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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35419 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/11/guggenheim-racism-controversy-curator-nancy-spector/671529/

Well we finally have a story about the self-destruction of the Guggenheim in the summer of 2020. Unfortunately the author seems to be lamenting that the activists didn’t try to get enough people fired by framing it as a story of people choosing a scapegoat instead of fully recognizing their privilege.

This piece appearing as a headline story in The Atlantic actually makes me pessimistic that we’re ever going to get a real examination of the hysteria during Summer 2020. The analysis is so hamstrung by the fact that any mainstream author will agree with the premises of the activists.

Also it’s worth noting that any principled opposition to Lebouvier from within the Guggenheim would have left the art world decades ago. Institutional capture was baked into the cake back then, lamenting it now just seems naïve.

The thing that struck me most about this whole ridiculous series of events was that it was over what is, objectively, a terrible painting. I mean look at this. In what universe is this considered a powerful expression of rage against a horrible tragedy, instead of the scribbling of a child on a canvas? The writer laments (in what is clearly a bald-faced party affiliation statement) the fact that:

The collections are slowly diversifying, but only 1.2 percent of artworks across 18 major American museums are by Black artists, and the big crowds still flock to the Great White Males: Picasso, Monet, van Gogh, Pollock, Warhol.

Please note that I chose my wording above (expression of rage against a horrible tragedy) very carefully. I ask that you compare Defacement (above) with one of the aforementioned "Great White Males" own expressions of rage against horrible tragedy. The famous Guernica by Picasso. Or perhaps Van Gogh's reaction to his own anguish and termoil? Shall we consider Monet's reaction to his wife's ill health and decline?

Of course people flock to these paintings. We have eyes. No matter how often the art community screams and cries and stamps their feet and demands that we acknowledge that they are the masters of their field and we mere peons cannot possibly comprehend the mysteries they do, we have eyes. We appreciate beauty and we recognize ugliness when we see it. People go to art galleries to appreciate beautiful things. That's it. That's the answer to this accusation that all art-museum goers are secretly racist. They just want to look at beautiful things, and this painting is not a beautiful thing.

Of course people flock to these paintings. We have eyes. No matter how often the art community screams and cries and stamps their feet and demands that we acknowledge that they are the masters of their field and we mere peons cannot possibly comprehend the mysteries they do, we have eyes. We appreciate beauty and we recognize ugliness when we see it. People go to art galleries to appreciate beautiful things. That's it. That's the answer to this accusation that all art-museum goers are secretly racist. They just want to look at beautiful things, and this painting is not a beautiful thing.

I'm not really sure this cuts it. There are plenty of black artists who have produced work that the average non-artist, non-expert such as myself look beautiful/impactful/impressive as those other paintings but few go to see them either. Which isn't to say that you shouldn't see Picasso or Monet or Van Gogh, but that the popularity of particular artists has as much do to with either a) arbitrary fashion and accidents of history or b) abstruse points of art history that 99% of gallery visitors know nothing about.

But these days you won't know the skin color of an artist unless someone goes out of their way to tell you (which they will in certain cases).

Discrimination is a completely bogus reason to explain why some works are popular and others aren't.

I tend to think fine art, especially contemporary art, is mostly a scam anyway, but the cries of racism here just ring painfully deceptive.

I agree that painting is trash but it's not like anything by Pollock (one of the listed great white males) is any better

Pollock's paintings have a considered colour palette, rhythm, harmony, scale, and originality/novelty, all elements that factor into the aesthetic and historical assessment of art. It's not the greatest art mankind ever made but it represents a new development for its time. On those bases it's arguably better than Basquiat, who retrod a path laid down decades earlier by abstract expressionists like Pollock without notably refining or extending it.

Unfortunately the author seems to be lamenting that the activists didn’t try to get enough people fired by framing it as a story of people choosing a scapegoat instead of fully recognizing their privileg.

