, and nor are people calling against the paintings destruction as censorship. But they're severely missing the point by abstracting a complex and important discussion into a safe and easy talking point about censorship.
posted by suedehead at 9:27 PM on April 22, 2017 [38 favorites]

Till was black. So was his mother. They are also human. So were his murderers.

As much as his death was the result of white power, it was also the result of human cruelty and apathy. I don't think historical events and images permit only a single angle of approach. And even more, I don't think artists can nor necessarily should separate out the various aesthetic, political, and moral elements of their inspiration. Our experience of the world is our experience of the world, whatever the larger moral and political issues at hand are.

I don't know this artists motivations or history. But I am reluctant to tell artists their are images or ideas they should not use or respond to. Powerful images and ideas don't discriminate based on race or religion, and I don't think it is fair to tell artists to pretend they do.

As a southern white man, Till in his coffin gave me a visceral sense for the first time, of the unreasoning, savage hate that was part of our history. And it made me acknowledge the natural end of the casual racism that I often encountered, even in older relatives. However pleasant they might be, this was the gruesome foundation their "good old days" were built upon.

I don't know if this artist is just trying to be provocative. If so, that's despicable. But I have no problem believing a white painter could be moved and inspired by it. Nor any reason they should hide away this particular art. I don't think we are going to somehow "use up" all the commentary on race in the US.
posted by pattern juggler at 9:31 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]

I don't think we are going to somehow "use up" all the commentary on race in the US.

Maybe the protesters would agree with you there: we've barely even touched the supply produced by actual black artists, let alone paid half as much for it.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:03 PM on April 22, 2017 [21 favorites]

I not sure you can divorce art completely from it's context, intent, and whatever natural response it evokes in audiences and have anything left more culturally significant and valuable than a stale peanut that rolled under the sofa.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:06 PM on April 22, 2017

I don't think we are going to somehow "use up" all the commentary on race in the US.

Oh, there is no shortage of White people with specious opinions about race, as one is reminded any time the topic comes up. The issue is that money, space, and bandwidth are limited, which raises the question as to why we keep giving them to people repeating the same, shallow views on the subject.
posted by Anonymous at 10:10 PM on April 22, 2017

Seeking the destruction of art on ideological grounds is a bad thing to do.
posted by Sebmojo at 10:12 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

I guess my frustration about this particular story is due to a larger issue I have had in my life, as we speak about dialogues. It seems every time I basically try to enlighten myself by speaking to a disenfranchised group, the communication basically boils down to being told (as I am a white cis male) that I know nothing of what they have been through and I will never understand it. Being told this while I am specifically trying to understand it strikes me as burning possible bridges. Unless you give someone a chance to understand something, they will always make decisions from a point of ignorance on said topic.
posted by Samizdata at 10:16 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

It seems every time I basically try to enlighten myself by speaking to a disenfranchised group, the communication basically boils down to being told (as I am a white cis male) that I know nothing of what they have been through and I will never understand it

Did you read the open letter link in the post? It was a pretty eloquent explanation of why they were upset.
posted by Anonymous at 10:42 PM on April 22, 2017

When I saw it in the Whitney Biennial a few weeks ago, a couple of things struck me:

First, I'm really glad Kabanos and the first article mentioned Henry Taylor and "THE TIMES THEY AINT A CHANGING FAST ENOUGH!" Taylor's work, and his other pieces around it, were a really strong counter to "Open Casket," and the exhibition is much stronger for having them. His painting of the death of Philando Castile is, of course, incredibly powerful, but it gains so much context from being installed alongside other works like Taylor's "The 4th," which shows a Black man preparing a 4th of July BBQ.

Second, when I saw "Open Casket," there was a Black male security guard stationed right next to the piece. And I've been struggling all evening with how to write this comment, because it's way too easy to turn this actual human being, someone doing his job who I didn't even speak to, someone whose feelings about the painting, or even whether he has feelings about the painting, I have no clue, into nothing more than a statue, and that's obviously not right. But it's really hard for me to think about the work without the context of the guard standing next to it, presumably to protect it from those who seek to destroy it. And it's a weird thing, because the race or presence of a museum guard isn't normally something that changes how you look at a piece of art.
posted by zachlipton at 10:50 PM on April 22, 2017 [16 favorites]

Oh, there is no shortage of White people with specious opinions about race, as one is reminded any time the topic comes up. The issue is that money, space, and bandwidth are limited, which raises the question as to why we keep giving them to people repeating the same, shallow views on the subject.
I don't see anything especially "specious" about a white painter producing a work like this. It doesn't express any particular strong opinion beyond the general response of horror to the violence implied in the original image. I'd think horror at systematized racial violence should be universal.

If there are voices that aren't being represented by the gatekeepers of the fine arts world, I think the onus to correct that falls on those gatekeepers to broaden their selections, not on artists to avoid inspiration that falls outside the range permitted them by their race or religion. (And I say "if" intentionally. I have basically zero interaction with museums or the world of fine art. My consumption is largely limited to online.)

This isn't like the use of sacred imagery in secular art, where you can argue about intended context. Till's death and funeral were real historical events that are part of the historical and physical place we all share. Artists are no more capable than anyone else of divorcing themselves from the world and its history. If an artist is talented and insightful, I think we are better off with their vision, however limited their perspective may be. If they aren't talented or insightful, no amount of perspective will help.

More women and racial and religious minorities being heard in culture is a good thing, but I don't think that means they have to be limited to speaking solely about issues of relevance to their community, nor should those issues be completely neglected by all other artists.
posted by pattern juggler at 10:53 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]

Mod note: A couple deleted. Let's try not to sideline too much with comparisons of other kinds of appropriation (ie offensive theme restaurants, etc.) because that's like a thousand little derails as people argue if it is/isn't comparable.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:21 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

Imagine if Schindler's List had not included a single Jew in the production, and its creators made no attempt to reach out to the Jewish community (but otherwise was exactly the same movie).

It would have struck people as extremely tone-deaf and awkward, if not outright offensive, to be profiting from suffering in that way.

Instead it was directed by a guy who grew up Jewish and (very publicly) tearfully rediscovered his own Jewish heritage while making the movie. So the connection was made. Instead of being a shameless attempt to profit off of suffering, it became a touching success that no one would call offensive (and still made hundreds of millions of dollars).

Schutz can't conveniently discover her black heritage. But if she had reached out to Till's family, had included personal recollections of the suffering of black people who she knew in her artists' statement, I think the work would be fine. Instead she just completely ignored the context around the suffering and tried to make the work in a vacuum, and it comes across as completely tactless.
posted by miyabo at 11:46 PM on April 22, 2017 [14 favorites]

I'm not qualified to say how much she's engaging with it, but even relating to the murder "as a mother" is decontextualising it: Emmett Till wasn't killed because he was just another mother's son, but because he was the son of a Black mother. She's redefining an iconic image and, by virtue of her privileged position, she's occupying the space of someone who could speak to it directly. And even if she wasn't doing all that, by producing the picture she has joined the historic American project of extracting money from the bodies of young Black men. Even without the offense to the victims of this ongoing war, it's the sort of thing that should shock the conscience.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:51 PM on April 22, 2017 [32 favorites]

By this logic the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" should be banned, since it was written by Abel Meeropol, a white Jew.

