Teaching Race

Teaching race in any classroom is hard.  It's a fraught subject, based on how we see ourselves and how others see us, and how we use that knowledge of ourselves and others.  I consistently walk into this section aware that I am a white woman and that most of my students are visibly other ethnicities and races.  Race suddenly looms larger than it should in the dynamic of the classroom because I am not just the teacher but the Caucasian teacher, asking questions and demanding answers of my students, my Black and Latino students.  We begin with the lights on, a rarity in an art history classroom.  But I want them to be able to see me as we discuss the power differences in self-identifying vs. being labeled, in prejudice vs. racism, the idea of stereotypes and their cultural resonances.  

Often, I've been teaching a chronological survey so they see Henry Ossawa Tanner with American Realist/Impressionists like Eakins and Homer; we talk about Jacob Lawrence and the Harlem Renaissance.  I started there today (at least briefly as this is a contemporary art topics class).  What strikes me though about Tanner is that his awareness of self is well within the artistic mainstream of Impressionism--gentle bonding genre scene of an old man teaching banjo to a boy in the idiom of light and shadow and loose brushstrokes.  I think it's important to see Tanner as trying very hard to be the man his White colleagues think he can't be, the man who feels compelled to leave the US for the greener-grass of France.  I moved on to Lawrence, who in the 1940s Migration Series, sees somewhat more openly the utopian longing of the move North, the racism both within the established Northern Black communities and the race riots sparked with Whites in cities like St. Louis.  Lawrence has a self awareness that was new and is important.

But part of me wanted to shock them into talking so I started with Carrie Mae Weems and the series, "From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried," 1995.  Appropriation is a theme we've been discussing so this was important. Made for Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz in 1850 to "prove" the racial inferiority of Blacks, they are "scientific" daguerreotypes that denied the personhood of these slaves.  Weems frames them within another image--an African woman--at the beginning and end to suggest heritage lost and mourned.  

My students looked at this image from the series:

They acknowledged the visual of the ropy scars from beatings but had no context at all for the words.  They did not know who Duke Ellington was; a few had heard of Billie Holiday.  None of them knew what the "strange fruit" was.  So I played the song and spoke the lyrics.  (Hurrah for YouTube).

We moved from there to David Hammons, an artist I almost never have time to teach but this is a special topics class.  Plus, he's rarely (if ever?) represented in survey books because of the largely political nature of his work.  We started with the seminal work, "Spade with Chains" from 1973.

They eventually got around to working on farms and chains of slavery.  They had seen no African masks so the connections there were ones I needed to make for them.  But they also had never heard the word "spade" in its derogatory meaning.  (So I made the computer users look it up in the Urban Dictionary.)  Age matters--when I was a kid, "spade" was still recognized; anecdotally, I suspect these kids are far more inured to variations on nigger, which was so pejorative when I was a kid that I never heard it, much less from my father in his own prejudices and jokes.

Finally, we ended today's class with Hammons' piece "In the Hood", from the Fresh Hell exhibit in 2010 (a piece which I have since learned dates back to the 1990s).

 For them, they jumped quickly to the Grim Reaper--faceless, deathly.  I asked them if it reminded them of the news and Trayvon Martin, seeing it now.  It seemed so fresh in my mind, and so much an evocation of the complications of race in America, with an African-American victim, an Hispanic-American perpetrator, concealed carry/stand your ground laws (and the economic class issues that drive them).

And about half the class looked at me blankly.  A few knew who I was speaking of and filled the rest in and we went on (actually, we stopped with this image but will come back to race on Friday).

Are they forced to reinvent their racial identities anew because they cannot see where they have grown from?  If my students don't know the history of race besides "the Civil War ended slavery" and "Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for desegregation", are they condemned to repeat the pain and sting of racism?  How can they not know the history happening around them, at this moment?  This is their lived context.  These events will be for them the Rodney King of the 1990s, the Willie Horton of the 1980s and 1970s, Eldridge Cleaver of the 1950s/60s.  When do they move from living in the moment to looking back at the moment to understanding the chain of moments?  When does living the history make it something other than just "OLD" and "A LONG TIME AGO"?

And this is why, every year, despite my own discomfort, despite my own frustration with what they don't know, I teach this material again.  Because we need--as Americans--to see how our countrymen see history, the country, the world.  (By the way, on Friday, we'll also talk about Asian-Americans and Native Americans and contemporary imagery.)

The Business of Art Museums

I don't know doodly-squat about business and running a museum but two stories recently came to my attention about museum buildings that really highlight the difficulties of preserving cultural patrimony in this age of tough economics.

