New York Times arts reporter Randy Kennedy covered the controversy over the audacity of a white artist exhibiting a painting at the Whitney Biennial, based on photographs of the body of Emmett Till, the teenager murdered in Mississippi in 1955: “Painting of Emmett Till Draws Protests -- A white artist’s work at the Whitney Biennial has some calling for its removal.”
Strikingly, the article, from a purportedly pro-free-speech media organization, included not a single word of dissent about the idea of leftist protesters wanting to have a piece of art not only removed from an exhibit, which would be awful enough, but destroyed (perhaps along with a book-burning?). No one came to the defense of free expression in the face of a frankly racist attempt to suppress and destroy art based on the skin color of the artist:
The open-coffin photographs of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, the teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955, served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement and have remained an open wound in American society since they were first published in Jet magazine and The Chicago Defender at the urging of Till’s mother.
The images’ continuing power, more than 60 years later, to speak about race and violence is being demonstrated once again in protests that have arisen online and at the newly opened Whitney Biennial over the decision of a white artist, Dana Schutz, to make a painting based on the photographs.
Kennedy blandly recited the anti-art, racism-based atrocity being pondered:
An African-American artist, Parker Bright, has conducted peaceful protests in front of the painting since Friday, positioning himself, sometimes with a few other protesters, in front of the work to partly block its view. He has engaged museum visitors in discussions about the painting while wearing a T-shirt with the words “Black Death Spectacle” on the back. Another protester, Hannah Black, a British-born black artist and writer working in Berlin, has written a letter to the biennial’s curators, Mia Locks and Christopher Y. Lew, urging that the painting be not only removed from the show but also destroyed.
The protest has found traction on Twitter, where some commenters have called for destruction of the painting and others have focused on what they view as an ill-conceived attempt by Ms. Schutz to aestheticize an atrocity.
And what about the hopefully vast majority of people, artists and aficionados, liberals and conservatives, who are repelled by the idea of expelling and destroying a work of art on racist terms because it supposedly has offended someone? Nothing. Only mealy-mouthed defenses from the curator and the artist herself.
Mr. Bright, in a Facebook Live video of his protest, makes some of the same points in objecting to the painting’s inclusion in the show. The biennial is an unusually diverse exhibition of work by 63 artists and collectives; nearly half the artists are female and half are nonwhite. Calling the painting “a mockery” and “an injustice to the black community,” Mr. Bright adds that he believes the work perpetuates “the same kind of violence that was enacted” on Till “just to make a painting move.”
After getting a non-responsive comment from the artist Dana Schutz, and making the show’s curators defend the inclusion of the art, Kennedy concluded:
The Black Lives Matter movement and greater awareness of the killing of black men by the police have led to efforts to film the Till story, with at least three screen adaptations in production.
Last October, Kennedy wrote about a left-wing themed haunted house piece in Brooklyn by artist and “biting social critic” Pedro Reyes. Kennedy signed on to Reyes’ anti-capitalist conspiracy:
But Mr. Reyes added that the house’s half-dozen fright scenarios are less about the failures of political leaders and more about systems at work in the world economy -- the military complex, the financial industry, the gun industry, the fast-food industry and Big Pharma, just to name some headliners -- that have become so vast they seem to govern themselves, rendering political control almost ineffectual....he knows he is preaching mostly to a choir of liberal art lovers who oppose many of the late-capitalist demons he holds up to ridicule...