I cannot believe for a second that this comment, or those agreeing with it, are in good faith. Surely you know full well that the "whiteness" of the Jewish people was not exactly an agreed fact in fucking 1939. Surely you understand the difference between a song by a "white" person written to protest acts of violence enforcing white supremacy, and a painting painted by a white person to exploit acts of violence enforcing white supremacy.

This painting is repugnant. I have never had a problem saying people need to shut the fuck up with white supremacist bullshit, so I'm a fan of saying this exploitative white supremacist bullshit should be destroyed. That's how you shut up a painting - let the record stand that Dana Schultz thinks it's totes cool to appropriate and monetize black suffering at the hands of white people, but the exercise of commercial speech where she tries to do that doesn't need to stick around.
posted by kafziel at 12:13 AM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]

I don't understand how a white woman painted the death of a Black boy and tried to claim it as her own when her own son is still alive.

I don't understand how we aren't talking about appropriation and why we're still talking about "tone".
posted by blessedlyndie at 12:19 AM on April 23, 2017 [15 favorites]

Also, I've only see one person in this thread actually engage with the painting itself, and I agree with their critical sight: it's a shotty paiting. It looks shitty because it flattens the violence.
posted by blessedlyndie at 12:35 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

I don't see anything especially "specious" about a white painter producing a work like this. It doesn't express any particular strong opinion beyond the general response of horror to the violence implied in the original image. I'd think horror at systematized racial violence should be universal.

The fact that it "doesn't express any particular strong opinion beyond the general response of horror to the violence implied in the original image" is exactly what makes it specious. Like the letter said:

As you know, this painting depicts the dead body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the open casket that his mother chose, saying, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” That even the disfigured corpse of a child was not sufficient to move the white gaze from its habitual cold calculation is evident daily and in a myriad of ways, not least the fact that this painting exists at all. In brief: the painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.

Their point is: the justification for this artwork is basically "aren't you shocked, isn't racism bad?" But it is pretty goddamn clear from decades of experience that just looking at pictures of mutilated Black people hasn't done a damn thing to make White people re-evaluate themselves and stop being racist. So if it doesn't do a damn thing, then all you're doing is exploiting the death of a boy for your own goals.

I said this earlier: nobody's saying White people can't make artwork about race. But that artwork needs to be something more than "let's stare at this mutilated corpse".
posted by Anonymous at 12:44 AM on April 23, 2017

There have been two versions of the letter from Hannah Black, with overlapping and disjoint membership. The first list I found was in Artnews.com, 3/21. The second list linked here, Artforum.com, same date, was acknowledge as updated, and the membership identified as all black.

Between the first list and the second list, 20 non-black signers were removed:

Addie Wagenknecht
Alexander Iadarola
Andrea Arrubla
Beatrice Loft Schulz
Cory Scozzari
Dana Kopel
Gaby Cepeda
Hannah Gregory
Harry Burke
Jack Gross
Jacqueline Mabey
Jesse Darling
Lulu Nunn
Mathew Parkin
Mia Matthias
Mostafa Heddaya
Robert Wilson
Rose-Anne Gush
Temra Pavlović
Thea Ballard

Between the first list and the second list, 7 black signers were added:

Adam Saad
Ari Robey-Lawrence
Charmaine Bee
Janine Jembere
Justin Francis Kennedy
Kai Clancy
Shani Strand

There are 27 black signers in both lists.

Amal Alhaag
Andrew Ross
Anisa Jackson
Anwar Batte
Aria Dean
Carolyn Lazard
Chrissy Etienne
Christina Sharpe
Devin Kenny
Dominique White
Emmanuel Olunkwa
Hamishi Farah
Hannah Assebe
Hannah Catherine Jones
Imani Robinson
Jareh Das
Ja’Tovia Gary
Juliana Huxtable
Kandis Williams
Kimberly Drew
Misu Simbiatu
Parker Bright
Precious Okoyomon
Sandra Mujinga
Taylor LeMelle
Tiona Nekkia McClodden
Vivian Crockett

I haven't found an explanation of why the whites withdrew or were removed from the list, but I'm sure it has some significance. I find it disheartening.

I don't think the painting does its subject justice. It's painted from the same viewpoint as one of only two photographs I can find of Emmett Till's open coffin appearance. It conveys so little of the enormous importance of the event that it's hard to do anything but condemn it, but I can see how the racially sharpened protest and the success of the artist might make this painting more attractive to a collector.
posted by the Real Dan at 12:59 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Their point is: the justification for this artwork is basically "aren't you shocked, isn't racism bad?" But it is pretty goddamn clear from decades of experience that just looking at pictures of mutilated Black people hasn't done a damn thing to make White people re-evaluate themselves and stop being racist.

Except it has. Images of racial violence have helped people stop imagining that what went on in the Jim Crow era was anything but a reign of terror. It completely delegitimized the entire argument that southern blacks were happy without "outside agitation". Given the increasing nostalgia for the "good old days" of America as a white dominated hegemon, I 'd say it is a message that needs repeating.

I said this earlier: nobody's saying White people can't make artwork about race. But that artwork needs to be something more than "let's stare at this mutilated corpse".

I feel like some people have been saying just that. That white artists should avoid commenting on race. That is what bothers me. Not because I think we don't have enough white voices, but because it feels wrong to tell artists they can only pursue some topics if they are deemed appropriate to what we imagine that artist's background to be. I have no problem with criticism of the piece, though I feel ill equipped to judge it myself. I just don't feel comfortable with art being judged because of who produced it. Maybe that reflects a lack of understanding on my part, though.

Also, while I understand the history and context of the image in civil rights history, is it acceptable to read it in other ways? It is also an image that reflects terrible human suffering, physical and emotional. Is it okay to use it in a context that doesn't center on the racial violence, but on the horror of violence and its aftermath? I don't know.

My instinct is to say artists should be able to produce what they want, but I am an old white man, so I am less than trusting in my instincts when it comes to racial sensitivity.
posted by pattern juggler at 1:16 AM on April 23, 2017 [11 favorites]

I feel like some people have been saying just that. That white artists should avoid commenting on race.

Who has been saying that? Could you be more specific?
posted by Anonymous at 1:31 AM on April 23, 2017

Dana Schultz thinks it's totes cool to appropriate and monetize black suffering at the hands of white people, but the exercise of commercial speech where she tries to do that doesn't need to stick around.

She also noted that the artwork will not be for sale.

I haven't found an explanation of why the whites withdrew or were removed from the list, but I'm sure it has some significance. I find it disheartening.

A number of original signatories’ names were scrubbed on Monday because they were white; responding to criticism, Black commented on her Facebook post that it was “better to include only black signatories.”
posted by to sir with millipedes at 1:35 AM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

Who has been saying that? Could you be more specific?
I don't want to go through the thread calling people out. But the whole conversation seemed not to be about whether this was good art, but whether this particular artist was justified in creating it. I don't think we'd be talking in terms of appropriation or exploitation otherwise. And it is hard to imagine a commentary on racial violence in America that would be less disturbing and still amount to any commentary at all.

Perhaps I have misunderstood what was intended, and it was only that this particular piece was in bad taste. If that is the case, then I apologize for the misunderstanding.
posted by pattern juggler at 1:51 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm going to amateurishly plate of beans this in an already exhausting thread. This is distressing and I apologize for further distress.

