To Censor or Not to Censor

Lots of people are calling for “Open Casket” by Dana Schutz to be removed from this year's Whitney Biennial. Some are even demanding that it be destroyed. I had expected to roll my eyes when I finally saw the painting for myself  today and wonder what all the fuss was about. To my surprise, I realized that the dissenters had a point.

This painting was the artist’s response to the famous photograph of Emmett Till, who was brutally beaten and murdered after being accused (falsely as it turned out) of flirting with a white woman. Schutz transformed the photograph of Till’s ravaged corpse into an abstract so rich and lush you almost wanted to lick the paint.

While I don't question the artist’s intentions, I do have to question the results. If you are intending--as Schutz claims she was--to reflect on the violence directed against black bodies in America and you wind up with a painting this deliciously sensual then you have failed. By her own standards, Schutz's painting is an artistic failure.

That being said, I do NOT think "Open Casket" should be removed from the Whitney exhibition. And it certainly should not be destroyed. We can have a civilized discourse and go on to criticize or even condemn a work of art without needing to strike it from the record. This painting may be a failure but it's not an affront to humanity.

It's the violence that lead to the original photograph which should have no place on this Earth.

Addendum:

I had originally intended to end this blog post at this point. But I realize that there are some of you who will not be convinced by my line of thinking. After all, I'm just another white male offering my out-of-date opinions on Freedom of Speech. Even worse, I'm a white writer suggesting that we allow a white artist to display an inappropriate representation of a black corpse at a major art exhibition.I will be accused of making a detached argument about a painful issue that really has nothing to do with me.

Fortunately, the Whitney Biennial curators were thoughtful enough to provide me with a piece of art that would allow the issue to become a little more personal. They selected an installation by William Pope L that has not gotten a whiff of controversy, although it could have. I present you now with Claim, better know as The House of Jewish Bologna.

Yes this seemingly whimsical structure actually has slices of shriveled bologna pinned to its pink walls to represent a fraction of the Jewish population of New York City. The artist is apparently trying to make a statement about the eerie perils of the government counting people as various ethnic groups.

Or perhaps it’s a statement about the nature of identity.

Or perhaps something else.

I have seen my fellow Jews represented as cockroaches, vermin and various sorts of plague. I have never before seen us represented as a form of luncheon meat. I found this cold-cut comparison to be not quite insulting and well short of offensive. But it was off-putting nonetheless.  

My personal reaction to this piece was a strong desire to tell William Pope L where he could shove his bologna.

Yet, much like the Emmett Till painting, I don't think there was any ill intent. In fact, I’ve come to learn that Pope has a long history of using food products to weird and occasionally subversive effect. But it seemed to me that this was a strikingly poor match of medium to message.

Much like African Americans, Jews don't need representations of their suffering taken lightly.

I think this piece was a mistake but I would not call on the curators at the Whitney to remove it or in any way censor it. Let it stand as a slightly ridiculous monument to all we don't know about each other and all we have to learn.