In Cologne, Germany, there was a thriving and quite large Jewish community.  The community even weathered Crusader massacres in 1096 and Plague retaliation in 1349, and limped along until the advent of the Nazis.  A rich trove of many different artifacts has been uncovered and lies unacknowledged and unused in storage.  There's a dig in the city, where a new museum was proposed in 2007, but the general feeling is that Cologne is too broke to build a museum and that there's a sufficiently big Jewish museum in Berlin (250 miles away).  The museum is proposed at $64 million ($50+million euros); building a modern facility is undoubtedly expensive.  No denying that there are other places to spend that money.  Are there better causes?  Depends on your values, doesn't it?  It's a tough question as the AP story highlights--there's a solid number of people signing a petition against it.  But it seems to me that the placing of a fake bomb/suitcase and the carving of swastikas are also an indication that those who do not know the past are condemned to making ignorant and hateful statements until history smacks them upside the head.  If it were me on the committee, I'd seriously look into scaling back plans, seeing if we could find a locale to overhaul or build smaller/differently to get some of the collection into public exposure.  There might be a balance that could be achieved in this difficult economic climate that doesn't mean all or nothing for both history and services.

Here in the US, MoMA has bought the locale next door, the former American Folk Art Museum at 45 W. 53rd St. (link to NY Times article, pay wall may apply).  The museum building was a big deal--designed by talented and ambitious architects (Tod Williams and Billie Tsien) and opened after the 9/11 attacks.  But it was doomed--the museum borrowed $32 million for the expansion to this site.  I've not been to the new site, though know folks who have and have said lovely things about the American Folk Museum.  We can look back now to the bubbles that burst in construction, NYC, non-profits, tourist trade; we can be pleased that MoMA has the ability/resources to make use of the site.  We can also wonder why MoMA will raze the building and rebuild in its own signature metal and glass; is branding so important that the satellite extension needs to look like the rest of the buildingS?  Would there be a better use of the money?  Again, depends on your values.  I have to feel like there could be museum uses that respected the architecture of the building (especially since it meets museum needs; this doesn't need to be a major new use renovation).  I have to feel that there could be ways to spend less money but the pockets of MoMA are very deep.  Director Glenn Lowry suggests that they could put in another restaurant and shop on the ground floor--because maybe that is our cultural patrimony: look at the art and then buy a cheap reproduction on a coffee mug to take home.

Added 4/11, after the initial post: Hrag Vartanian over at Hyperallergic  also reflects on the MoMA purchase, with less flattering things to say about the Folk Art building in general but raising the question of buildings themselves as part of our cultural heritage.

March 14: It is Enough, Gun Violence and Art

As I wrote last month, on the 14th of every month, this group is turning its attention to the issues of gun violence.  I'm doing my part by writing what I know--art.

Today's work is

Roy Lichtenstein, Pistol, 1964 (print on banner, dimensions: 82 x 49")(in the collection of MOMA)

I have always been a fan of Roy Lichtenstein and the Pop Art Movement.  But I want to argue the complexity of this work in detail.

It is clearly referencing comics and the art that appeared in the newspaper.  The use of dark outlines, Ben Day dots (print process reproduced here by stencil), and the simplified abstraction of anatomy and objects all point to the comics.  Lichtenstein was clearly influenced by the issues of perception--hence the draw of Pop Art where comic art was taken from its pulp original and turned into "high art".   This work of art is all about our perceptions.

Comics carry with them connotations and the weight of our day-to-day and mass culture perceptions of ourselves.  The stories in the comics are the stories we tell ourselves about needing superheroes, seeing children who are loved and loveable despite their hijinks, recognizing the personalities of our pets.  Even comics that aren't topical can reflect our concerns about our job security and global situation.  They come with a recognizable vocabulary, often relying on humor to set us at ease with a story that may be uncomfortable otherwise.

I don't know what comic this came from.  Lichtenstein used a lot of the pulp comics, especially war, westerns, and superhero comics.  But here's why Lichtenstein's image is supposed to frighten us:

There is no setting.  Just a red wall.  Red like blood.  Red like anger.  Unrelenting.  There is nowhere else to turn, nowhere to imagine a scene and a story to diffuse this gun.

The gun points right at us.  There is no getting away from the black center of the barrel.

The hand--its finger clearly on the trigger--is disembodied.  There is no brain telling the shooter to not harm you.  There is no reluctance.

The size is huge.  There is no getting away from this threatening hand and the poised violence of the gun.

There's a lot of discussion in the gun control debate about what role culture plays in the psychology of guns.  Many gun owners argue that they put the gun in its "correct" context--teaching safety, using locks, limiting access--and that it is only when the gun is taken from that "correct" context--used by the criminal or the insane or the suicidal--that it should be limited.  Many folks argue that the context of guns in video games particularly accustoms children to guns as part of toys (part of comic mobs and criminals) and that it desensitizes them to the actuality of violence.  I suspect that the reality is some combination of all of these. 