I'm sure there's a message the painting made, but I'm not sure if this was the painter's intention. Intention can be fluid and hard to judge, especially in retrospection, even by the first parties.

Looking at the painting itself, I must say I don't like it much. As blessedlyndie wrote, the aftermath of brutality is flattened. One cannot avoid the similarity in the texture of the face and the red poppy to the lower-right corner. It's like an objectification of the dead. To be blunt, all dead people are, to a certain extent, objects -- they can't feel what people do to them. However, by an abstraction the irrevocably dead was separated from the process death that is very real and painful and humiliating, and this pain is asymmetrically imposed on a community. And to this extent, I can understand the outrage, the feeling of being uprooted from one's human condition and exposed to the gaze as a museum piece.

I can't say I'm a connoisseur of fine arts, and if I'm babbling please call me out. What I recalled in mind, when viewing the work, was Goya's Third of May and Dalí's crucifixion on the hybercube.

The former was an testament to human brutality and in the age when documentary visual media implies painting (no photos), and was made in the close wake of the events (years actually, but that was the early 19th century). It served as a documentary monument to the once-warm existence of the victims, and stands as a constant mirror into our own condition.

The latter was an abstract, intellectual, and imaginative transformation onto the modern mind of an event imprinted by no direct imagery but oral tradition (later codified as the evangelicals), one that had already been incessantly symbolized for centuries. It prompted the audience to re-examine the meaning of evangelical messages and articles of faith when science and mathematics have greatly changed the way we process message-symbols and see the world.

I recall those two works not because this painting is IMO anywhere close to either. On the opposite I find it standing in an uneasing distance to those two points, forming a jarring triangle. It's subject is a real event, and we hope this event shouldn't have left the warm collective memory that has been imprinted by the photographically-real modern media and its live survivors. It shouldn't have entered the indifferent and the symbolic. Perhaps it never should, now that we have the means to take and preserve copies of the real. I see this painting as a witness to our inevitable tendency of turning everything into symbols, images, and representations. It's a copy of a copy, its existence witnesses how physically and emotionally inexpensive it is to make copies of copies of copies.

Maybe I've read too much Jorge Luis Borges to think in this way, but I feel it is this message that the work stresses. Live events and memories eventually become alien. Perhaps this is the meta-message behind messages or the lack of a message. Perhaps in 40 years the message will have metamorphosed. I think good art reminds us of something we cannot be indifferent to, and I'm not even sure if this is the case here.

I'm neither white nor black, and I'm not sure if that gives me greater balance or greater ignorance, or nothing at all.
posted by runcifex at 3:19 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

The engage in art criticism. Engage in making art in response and opposition. Jumping in with 'this must be destroyed' has an impact and it they didn't want that to be part of the discussion they could have wrote a different letter.

"Just play the game" is easy advice when the rules are rigged to favour you, perhaps less useful to the PoC who are excluded from and delegitmised by the art world. If you're in the latter position, "fuck your game" makes a lot more sense.
posted by Dysk at 3:36 AM on April 23, 2017 [34 favorites]

Unless you give someone a chance to understand something, they will always make decisions from a point of ignorance on said topic.

But if you genuinely can't understand (as is the argument) isn't out better to get you to acknowledge that and thus seek the guidance of those who have the experience and position to understand their (own) perspective, rather than act from a point of ignorance you now confidently 'know' isn't there because of your 'understanding'?
posted by Dysk at 4:13 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

JFC. Having now seen the photograph of the dead boy thanks to the Real Dan's link, I say that painting is a piece of crap. Do you know what it is? It's a very comfortable euphemism, one in which a rather old-hat and played-out expressionist style is used to denote feeling and moral engagement.

We can all work together towards greater justice. We are all one people.

In the light of current events and the history of your country, this easy, well-meaning statement is laughable.

declaring that white people's free speech isn't a natural right.

It's really solipsistic to extract this interpretation from the protest without acknowledging that there's no corresponding commitment expressed to black people's freedom of speech in the context of the showing of this painting.
posted by glasseyes at 4:27 AM on April 23, 2017 [29 favorites]

Seeking the destruction of art on ideological grounds is a bad thing to do.

One of the most influential modern art movements, Dada, explicitly set out to do exactly that: they literally wanted to undo art completely because the artists of that movement blamed the totality of Western culture and modernity for the atrocities of the world wars. Far from being rejected as anti-artistic reactionaries, Dada was absorbed into mainstream art culture. Art is complicated, like Frowner said upthread.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:12 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

Engaging with the painting's qualities as a painting runs against what the protest is about - according to they themselves, the focus should be on the painting's authorship.

The thing is that I don't think anybody would be particularly upset by people arguing that the painting itself is bad, or that the painting is bad in a way redolent of the artist's lack of socioethnic connection to the subject matter, i.e. the painting is bad in a way indicative of having been made by a clueless white person.

Imagine if Schindler's List had not included a single Jew in the production, and its creators made no attempt to reach out to the Jewish community (but otherwise was exactly the same movie).

It would have struck people as extremely tone-deaf and awkward, if not outright offensive, to be profiting from suffering in that way.

Well, it'd be more like a non-Jew making a painting, now wouldn't it.

Either way, as a pesky Jew myself, not only would I not take any offense whatsoever by non-Jews making such a painting (or film), but I would be aghast at the temerity of anybody purporting to speak for me.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:35 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

Mod note: Once again, let's maybe steer away from "what if it were X [different thing]" analogies and similar that derail the discussion from the original topic. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:59 AM on April 23, 2017

until today I had not heard of Emmett Till - but then again I was born 10 years after the event, in Europe. I learned something new today.

So, in that small way, the piece of art has been useful. That usefulness is NOTHING compared to all the above, of course.

Also, it's clearly going to take a LOT more time and progress before mankind is anything close to color blind. I am sad because of that, but right now I have no useful suggestions in how to move us closer to that point based on anything in the events surrounding this artwork.
posted by DreamerFi at 6:15 AM on April 23, 2017

This debate strikes me as a good example of the confusions introduced into discussions of racism and inequalities of power by the incoherent framework of cultural appropriation, which applies a zero-sum logic to things that don't obey zero-sum rules. There's nothing about the structure of the art world to suggest that if white artists were successfully harangued into not producing art about black history, then black artists would as a consequence attain some of the equality of prestige and profile they're denied. If part of the end goal here is for artists to have equal access to prestige and income regardless of race – rather than to construct and fortify walls within which individual cultural groups will produce their own art, about their own cultural groups only – then trying to shut down (or at least strongly dissuade) one person's freedom of expression is never going to have the intended boosting effect on the freedom of expression of those denied it.
posted by oliverburkeman at 6:25 AM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]

How many times have you seen a black person be a recipient of violence in art/media? Is it just a random chance that the notion of the black character dying first in a horror movie is such a trope? How is it that one of the representations of black culture most popular with white people is The Wire, a remarkable show, but largely about black violence? As an Asian-American I cringe imagining what it would be like if the one of the most popular shows on TV emphasized and amplified existing racial tropes of Asian-Americans, however accurately, for many non-AAs.

In news, you see it over and over again: black bodies being shot, choked, handcuffed. Films and TV have merely amplified these representations, even though there are some wonderful shows pushing against this tide (Luke Cage, for example).

So why see another painting of violence done onto a black man? Why is this imagery the best way to "protest"? I mean, is a painting of a woman being raped the best way to protest sexual violence? If you thought, 'oh god FUCK NO' to the above question, then we're on the same page here.