I read it a little differently; I thought the article's point was largely to criticize LaBouvier for acting like an insane narcissist. The author seems to carefully let LaBouvier make the argument against herself in her own words. There was hardly a single sentence in that article that made LaBouvier seem reasonable. For instance:

Chaédria LaBouvier was one of those dissenters. She quote-tweeted the Guggenheim’s post, adding: “Get the entire fuck out of here. I am Chaédria LaBouvier, the first Black curator in your 80 year history & you refused to acknowledge that while also allowing Nancy Spector to host a panel about my work w/o inviting me. Erase this shit.” She followed this up with a long viral thread the next day, claiming that working at the Guggenheim “was the most racist professional experience of my life.” She zeroed in on Spector, the woman who had brought her into the museum’s orbit but who, according to LaBouvier, was “trying to co-opt my work,” and likened her to Amy Cooper, the “Central Park Karen,” a white woman who had recently been in the news after she called the police on a Black bird-watcher.

Even by the standards of the Atlantic's readership, this isn't the kind of thing your average white liberal is going to appreciate or agree with.

I don't read her as believing that anyone should have been fired. That's probably the worst possiblle way to diversify - scapegoating and targeting someone, largely for their race is gross. Especially when there were so many better and non-racist options available. They have an obscene endowment, and in that moment, donors would likely have been all too wiling to fund even more if it was targeted toward increasing the diversity of staff, or artists whose works are collected and exhibited.

I think she's just making clear - lest she be the next one targeted - that calls for more inclusivity aren't the problem.

It does seem like the director was a little too trusting. The article does suggest that the guest curator had a "long-standing pattern of excoriating others who were interested in Defacement or Basquiat, even when they sought out her opinion." A little more due diligence probably could have avoided the situation all together. .

I was feeling vaguely sympathetic up until this part:

Around the same time, political concerns were getting louder at the Guggenheim. According to several sources, in late 2016, some staff members expressed frustration that the museum was not doing more to signal its opposition to Trump. Then Nancy Spector, as the chief curator, had a chance to join the #resistance. In 2017, the White House got in touch to request the loan of a van Gogh. Spector instead offered an artwork by Maurizio Cattelan called America—a solid-gold toilet. Liberals on Twitter loved the insult. “You spend your life hoping one day you’ll get the chance to respond to an unreasonable request in a manner worthy of Oscar Wilde,” tweeted a Georgetown Law professor named Aderson B. Francois. “For this one Guggenheim curator, that moment came last September and, as the kids say, she didn’t throw away her shot.”

"But why would the leopards eat my face????" You live by the sword, you die by the sword.

If there's one thing you should take away from this story, it's that this is the painting that inspired the whole debacle. I think it reveals more about the people involved than all ~8k words of that article:

/images/16648375033063056.webp

It is a Basquiat, and although this particular piece does not do much for me, in general I find that Basquiat's works tend to have real emotional power, though why, I don't know (color? composition? I don’t know enough about art to say. And, no, anyone can't do it; I attended a showing of an art teacher colleague who worked in a similar style and felt nothing. Similarly, lots of people can execute the lines and shapes of Guernica, but the result will not necessarily be the same. I can cut out pictures and paste them on a canvas, but I can't create anything like this stuff

It's not an asthetic that appeals to me at all. But while it really doesn't resonate with me stylistically or compositionally, I do like that there is a very pronounced style - a Basquiat looks like a Basquiat to me, in the same way a Picasso just looks like a Picasso. And I like that there is a strong point of view and that comes across in a very direct way.

The author seemed pretty critical of the broader trend.

In hindsight, the summer of 2020 was revolutionary, in both good and bad ways; noble goals were being pursued, but the ground was constantly shifting, and it was unwise to end up on the wrong side of the revolutionaries. People are complicated, and not every workplace dispute between individuals can bear the entire weight of America’s racial history.

They felt the museum was playing by the old rules, whereby the most dangerous person to offend was the celebrity with his name on the posters. In the new world, the power had shifted to those who could attract the most attention on Twitter.

As in any revolution, who survived and who fell foul of the crowd was often arbitrary.

At the least, the author is pointing out that devouring the old guard is not particularly just. Spector is painted very sympathetically, and the agitators and consultants are treated with ambivalence. This may or may not have something to do with Ms. Lebouvier's absolute tantrum on request for an interview.

What more examination did you want to see?

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