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Notes -
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:
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.
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.
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