Why an aestheticized, abstracted painting? Either the work talks about the actual issue: If Till's mother opened the casket and showed the world how despicable and how brutal Till's death was, it's because we saw an actual human being's body, and the terrible things that happened to it, and because it is unrecognizable enough to make us gasp. It's precisely because you know that it's a photo that you gasp at how horribly mangled his face is. When you abstract it you suck all the importance and the political impact of the photograph's nature and turn it into a pretty thing, like an abstract photo of the My Lai Massacre. The painting works like a neat and tidy reference to a historical document, not an image of a formerly living, breathing, human being, all the more sobering because it was a photograph and pointed towards someone real.

And of course, a non-black non-POC artist created this painting. I am not surprised. As someone mentioned above, Whiteness is a real thing that white artists should spend time thinking about, rather than participating or appropriating others' narratives. This doesn't mean "only black people can talk about black issues", at least to me. But I will say that many white people who talk about race do so without addressing Whiteness as a race issue.

Racism, like the patriarchy, is a problem that we all need to solve together. So we need everyone talking about race. For people who are white, instead of adopting another PoC'a issues, they can help and participate by thinking and creating art about Whiteness.

A Syllabus For Making Art As A White Artist In America
posted by suedehead at 6:51 AM on April 23, 2017 [59 favorites]

Can someone who sees any deep meaning to the picture fill me in, please? Because the only message I see in it is "this is sad" (which is basically the meaning the artist ascribed to it) and I don't think that's a political message any more than a picture of Mary looking soulful is a theological one.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:51 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

Yeah I'm not seeing any particular artistic value to it either. It's an abstracted version of one of the currently-available photographs of Emmett Till. It's competently made, but from reading blurbs about this elsewhere I was expecting a more complex work. What I don't understand is why this gets selected for the Whitney when I'm sure there are more interesting works out there.

And the artist's own statements about the work are embarrassingly shallow. As a white woman they make me cringe. If she wanted to paint about race from the perspective of a mother, she didn't have to go all the way back to 1955 to find an example, as if racism is something safely in the past. Tamir Rice was 12 in 2014 when he was shot by police while he was playing in a park. She has the right to paint whatever moves her, but that doesn't mean it deserves a place in a gallery which will profit from a sanitised depiction of real-world mutilation and death.
posted by harriet vane at 8:19 AM on April 23, 2017 [17 favorites]

I've read the open letter several times and it's something I simply couldn't ascribe to.

Also, it's clearly going to take a LOT more time and progress before mankind is anything close to color blind.

The goal isn't necessarily colorblindness, it's about making access for all people. The suggestions made in this letter, imo, don't do that.
posted by girlmightlive at 8:20 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

The painting doesn't do it either.
posted by harriet vane at 8:22 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Late to the party, but I see a huge difference in the act of creating the piece, and the act of conserving the piece. As a writer, I create images of humans I don't know. If their race or gender is different from mine, is that appropriation? I would argue I can write those stories because I can learn from empathy and history what that experience is like. Now I may do the job poorly, or in an exploitative manner, but I don't think the act of creating itself should be outlawed.

OTOH, the Whitney is being asked to select a set of artists. That process is necessarily exclusive. So when they choose a piece, they are beholden to consider who they are excluding as well as well they are including. In that context, choosing a white artist's depiction of a racially charged event takes on a very different quality.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:22 AM on April 23, 2017 [29 favorites]

the painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.

This is honestly so offensive to me. I really want to know what gives them the idea to tell me how I'm supposed to feel or engage with my own blackness or depictions of black people in art. They say it as if it's an irrefutable fact.

There is certainly a legitimate point to be made about depictions of black violence, but I have a serious problem with the methods employed in this instance. Why is it okay for someone to stand in front of a painting for hours to prevent someone from seeing it? Why do they get to make that decision for others?
posted by girlmightlive at 8:33 AM on April 23, 2017 [18 favorites]

The same reason people can sit in at lunch counters and block traffic. It's a protest.
posted by Mavri at 8:37 AM on April 23, 2017 [12 favorites]

Someone not seeing artistic value in a painting doesn't mean it doesn't have enormous artistic value. See: every painter, ever.

I'm personally glad the painting exists. There are a lot of people walking through the halls of the Whitney who have no idea who Emmett Till was. It is not the job, I don't think of the museum to go looking for paintings on a subject, but to examine their worth from a larger standpoint. The painter's race is important, but has nothing to do with the merit.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:46 AM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

In fact, the Whitney is already exercising the power to metaphorically "stand in front of paintings to prevent others from seeing them." They do that implicitly every time they make a deliberate choice about what works of art not to display and not to give recognition to. There's no way to take all the editing and decision-making out of creative production (what you could lazily lump together and think of as institutional or self censorship, though I personally think that's overextending the idea of censorship). It doesn't necessarily have to work that way and be a zero sum game, but that's how it effectively works now, isn't it, with artificially constrained resources for distributing and finding audiences for art?
posted by saulgoodman at 8:50 AM on April 23, 2017 [15 favorites]

Wow, thank you felix grundy for advancing the conversation, and answering my question before I asked it, "what would it look like for Schultz to have succeeded in her aim?"

re-linking Kerry James Marshall's "Heirlooms and Accessories"

It's seems that Schultz has failed in her task, by her own admission. Mamie Till-Mobley 'wanted the world to see what they did to [her] baby' but this ain't it, says Schultz.

It is true that many people don't know the history of the United States, and our history of public lynchings, but that's no reason to lower the bar, if good art is something we want. That's a high school class, a PBS show, even a bob dylan song, not the Whitney Biennial in 2017.

In my line of work, if you make something that doesn't work, you trash it and try again. In that light, getting rid of the painting isn't some form of censorship. It's a vote of confidence that Schultz can actually make the art that Schultz seeks to make, rather than this mediocre painting.

In the sciences, if you don't acknowledge previous scholarship, your review committee will probably keep you from getting published--especially in say, Nature or PNAS. That's not censorship, that's taking the work (and everyone's time, say, at the Whitney Biennial) seriously.

Why should the Whitney publish a work that, by the admission of the author, is a failure? Why should we all accept mediocrity? Hasn't the Whitney's 'review committee' failed?
posted by eustatic at 8:58 AM on April 23, 2017 [17 favorites]

Also: in fucking nineteen thirty-six a Jewish person might be forgiven for feeling they had a lot more in common with Black people than those who counted as White.

I would like to push back on this a bit, mostly because we went to see Indecent on Broadway, yesterday, which tells the story of Sholem Asch's 1907 play about a young Jewish woman who falls in love with another woman, and the complexity of how the Jewish troupe of actors and author were treated, from then until the play ends in the 1950s. I'm not at all saying that in 2017, I as a queer, Jewish woman don't have a lot of white privilege, but having seen Holocaust imagery in my classrooms since I was 6, and having had guests in my home talk about "Jewing down" customers, and having a friend who posted yesterday on Facebook about a man she encountered at a party who, in referencing this mutual relationship, spoke about this individual as being an "opportunistic Jew" even going so far as to say he didn't want to shake this person's hand because they were a "dirty Jew".... there are still a lot of things that cut deep into my identity in which I am unable to separate myself from the "who has it better" game.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:07 AM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

So, I was wondering, has Emmett Till ever been painted in a way that doesn't cross this line? I've been looking in the web, and most paintings related to him are representations of him when he was alive, mostly reproducing the picture where he is wearing the hat and smiling.

