Political art

Danny Gregory put up a post asking why there isn’t more political art reacting to current events:

It’s been three years since 9/11 and yet, (except for a couple of forgettable efforts from Springsteen and Bowie, a few made-for-TV movies, and Michael Moore’s upcoming Fahrenheit 911) artists don’t seem to have responded in a significant way that has caught on with the public. Where’s the first great anti-war hip hop song? The Whitney Biennial was great but if any of it referenced 9/11 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, I missed it.

He’s right: there hasn’t been much in the way of war (or, specifically, anti-war) art. There are, I think, two reasons that we’re not seeing a lot of art dealing with current events. One is that people are scared. And the second is, they don’t really know what they’re scared of.

As to the first reason, here’s an article from today’s San Jose Mercury News (registration required; as always, use Bugmenot if you don’t want to register):

Painting prompts threats at S.F. gallery
By Mary Anne Ostrom

When Lori Haigh realized her life’s dream and opened up a gallery to show provocative work by local artists, San Francisco’s North Beach — bastion for free speech since the Beat Generation — seemed the obvious place.

But that was before she graced the gallery’s front window with a graphic depiction by Berkeley painter Guy Colwell of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, based on recent photographs coming out of Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghurayb prison. In the past 10 days, Haigh has endured vandalism at her Capobianco Gallery, dozens of hate calls labeling her anti-American, and even a few death threats.

Now disillusioned and frightened for her family, she’s closed the Powell Street gallery at least temporarily, and maybe for good. That has spawned another protest, from San Francisco artists and publishers, including veterans of past censorship battles. They vow to persuade her to stay open.

“I haven’t seen something like this since the 1960s and 1970s,” said Ron Turner, owner and founder of Last Gasp, an alternative San Francisco publisher who has supported controversial writers and artists for 35 years. “San Francisco is considered a way station. If you get here you are in an environment of freethinkers who look at art for art’s sake and not to adhere to moral codes,” he said.

Veiled threats

Several Bay Area television stations reported the vandalism last week, and protest calls for her to remove the painting increased. One anonymous caller warned he knew where her children go to school. Calls suggesting she burn the artwork came after a KTVU reporter ended his report by saying “to own it, or own it and burn it” the painting’s cost is $2,000. On Sunday, a man in a military-style khaki jacket walked into the gallery and spat on her.

San Francisco police are looking into the threats and advised Haigh to move the work from the front window, which she did last week, for safety reasons. Police told her a few of the harassing calls they traced came from pay phones.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of the nearby City Lights bookstore, paid a visit to Capobianco Gallery on Saturday to show support for Haigh and Colwell, whose work he exhibited two decades ago.

Ferlinghetti, a veteran of free-speech wars who was tried unsuccessfully on obscenity charges in 1957 for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” called today’s reaction to the artist’s work “an alarming development,” fostered by an attitude that dissent must be controlled. Recently, he said someone had defaced a window at City Lights where he had posted a “Depose Bush and Cheney” sign. “I hope it’s still a very tiny minority who would do this thing.”

Colwell’s black-and-white painting shows three U.S. soldiers, including one who appears to be Private Lynndie England — one of the U.S. soldiers facing abuse charges — engaging in torture. England is holding wires connected to three naked Iraqi prisoners, and the painting graphically shows their genitalia. An American flag on a soldier’s uniform, splattered with blood, is the only object with color.

Haigh said at least one of her neighbors told the gallery owner she found the work distasteful and wanted it down but several neighbors, including local artists, interviewed Tuesday said they found the reaction to her work puzzling, especially because graphic photos had appeared on television and in newspapers.

`Surprising’ in S.F.

“It’s surprising in a place like San Francisco,” said Winston Smith, an internationally known punk artist and record-cover designer. “Maybe not in Topeka, Kansas, but San Francisco, yes. If you get them riled up, you know you did something right. But when you have a physical location you’re a sitting duck.” He worries that if Haigh closes, the only North Beach galleries remaining are those showing mundane tourist scenes.

As for Haigh, 39, the daughter of a former military doctor who once made a living publishing Barry Manilow’s fan newsletters, she said she is not a political activist, but neither does she support the war in Iraq.

She decided to display Colwell’s latest piece, called “The Abuse,” as part of a larger monthlong show. In recent years, Colwell has painted animals, including murals at the Oakland Zoo, and other less controversial art. But his past work, which grew from his years as a 1970s underground artist, has shown more biting critiques of modern life, including violence and racism.

Reached at his home Tuesday evening, Colwell was curt and declined to talk about the message of his controversial painting, saying the work “speaks for itself.”

The artist, who said he plans to take the painting home when the exhibition ends, also was dismissive of the criticism: “I don’t want to be the center of attention. It’s not about me; it’s about the painting.”

Haigh said Tuesday that while she appreciates growing community support, she is not in a mood to be a crusader.

“I’m so disillusioned,” she said, as calls from protesters continued to ring in the gallery Tuesday. “I wish they would aim their criticism where it belongs, at the military. But I can’t sacrifice my family for principles.”

(Gotta love the internationally known punk artist and record-cover designer named Winston Smith.)

People are scared and they don’t know to whom to turn. This administration, with their (You’re with AND you’re a registered Republican AND you’re actively donating) OR (You’re treasonous scum) mentality, has scared people. Until very, very recently there wasn’t any mainstream criticism of the President, because until the tide started to turn, the media had the following laid out for them: criticize the President, get your access turned off. And it’s easier just to go along with the Powers That Be, until problems arise.

The second reason, I think, is that for the vast majority of us here in the good ol’ US, is that the War In Iraq and the War On Terrorism don’t affect us much.

Yet, at any rate.

Seriously, how have the war and the “war” affected you? Slightly higher prices at the pumps. I heard recently that gas in Britain is £3.35 a gallon. That’s a little over $6.00. Feel better about that $2.35 for unleaded? Okay, we’ve had slightly longer lines at the airport, and only at peak times—they seem to have figured a lot of the security snags out. Are you scrounging for food? Worried about the squadrons of soldiers coming through town, taking your food and shelter and daughters? Anyone’s house in your neighborhood get bombed recently?

Yes, I know you might know someone in the armed forces who might be in Iraq or might possibly be sent to Iraq. But compare this to the Vietnam war, where millions of Americans ended up getting shipped out (unless they were lucky enough to, you know, go to college AND go to graduate school AND get married AND have children…). Or World War II, where every single village, town, and city in this country was affected. Or the Great Depression. Or World War I, which most people have forgotten but which was simply horrible and devastating, even here in the US, which didn’t host any battles. Images, like those at Abu Ghraib, are horrible. But we can wipe our brows and say, Oh thank goodness, it’s happening to someone else.

And as disgusting as the so-called War on Terrorism is, I cannot point to one single instance in my everyday life that has been affected by it. Yes, “rights”…but not my rights, at least not yet. Rights are so, so, intangible, you know? There might be, oh, one or two or even maybe a couple of hundred people whose rights have gotten trampled, but no one I know, even at a friend of a friend of a friend distance.

It’s not visceral. It’s not immediate. It’s theoretical.

So far.

My theory (ha) at any rate is that theoretical art makes for an intellectual exercise, not an emotional one, and until most of the population moves beyond being scared of what is essentially the Boogeyman to a deep emotional investment in what’s going on…we’re not going to see the art that we need to.