So there I sat in Loew auditorium, as required by my introductory art class, and lo and behold, I was subjected to a lecture I found both compelling and thought provoking. The subject was Public Art, and the lecture encompassed a virtual cornucopia of subjects: issues of content, purpose and aim to sponsorship and funding. Not to mention the question: what is Art? The speaker was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and I found her presentation provoked not the usual soporific stupor but a mild hum of brain activity. Her examples of artists as social activists enlightened me to a more contemporary, activist vision of the artist. Having been raised on the Romantics conception of aristocrat artist, it was a new and intriguing model for artistic expression. Why can't an artist effect change? Is it enough to present one's perceptions of the world? Shouldn't one also attempt to effect change as well? In any event, the lecture was, in my mind a success. That is, until the floor was opened for questions.
Now, it has been my not unlimited experience here at Dartmouth that discussion groups and Q and A sessions often reveal the worst about our alma mater. I have often been driven to silent rage by the idiocy of many of my classmates. I cannot help it. Nothing is more demoralizing than witnessing an Ivy L eague discussion of philosophy or historical theory derailed by a yapping fool. A wise man (or woman) speaks when he has something to say, the fool speaks to hear himself speak. Or however that old maxim goes. Not to say that all comments made in class are inane or irrelevant. My complaint is simply that far too often, a student ignorant of the subject matter and often even the required reading, will waste valuable time with extraneous blithering on a nearly unrelated matter in a far too assured manner for far too long.
To return to the lecture. It was an intellectually stimulating affair until the floor was opened for questions and discussion. I use the word discussion here liberally. A discussion is an exchange of ideas and views, and the Latin prefix "ex" means between. Not at, but between. Verbal assault would be a more accurate description. A discussion requires listening as well as vocalizing. And that was part of the problem that ensued. The issue that became the subject of a heated debate is complex; I will not equivocate. My attempt to paraphrase is, of course, only my perspective and should be taken with a grain of salt.
One of the examples of public art involved a sculptor who has resided in the South Bronx for some twenty years. His body-casts of neighborhood citizens have been used in murals and public art projects to rousing success and community support. His works serve to re-imagine the stereotypes and humanize the environs of the South Bronx where he lives and works. He is popular within the community. He is white.
Now this same artist was commissioned by a municipal board to create three statues for a local police precinct. Keeping in mind his works are actual body-casts of real citizens and friends, this artist cast three individuals for display outside of said police precinct. The statues were of a large black man with a basketball and a foot up on a boombox, a black girl with pigtails and roller-skates, and a lighter skinned man kneeling, dressed in hightops and hooded sweatshirt, with his pet pitbull. Now, I am not normally race obsessed but I believe the ethnicity of the subjects and the artist too be all too pertinent to the argument that ensued and the underlying emotions involved. Apparently, these statues were up for only one day before an outcry, and I hesitate to say community outcry, went out and the artist immediately withdrew is works. I hesitate to say community outcry because affluent individuals, black individuals from outside the community were a large part of the resis
tance to this artist's work.
So the floor is opened up to questions and there is an immediate cry of indignation and reaction to the above mentioned works. That the artist was continuing and supporting age old stereotypes. That the man with the basketball portrayed a "shiftless lay-about" and the man with the hooded sweatshirt looks like a drug dealer. Now, stop me if I'm wrong but aren't these the very assumptions that the artist is challenging by placing these images outside a police station? That the stereotypes supposedly supported by these works are in fact debunked by placing them outside a police station, reminding everyone that these are just a few of the many citizens who the police are employed to protect and serve? And wouldn't this artist who lives in this same community that commissioned him know better than anyone present at that lecture what is a fair representation of his friends? (Two of the figures cast were indeed his friends.) So who cares if old white ladies in the audience are upset b
y their "visceral" reaction to the "shiny black skin tone" of the statues which reminds them of lawn jockeys? Why must all this guilt over race and belonging cloud the real issue? Is this artist's work delegitamized because he is white? Why can't we act like true academics and discuss these complex issues rationally? Why must the potential of all good discussions be drowned by the cries of personal inadequacies?
Obviously, the lecture that started so well and ended so badly did so because there are deeper issues to resolve than the nature of Public Art. While my mind churned with the possibilities of urban renewal and subversive art projects to fight the machinery of commerce and industrialism, others churned in decidedly different ways. I am a white man in late 20th century America. I feel no guilt for the injustices of the past, only cynicism about human nature and a hope for a brighter future. And artists like this man from the South Bronx wish to make it so, if even in small, human ways. But somehow, when race became the issue of debate, I felt my voice to be somewhat less legitimate. I, who rarely back down from any fight, felt cowed by what I perceived as the mob mentality that pervaded that evening. That isn't right. Ignorance must not be allowed to prevail, no matter what taboo it hides behind. If only we could all learn how to listen to each other. Then we could discuss our c
oncerns like adults, clear away the misconceptions and fears that cloud our judgment, and just maybe make our future a little brighter.