The most glaring divergence from this pattern is "Till" by Carrie Iverson, from 2002. Iverson isn't black either.

It seems like Schutz's painting is one of the few (if not the only one) where he is put in the context of the casket. I think that is significant. Why has that not been part of the painterly "imaginary" of Till's ordeal? Why has, apparently, no other artist taken on the theme? The open casket is a powerful image, which is why Till's own mother allowed it in the first place. It seems to have remained outside of the reach of painting. Is it not the proper medium for it? What does that mean, even?
posted by fmoralesc at 9:38 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

So, what do people think about Claudia Rankine's perspective?
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:01 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

There is certainly a legitimate point to be made about depictions of black violence, but I have a serious problem with the methods employed in this instance. Why is it okay for someone to stand in front of a painting for hours to prevent someone from seeing it? Why do they get to make that decision for others?

This. It's the same authoritarian streak that sees censorship as the proper solution to the issue.

In fact, the Whitney is already exercising the power to metaphorically "stand in front of paintings to prevent others from seeing them."

There's a difference between metaphor and some guy physically blocking my view of artwork because he's decided I don't get to see it.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:04 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

The open casket is a powerful image, which is why Till's own mother allowed it in the first place. It seems to have remained outside of the reach of painting. Is it not the proper medium for it? What does that mean, even?

I mean, the image in the painting was first created by Mamie Till-Mobley working alongside civil rights organizations (and secondarily by the press), and I think most people wouldn't try to copy the original "artist" (ugh) like that
posted by eustatic at 10:08 AM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

So I believe that the story of American racism would benefit from specific white voices. Those voices which talk through how you come to terms with knowing you have been complicit in a racist system, that you have benefited from a racist system, regardless of how difficult your life was or how much you’ve worked toward egalitarianism. (Re-read Ijeoma Oluo’s piece on talking to Dolezal, where Oluo wonders Dolezal decided she was black because she does not understand whiteness FPP) So I suppose I'm on board with Rankine's idea that an intentional critical examination of how and why we construct whiteness might be useful for a lot of people, as much as it sounds like a gimmick. There is something to the notion that you can't deconstruct the oppression of blackness without understanding how we construct whiteness as dominant.

[for example: People being offended by the idea of reparations for African-Americans toss out the "Italian immigrants were not considered white in the Olden Days!" argument without bothering to examine any of the assumptions a) why they're offended by reparations; b) why an example of a "white" person being treated systemically as a "black" person shows a past wrong; c) why we would never argue in favor of reparations for a past wrong to a white person]

I also believe that art can wrestle with difficult questions (both successfully and not) and I also believe that art is fiction and can be "allowed" to tell not the artist’s own story but someone else’s story which the artist found compelling.

But there are real problems when white voices, or white artists, choose to tell a story (or paint a picture) of black pain at the hands of white supremacy. And these problems come not necessarily from the success of the work itself, or the intent of the artist, but the system in which the art is made and—more importantly—the system in which the art is critiqued, praised or elevated. You can try to examine the two things separately but that’s a fool’s errand. Open Casket is a work about American racism, framed in the story of black pain, created by a white woman and elevated by an institution with a history of ignoring black work.

Art is not a special form of fiction, nor a special form of expression, nor a special means of working out problems such to the extent is exempt from the question of whether or not it is a good idea for the artist to choose this story or go with that inspiration. Art which perpetuates harmful ways of seeing or talking about humanity does not get a pass because it’s ART. It’s just art—it’s just another way we look at and order our world.

So I circle back to my initial response: agreeing with the idea that “Those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material”.
posted by crush at 10:18 AM on April 23, 2017 [20 favorites]

And I note that I have used "people" to stand in for "white people" a number of times in my response, which means I could probably benefit from Rankine's ideas.
posted by crush at 10:22 AM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Uh, y'all remember that inarguably the most famous version of "Strange Fruit" is sung by Billie Holliday, right? Thus making that work of protest art something far closer to collaborative than what's gone on here.

One of my professional artist friends wrote a great (alas private) post about how, technically, she found this a bad painting and that makes it even more problematic. I know shockingly little about painting, so my first glance (beyond HDU) was more like, "Uh, budget Picasso knockoff?" and I'm sure that's wrong but I'd love more education about the actual technical merits of the piece.

I also came across a great tweet, in line with the statistics above about the longstanding problem of Black representation at the Whitney and the art world in general, is that Schutz's fawning New Yorker profile--before the piece became controversial, with clearly no guessed that it would, which is telling--is part and parcel of the white privilege of artistic support she already enjoyed.

And meanwhile, The Root mixes some humor and pointed commentary: This White Woman's Painting of Emmett Till Belongs Under the Definition of Whitepeopleing.
posted by TwoStride at 10:25 AM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]

"Uh, budget Picasso knockoff?"

I think it's more of a budget Francis Bacon knockoff - for example.
posted by Grangousier at 10:41 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Thanks, Grangousier! As admitted, I know little about art...
posted by TwoStride at 10:47 AM on April 23, 2017

seconding that link, the Root has more examples of this happening linked to their article. But Michael Harriot's conclusion is worth repeating; I wonder if it can it be a point of consensus?

Just because someone can say something doesn’t mean he or she should. There are some spaces, subjects and times where white voices are not needed.

And a question: to people who think taking the painting down would be 'censorship,', does it not matter that Ms Black is a colleague of the Whitney, herself? Shouldn't colleagues that constitute the work of the Whitney get a say in what the Whitney is?

full quote:
This painting is a prime example of peak whitepeopleing.

What is “whitepeopleing”?

Whitepeopleing is the privilege and dismissive confidence that you have not only the right but also the permission to do whatever the fuck you want. Whitepeopleing is the audacity of believing that your white hands are gifted with the skill, soul and empathy to transmute the horrific spilling of black blood into something passersby can contemplate before they move on to another sculpture or painting. It is either not knowing or disregarding the difference between a mother saying, “Look what these monsters did to my boy” and a New York paint-slinger saying, “Look what I did.” Whitepeopleing is this.

Just because someone can say something doesn’t mean he or she should. There are some spaces, subjects and times where white voices are not needed.
posted by eustatic at 10:50 AM on April 23, 2017 [13 favorites]

White people are conditioned to believe that we have the right to interpret and insert ourselves into ALL the stories, and are often astonished (and angry) when told that isn't true. Examining and then releasing our knee-jerk outrage at being told that some things don't belong to us is part of the work we have to do to challenge and destroy white supremacy.
posted by merriment at 10:53 AM on April 23, 2017 [29 favorites]

"The removal of scandal just left the construction of whiteness that is implicated in systemic racism": If you have read Claudia Rankine's Citizen (which OMG everyone should, it's absolutely breathtaking), you'll recall that she includes a very famous lynching photo in her work--but with the bodies of the victims erased from the photo. Watch the first 8 minutes of so of a reading at Harvard (SLYT) in which she reads a poem in honor of Freddie Gray and other victims of police violence, and then talks about the process by which she came to have the (altered) lynching photo in her book. She called the Getty (twice), and actually sent them to poem, which they considered before granting permission.

