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 and not entered
into any market or museum.
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.
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 -
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.
Emmett Till's name has circulated widely since his death. It has come to stand
not only for Till himself but also for the mournability (to each other, if not to
everyone) of people marked as disposable, for the weight so often given to a
white woman's word above a Black child's comfort or survival, and for the
injustice of anti-Black legal systems. Through his mother's courage, Till was
made available to Black people as an inspiration and warning. 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.
Ongoing debates on the appropriation of Black culture by non-Black artists
have highlighted the relation of these appropriations to the systematic
oppression of Black communities in the US and worldwide, and, in a wider
historical view, to the capitalist appropriation of the lives and bodies of Black
people with which our present era began. Meanwhile, a similarly high-stakes
conversation has been going on about the willingness of a largely non-Black
media to share images and footage of Black people in torment and distress or
even at the moment of death, evoking deeply shameful white American
traditions such as the public lynching. Although derided by many white and
white-affiliated critics as trivial and naive, discussions of appropriation and
representation go to the heart of the question of how we might seek to live in a
reparative mode, with humility, clarity, humour and hope, given the barbaric
realities of racial and gendered violence on which our lives are founded. I see no
more important foundational consideration for art than this question, which
otherwise dissolves into empty formalism or irony, into a pastime or a therapy.
The curators of the Whitney biennial surely agree, because they have staged a
show in which Black life and anti-Black violence feature as themes, and been
approvingly reviewed in major publications for doing so. Although it is possible
that this inclusion means no more than that blackness is hot right now, driven
into non-Black consciousness by prominent Black uprisings and struggles
across the US and elsewhere, I choose to assume as much capacity for insight
and sincerity in the biennial curators as I do in myself. Which is to say - we all
make terrible mistakes sometimes, but through effort the more important thing
could be how we move to make amends for them and what we learn in the
process. The painting must go.
Thank you for reading
Hannah Black
Artist/writer
Whitney ISP 2013-14
.00 AT&T
10:02 PM
@ 89%
eperalta.org
C
Kindly Inquisitors/Open Casket essay
We've talked at length about Rauch's ideas, about the importance of free speech and free thought
to the generation of knowledge. We've also talked about how some institutions-with the best of
intentions have sought to eliminate "bad" or "ugly" or "offensive" speech in the name of
humanitarianism or the greater good. In Hannah Black's letter to the Whitney Museum, she
argues, for a variety of reasons, that Dana Schutz's "Open Casket" should be not only removed
from view, but destroyed.
Black's concerns have valid antecedents (some of which we have discussed): Can a white artist truly
understand Mamie Till's pain in the same way as a black artist? Is she appropriating a tragedy for
artistic purposes? Does she have a luxury as a white artist that artists of color don't have? While
these concerns may be culturally true and appropriate, how does her argument violate Rauch's
theory of Liberal Science?
For this essay, you should discuss why removing and destroying "Open Casket" falls under the
rubric of Humanitarian Threat. And as such, why must the painting be allowed to remain? Yes,
this is an issue of free speech and free artistic expression, but what else? What are the risks,
according to Rauch, of submitting to pressure and doing what may seem right in the name of
correcting past injustices? Even if Black is right, and this painting capitalizes on hundreds of years
of oppression, why is it important to let it remain? And if we destroy this painting, who else's
painting should be destroyed? Who decides?
You should frame your essay around Rauch's argument (mostly those in chapter 5). Be as specific
as you can. Remember, it's not enough to say, “As an artist, she has the right to express herself."
That's a fine place to start, but that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Your essay should be 4 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12 point font. It's worth 100 points.
Please bring in a first draft for peer review on Wednesday 3/14. Final draft is due to turnitin
Monday 3/19. You have time for revision. Please take advantage of it!
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