The End of Art
It has always been impossible to separate politics from art: Pablo Picasso once said paintings are “an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.” But now art (as with so much else) has become so hyper-politicized that a painting itself has become “the enemy” — to artists themselves, no less.
Brooklyn-based Dana Schutz is under fire for her painting “Open Coffin,” a featured work at the Whitney Biennial. It depicts in abstract the horribly mutilated face of lynching victim Emmett Till at his 1955 funeral.
The problem? Schutz is white. And to a growing chorus of African-American artists, “it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun.”
Some take particular offense that Schutz is the same race and gender as the woman whose unfounded “wolf whistle” accusations led to Till’s killing, arguing that her work thus perpetrates “the same kind of violence” he suffered.
The Whitney, to its credit, refuses to remove the painting, saying the museum provides a platform to explore critical issues. But it also won’t interfere with the protesters who maintain a vigil in front of the painting, obstructing it from view. They want it not just removed, but destroyed.
Ironically, Schutz decided to create the work as a reaction to last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. She also says she has no intention of ever selling it.
Set aside the (considerable) free-speech issue: If we’ve come to a point where artists can no longer depict things outside their particular “privilege,” then we’ve reached a point of no return.
Consider Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” a jarring 1960 portrait of a six-year-old black girl trying to enter an all-white New Orleans school, guarded by four white US marshals and braving a hail of thrown fruit and ugly racist graffiti. President Obama chose to have it installed in the hall outside the Oval Office. Racist art?
Asked if the protests would change the way she paints from now on, Schutz replied, “I’m sure it has to.” That’s another win for the hecklers’ veto — and a loss for art.