What I find really important about this:
1) again, the gesture toward collaboration in sharing the poem with the Getty first and explaining why she wanted the piece
2) THE REMOVAL OF THE VICTIMS in order to place the focus on "the construction of whiteness" and its complicity

So basically: the complete opposite of everything Schutz did.
posted by TwoStride at 11:07 AM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

> i sure as hell had better do it with more taste and ambition than she did

This is a really shitty thing to say. Do you even care about art, or are you just being "provocative" (like the call for the destruction of the art)? You can complain about the social effect of a painting without descending to "...and she can't even paint!" Which is manifestly untrue.
posted by languagehat at 11:23 AM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

We definitely have some double standards when it comes to what speech people defend most passionately. To this day, I've yet to see anybody worrying over how things like nondisclosure agreements affect the integrity of free speech, even though it seems pretty obvious such legal instruments are often used to conceal unethical or outright illegal industry and business practices we might urgently need to know about to make informed choices and understand the effects of trade and industrial policy, which may in practice be far more immediately valuable and urgent forms of speech than even the most compelling works of contemporary art.

Does anybody seriously think the complete absence of this painting would change anything significant about the world?

I've always believed Picasso's Guernica is one of his finest works, not because the work itself was that much more exceptional, but because he used it to raise funds and draw attention to the victims of the atrocities it depicted, and so for once, he made a gesture in his work that went beyond his chief preoccupations with his own manliness, status as a great artist, his sexuality, and those goddamned Minotaurs of his.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:57 AM on April 23, 2017 [10 favorites]

I draw. I think about this a lot.

A week or two ago, I asked metafilter where I could find photo sets of POC for my drawing references. One of my first drawings after that was of a Japanese American father packing up his belongings in preparation to be sent to internment. I drew it a few weeks ago, but then I started thinking... why should I portray that when there are Japanese American artists who are far closer to that subject? How would they feel if they saw me garnering praise for depicting their struggle? I've decided not to share that drawing because I don't have good answers to those questions.

I also draw portraits of my friends who are poc or queer or other identities that are often appropriated. This feels less exploitative because they are my friends, their photos aren't usually sad, and I can ask for their consent to share it. I also always give the drawing back to the subject if they will have it. If they decide later to destroy it, it's their prerogative.

It's not hard to make art about other people's struggles. But it is very hard to profit from this sort of art without hurting your subject. This makes perfect sense because all the institutions that reward artists are bound up in the very oppressive structures that antiracist art is meant to undermine.
posted by yaymukund at 2:58 PM on April 23, 2017 [22 favorites]

why should I portray that when there are [X] artists who are far closer to that subject?

This way lies madness, and is the opposite of art and free expression.
posted by Guy Smiley at 4:43 PM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

Surely you understand the difference between a song by a "white" person written to protest acts of violence enforcing white supremacy, and a painting painted by a white person to exploit acts of violence enforcing white supremacy.

Surely the core issue here is that there isn't a hard line, or at least its location is not universally agreed upon? The artist thought she was making some kind of point about racial injustice. Her critics think she's - regardless of intention - exploiting a tragedy which she has no deep connection to in order to get herself some visibility.

But the whole conversation seemed not to be about whether this was good art, but whether this particular artist was justified in creating it.

There are probably some who would argue otherwise but I still think these things are not fully separable. I'm sure there are people who think it is not okay for a white artist to make art about Emmett Till, period - but do I think it's possible for a white artist to come up with a commentary on race powerful enough that the reaction, in aggregate, is positive? Yeah, probably.

I don't mean by this that her painting is incompetently done, necessarily. And I really don't think I buy the idea that it's an issue of the abstractness of the painting - would photorealism be any better? I think it's might be worse. Assuming that the abstract style of the painting corresponds to emotional distance from the subject seems pretty superficial. But I think it's possible that, in 2017, a painting cannot be sufficient commentary at all (and then she explained it in terms that reinforce the perception that she's out of touch).
posted by atoxyl at 4:43 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

why should I portray that when there are [X] artists who are far closer to that subject?

This way lies madness, and is the opposite of art and free expression.

Alternately, this way lies a responsibility towards being respectful towards your subject and a willingness to listen if people have a problem with your art due to your inherent cultural blinders.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 4:56 PM on April 23, 2017 [20 favorites]

(and then she explained it in terms that reinforce the perception that she's out of touch).

I feel like you are policing expression, though. Some people are eloquent with their words. Many artists are not.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:00 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

The protest is a form of political expression. If the painting is also political expression then at least one of the parties is going to be silenced. I think before that happens someone needs to make a case for the political nature of the painting, though, something more sophisticated than "of course it's political, it's a painting of Emmett Till".
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:00 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

My thoughts keep returning to "Strange Fruit". It's such a powerfully compact song - it does so much in three verses and with implication rather than characters or overt story. And of course you can hardly think of the lyrics without hearing either Billie Holiday's or Nina Simone's voice in your head.

And: Can you picture a white person performing it? Have you ever heard of a white person performing it? I never have. I can't even imagine it. I can imagine a white person quoting the lyrics, but I can't imagine a performance of the song.

Maybe there's a white person who's performed it, but I think that would strike most white people as bizarre, even if they didn't think of it as offensive.

My point being that we already have a fairly broad understanding that white people actually can't do certain artistic things that are about Black experience. People intuit that it would be fucking bizarre for a white person to sing a song which is not only about the horror of lynching but which is so strongly embedded in radical Black performance history. Not only is the song about something where white people need to be very thoughtful, but the history of the song situates it in Black political discourse. This is not a new thought, which is why you don't see white people covering the song.

Similarly, images of Emmett Till - particularly the photograph of him in his coffin - are heavily freighted both in content and history. If we can intuit that "Strange Fruit" is not going to be a white person's song, perhaps we can apply similar understanding to images of Till.

I'm not saying this to be sarcastic - I'm saying it because I think that reasoning from "Strange Fruit" sheds a lot of light on this situation. "White people covering 'Strange Fruit' would get a fuck of a lot of side eye, and you'd have to be really tone deaf to do it in the first place" is not met with cries of "art is free! That's censorship", perhaps because the power of the song and the power of its iconic performances are more familiar to more Americans - I know I heard "Strange Fruit" long before I saw the photo of Emmett Till. People don't reason about why "Strange Fruit" is not a white song; we grasp that fact on an immediate, intuitive level.
posted by Frowner at 6:03 PM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]

I know Strange Fruit has been covered by both Tori Amos and Annie Lennox, so I don't think it can be so very unusual for White artists to do so.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:37 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

Have you ever heard of a white person performing it?

Yes! Irish traditional singer Karan Casey has it on her album "The Winds Begin to Sing," which is an album that I mostly like a lot, but that song has always seemed like an extremely odd choice. Casey is Irish, which is maybe why she's removed enough from the context not to realize that it's probably not a good idea.

I guess that I think that there's a kind of rules lawyering here, a kind of expectation of crystal-clear boundaries that aren't really possible. Maybe the reason that Strange Fruit succeeds is just that it's such an extraordinary work of art that it transcends the usual boundaries, and if you think that your work is as profound and immediate as Strange Fruit, you should put it out there, knowing that there may be some blowback if other people disagree.