Ernest Busche in the Lichtenstein bio linked here writes: "The theme basic to all of Lichtenstein’s work ...explicitly questioned the assumption that the function of representational art was to reflect reality. Throughout his work in all media, he continued to affirm that the arrangement of forms and colours obeyed pictorial rules independent of the subject portrayed. The succession of styles alluded to in his art, rather than being taken for granted as a self-perpetuating system, thus becomes an instrument for understanding art as the expression of an ideal state."  Lichtenstein is explicitly taking the gun from the removed state of the comics and returning it to the one where it is a tool of violence.

IT IS ENOUGH.  Now is the time not just to limit the horrific violence of the Sandy Hook shootings but to consider the casual access that allows over 80 deaths daily in the US by gun violence.  Our legislators are talking; make them act.  I wrote to CT. Senator Richard Blumenthal this morning.  What will you do?

What Art History Should Be

Mostly this is an entry to post you to a fascinating blog post from the British Museum: The Spirit of Sierra Leone in London, written by Paul Basu.

Sowei Mask, Collection of the British Museum, Af1886,1126.1

 

A serious post: Guns and Birthdays and Art

Please note: this is my view.  This is the story I tell about my world and my life.  It's ok if it isn't your world but treat me and the other readers/commenters on this blog with respect.  Posts that abuse  trust and civility may be deleted by me.

 
Today is February 14, 2013.

Today the world gets all gushy about love, in the name of a 3rd century Roman saint about whom very little is known but it gave an opportunity to connect traditions of courtly love in the late 13th and 14th centuries to a saint and thus sanctify the practices.

Today is my birthday. As a kid, I used to get teased about being a LOVE child because of my birthday.  Nowadays, I just tell people that you're guaranteed to get chocolates and flowers for your birthday.

Today is also the 14th of the month, marking the day that "It is Enough", an informal Christian social media group to which I belong, is marking its support for stronger gun laws.  On the 14th of every month, they are urging folks to speak up in favor of stronger gun laws.  To write their reps, tell their stories, get the word to others.

I am in favor of stronger gun laws.  My personal story is very relevant to my current position.

I grew up with guns in the house.  My father was an enthusiast--for hunting (which he did regularly) and history (he knew a lot about guns made for warfare from all parts of history).  I was taught to fire a gun; there was a point in my life when I was quite good at shooting tin cans with my dad.  My dad gave me a shotgun for Christmas one year, even had the stock cut down to fit me.  I used it once or twice with him in the backyard on the villainous tin cans.  My father taught me, and later my brother, how to use guns.  We were taught from the very start that the first rule is that guns kill.  We were taught never to point at anything we didn't intend to kill, even if we "knew" the gun was empty and unloaded.  Guns were supervised and taken as tools but tools meant for killing.  There was nothing glamorous about them; their sole beauty was in their usefulness as the tool for which they were designed.

My brother, who was born on April 6, 1974, was shot in the head and killed on November 15, 1994, by a friend and roommate of his.  That man is now serving a 40 year prison sentence.

On this day, I am aware that gun violence and birthdays have coincided in my life.  That gun violence has stopped my brother's birthdays.  That we are rapidly approaching the point where he will have been dead more birthdays than he was alive.  That no mother/father/sister/brother/friend/lover should have to experience what my family has.

On this day, I believe that gun availability was a contributing factor to a dispute/upset becoming fatal.  I feel that I see this in the news a LOT--situations that having a gun at hand makes the violence boil over.  I don't believe that taking guns away completely is possible; I would support massive government buy-backs, however.  I would support any legislation to make getting guns harder (universal background checks, sale limits, etc.).  If you want a tool like a gun, it's worth doing the things to make that tool safe. I would support legislation limiting capacities (because rage boils over too easily; it feeds on itself).  I would support legislation requiring personal responsibility (trigger locks, etc.).  For me, I cannot support the tragedy of loss in order to have freer civil liberties.  These liberties come at a cost that is too great for me to sustain.

I am an art historian.  I will continue to mark the 14th with art as we move to make our voices heard to end gun violence in America.

This is a necklace made by Rebecca Batal in 1989.  For me, the cramming of the chain with the pink and blue ribbons until there is no room for more is a sign of our times.  There is no more room for gun violence.  It robs us of our children.  It takes from us birthdays of joy and love.  Gun violence is not limited to one kind of person--it affects women and men, boys and girls, beyond race or creed.  In the midst of these soft shiny satin ribbons is the incongruity of the pendant gun.  It separates us from our humanity.  On this 14th day of the month, recognize love and deny violence.