I just don't think that it's reasonable to expect that you can produce art about charged subjects without risking criticism and protest. If you want people to engage seriously with the stuff you create, you have to realize that their engagement may not always be positive.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:38 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Strange Fruit is on the Siouxsie and the Banshees' album of covers (Through the Looking Glass). It's not a terrifically successful cover, but it's another example of a white person recording it.
posted by crush at 7:15 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

And perhaps that is the lesson. As irrevocably black a song isas Strange Fruit is, as tied to the black experience as is its subject matter and as bizarre and gross as it would be for a white singer to just snatch it up for a commercial cover track, it has nonetheless happened time and time again. Absolutely everything Frowner said is right, but it happens over and over anyway, because white people absolutely love to co-opt black suffering and put it on the latest album they're trying to sell. And this is bad. We should not be tolerating this.

We don't need to list every single white singer that felt the need to squat out their own little extra pile of oppression. The point is made.
posted by kafziel at 7:44 PM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

We definitely have some double standards when it comes to what speech people defend most passionately. To this day, I've yet to see anybody worrying over how things like nondisclosure agreements affect the integrity of free speech

How hard are you looking? The phrase nondisclosure agreements affect the integrity of free speech returned 153,000 results.
posted by layceepee at 8:11 PM on April 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

I don't think Schultz intended the painting to be political, as far as I can tell from her statements. It seems like she was identifying with Mamie Till as a mother. But Mamie Till was acting politically by having an open casket and encouraging photographs to be published. She wanted the realities of lynching to be looked at unflinchingly. So Schultz chose a political subject without realising it. I'm sure she didn't intend to cause harm, but she was too ignorant of her subject to know that of course it would.

It's not that the painting isn't well-painted. It's that it's trite. It's the "racism is bad, mmm-kay?" of the art world. Schultz is entitled to her feelings and art, but that doesn't make it art worthy of public attention. And to elevate this thoughtless piece to a platform that frequently (#NotAllBiennials) excludes voices with greater experience and knowledge is hurtful to black people. It's like when news channels have an all-male panel discussing pregnancy - no matter how seriously they take the task, how much they learned while their wife was pregnant, they just don't know as much as women who have had another person growing inside them for 9 months.

Some people have more knowledge and experience than others. It is not censorship to ask that those people be given a wider public voice than people who are not as well-informed. And from a purely selfish point of view, I'd prefer to hear from people who know what they're talking about on topics I'm not familiar with. I haven't got time to look at all the art in the world - I rely on thoughtful curation and the Whitney did not provide that.
posted by harriet vane at 8:21 PM on April 23, 2017 [19 favorites]

White people are conditioned to believe that we have the right to interpret and insert ourselves into ALL the stories.

One of the things that I find really odd about Schutz’s statement is the peculiar way in which she doesn’t insert herself into the situation or engage with the issues at hand. She states that she, as a mother, empathizes with Till’s mother. But in completely failing to address the power structures that killed Till, she also fails to acknowledge that she is situated in those very same structures and has benefited from them.

Does anybody seriously think the complete absence of this painting would change anything significant about the world?

It would have made space on a wall for another artist to receive recognition, and, potentially, to make thousands upon thousands of dollars. And I'd like to think that, in the aggregate, making room for a greater variety of voices would be a pretty significant thing in and of itself.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:27 PM on April 23, 2017 [11 favorites]

If she didn't intend the painting to be political, then it's not even speech. It's nothing but a void, an empty hole emitting black-body racism. It might as well be destroyed because there's no content. It is a negative of content, because it's taking up gallery space.
posted by kafziel at 9:30 PM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]

zachlipton, look up NippleJesus, by Nick Hornby, for a short story about what you were thinking.

I find these threads reinforce for me there are certain things I believe that differ from some of the most dominant voices that enter into all these conversations, and are treated as absolutes that mean never the twain shall meet. For example, I believe it is possible, through empathy and imagination, to put yourselves in the position of other people who live very different lives from yourself. This is something all forms of art is about, but increasingly frequently the argument is put forward here that 'my pain, or the pain of my people/these people, is unique and unknowable'. I disagree with that vehemently, and I don't think this painting, whatever its quality, is claiming any kind of Rachel Dolezal-esque ownership over or intrinsic belonging to a different identity, but that this is repeatedly being claimed. It seems a fundamental difference of opinion on the limitations of art and artists, based on some essentialist views of identity.

It also suggests that all the deep and personal discussions people have, here or in art or in the world, can never be enough to actually reach someone, that the majority - in this case white - is by its nature unable to understand what other people go through. Certainly not enough to have any response worth expressing other than full-throated agreement but, and this is key, only with the minorities who are saying what you want them to say. Because black people aren't a monolith but you shouldn't listen to any who disagree. And, of course, minorities have an undue demand of emotional labour and struggle due to their minority status (which, I wish I didn't feel I need to point out I completely agree with) which makes allies valuable and helpful and, one would have thought, possibly even the goal... unless they start taking on other opinions from other minorities again and diverging from the one acceptable viewpoint.

So I think Hannah Black's letter is actually bracingly honest, moreso than many of the arguments in this thread, because she is direct about things that people are pretending she's not actually saying. She finds the art offensive, she wants it to be destroyed. She has some white artists who agree with her, but if white people's opinions and positions on this matter can by their very nature only be incomplete and appropriative, then their signatures on her letter do more harm than good. There are things white people have no claim over representing, discussing, expressing, and so she wants them to not attempt to depict them in any form of art.

It's a much tougher argument to support, because it is a call for censorship, however it's done from a very understandable motivation. Defending her requires defending some strong restrictions based on a moral position on race, and it's all tied up together rather than being somehow separate from her anger at the painting. If you're going to support her statement, you pretty much have to accept that you're supporting more than just 'this one picture is tone-deaf', as there's an entire framework of context within the letter just as much as there is behind the painting and her response to it.

I mean, it's certainly easier to simply dismiss anyone who doesn't completely agree with every word as being a racist, though.
posted by gadge emeritus at 1:46 AM on April 24, 2017 [16 favorites]

Guy Smiley replied to my comment, "This way lies madness, and is the opposite of art and free expression."

It's not that maddening. Sure, it's not always easy, but it's an opportunity to make your work even stronger and accessible to a wide audience.

I mean... what's the alternative? I simply don't think about those power dynamics? That sounds so boring! I saw felix grundy mentioned Kerry James Marshall's "Heirlooms And Accessories" upthread— how do you talk about his work without considering all those different layers? Why would you?
posted by yaymukund at 1:48 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I mean, it's certainly easier to simply dismiss anyone who doesn't completely agree with every word as being a racist, though.

It would be; lucky no-one here has done that though. I'm seeing a lot of people discussing the boundaries of knowledge and art on sensitive topics.

I think Hannah Black's letter is actually bracingly honest, moreso than many of the arguments in this thread

Don't assume that everyone here who finds the work offensive or problematic agrees with Hannah Black's call for it to be destroyed.

Personally, I find it offensive. But I don't want it destroyed, I want the curators and the artist to learn something from it and do better next time. Complaints are not automatically censorship.

There's a lot of catastrophising by people who support the artist, here. One person in the world called for censorship (as someone always does); a small group of other people sign on and then off and maybe on again because of confusion over whether the petition included the destruction bit or not; another group protested it; and then a large number of people on the internet said "yeah, it shouldn't be there" without supporting the destruction of the work or saying the artist should be banned or shunned. This is not the end of free expression or accusations of the artist's supporters being secret members of the KKK. It's people saying "if you're new to a subject, sit down and listen to the experts before you say something stupid or hurtful".
posted by harriet vane at 3:56 AM on April 24, 2017 [12 favorites]

It also suggests that all the deep and personal discussions people have, here or in art or in the world, can never be enough to actually reach someone, that the majority - in this case white - is by its nature unable to understand what other people go through.

There are degrees of understanding. Can some understanding be gained of the position and experience of marginalised people be attained by people not in those groups? Absolutely. But understanding to the point where you can legitimately go "let me explain these people's situation" (whether to other people in the dominant group, or worse, in the marginalised group)? That's a different kettle of fish. And that's what it feels to a lot of people like this painting is doing.

On some topics you can certainly think deep and hard, and participate in discussions (when invited to do so) productively, but it doesn't follow that you can usefully this hold forth on the subject publicly as an authority figure, or profit from so doing, without that being a problem. Those are the things the painting effectively does - whether actually for sale or not - by virtue of hanging in a prestigious gallery.
posted by Dysk at 4:08 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

Whether or not a white artist could produce work through some act of imaginative empathy or by drawing on personal experience that intersects in some way with black experience that contributes positively to better understanding of the personal impacts of racial hatred, does this particular painting accomplish that? Nobody has persuasively argued this painting does.

What some have argued is that the white artist in question has a right to make audiences look unflinchingly at an image of Till's dead body, which perversely, is exactly what the people who lynched him wanted and felt was their right to do, too. Only now instead of a real dead body, we're told the artist has a right to make us look unflinchingly at a mediocre, abstracted representation of Till's corpse. I mean, FFS, he was just a kid. You'd never even realize that from this depiction, so it doesn't really even make sense to say it makes anybody look at the reality. It turns a real dead body into a conversation piece for no good reason other than the artist's desire to take on the subject for reasons the artist herself can't even sensibly articulate beyond the nebulous idea of raising awareness.

I don't know. I wouldn't call for this or any other painting to be destroyed, personally, even if it was my place to. It's not a standout work of art from what I can see. I do have a little formal training in painting and used to paint myself, so I feel pretty comfortable saying the technique isn't especially impressive or groundbreaking, though it seems competently produced for its stylistic niche. It's not awful, but it's not all that exceptional either, in terms of technique, so the choice of subject matter and the artist's own motives seem within fair bounds for evaluating it to me.

The idea you can and should separate art from artist is as much an industrial era idea about how commodities markets should be organized as it is a respectable critical perspective. Separating the product from the means of production and treating them as unconnected and unrelated for purposes of marketing and selling them is the model of contemporary American capitalism. Is it just coincidence the critical attitudes toward art followed the model of industrial production more generally during the same historical timeframe those ideas were being adopted in economic theory and practice? I don't think so. I think the practical effect of compartmentalizing the artist's experience and intentions away from the art is to reinforce the more culturally alienating effects of how unregulated capitalist markets function.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:24 AM on April 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

I think Hannah Black has actually done Dana Schutz a kindness here. Black has given a Schutz a way to atone for her failure. Destroy the painting. Treat it like the harmful mistake it is, throw it out, think more deeply before or if trying again because this effort wasn't good enough. As she is a well known, successful artist I feel totally fine holding her to a high standard for her work. She has a responsibility; not to be perfect, but at least to learn from her mistake and not double down on it. And not to flaunt that mistake as if its something to be proud of (we get enough of that on the evening news and Twitter) If this subject is truly important to Schutz she should welcome the opportunity to really engage with it in a way that is meaningful - to actually set an example; to listen to the very people that she is supposedly advocating for. Otherwise it really is just a trite personal indulgence and certainly doesn't belong on a wall in view of the public. She should be embarrassed and Black has given her a way to at least salvage something from it. And the emphasis should be on what she learned - not the act of destruction itself. But destroying that painting in my mind would be a far more meaningful act as art than the actual painting itself.

The Whitney should also take it down - although the responsibility for destroying it lies with Schutz. . Their error is actually the greater in my book, since as curators their main job is acting arbiters of importance. If they don't understand why that painting was problematic in a way that should have excluded it from the exhibit then they don't deserve to have the funding or the audience they are entrusted with. Black does a very good job of explaining why it's harmful.

A common complaint I hear from White folks talking about topics like this is well "What do they (Black people) want from me?". Black has told Schutz what she wants. I'm sorry, this doesn't even approach the level of authoritarianism because Black doesn't have institutional power behind her. Her statement is very powerful - apparently powerful enough that it has scared people, but it doesn't have the power of the institution like the Whitney backing it up. This isn't a frivolous call for destroying something that makes someone mad or uncomfortable or that is a political statement they don't agree with or is not to someone's taste (ie Dixie Chicks). It is causing actual harm to the people it was supposedly trying to help. If a politician, particularly any that had funding authority over the Whitney, had written that letter I might feel differently. But that's not what's happening here and I think its a distraction to act like it is.
posted by DarthDuckie at 7:23 AM on April 24, 2017 [14 favorites]

I misread "The Whitney" as "The Whitey" multiple times...
posted by CottonCandyCapers at 8:23 AM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

"Schutz can't conveniently discover her black heritage. But if she had reached out to Till's family, had included personal recollections of the suffering of black people who she knew in her artists' statement, I think the work would be fine. Instead she just completely ignored the context around the suffering and tried to make the work in a vacuum, and it comes across as completely tactless."

As far as I know, Till has no surviving family.

"Looking at the painting itself, I must say I don't like it much. As blessedlyndie wrote, the aftermath of brutality is flattened. One cannot avoid the similarity in the texture of the face and the red poppy to the lower-right corner. It's like an objectification of the dead. To be blunt, all dead people are, to a certain extent, objects -- they can't feel what people do to them. However, by an abstraction the irrevocably dead was separated from the process death that is very real and painful and humiliating, and this pain is asymmetrically imposed on a community. And to this extent, I can understand the outrage, the feeling of being uprooted from one's human condition and exposed to the gaze as a museum piece."

Only one person in this thread says that they've seen it in person. I can't seem to find it now, but one of the reports of the show described the image as being impossible to photograph because the paint is heavily built up, then gouged away in Till's face, but without the obvious brush strokes of most impasto.

"If she didn't intend the painting to be political, then it's not even speech. It's nothing but a void, an empty hole emitting black-body racism. It might as well be destroyed because there's no content. It is a negative of content, because it's taking up gallery space."

That seems to be a profoundly silly opinion. If we take her at her word, her piece was supposed to be about motherhood and loss. That she was fairly oblivious to how it would be received by Black and other black people doesn't make it an empty void.
posted by klangklangston at 11:55 AM on April 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

What some have argued is that the white artist in question has a right to make audiences look unflinchingly at an image of Till's dead body, which perversely, is exactly what the people who lynched him wanted and felt was their right to do, too.

This seems ridiculously exaggerated. Creating a painting doesn't mandate that anyone view it, let alone view it unflinchingly. The decision of the Whitney to put it on display is the decision that mandated that audiences look at it. Without that, it's just a painting.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:05 AM on April 28, 2017

Pretty sure the Whitney didn't make that decision without any involvement or consent from the artist, but you're right that the Whitney should share in the blame. Also the notion that making statements about the notion of motherhood and loss is apolitical is kind of bizarre, especially when you consider the image in question.
posted by Dysk at 9:29 AM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]