"Study For the Nurse in the Film 'Battleship Potemkin'" by Francis Bacon |
Oh for the days when political and artistic revolutionaries
had something in common, right after the Russian revolution, for instance, when Malevich and
Marx not only co-existed but cross-pollinated. Remember films like Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie
Camera (1929) or paintings like Picasso's Guernica (1937) whose innovations derived from revolt? Think back on the famous
Odessa steps sequence in Potemkin and the wide open mouth of the horrified nurse which Beckett would expropriate in Not I (1972). All of this comes into focus with both the current controversies at the Guggenheim (where three pieces by Chinese artists were removed) and earlier
at the Whitney in the case of Dana Schutz’s Emmett Till painting, "Open Casket." Which way is your avant-garde turning, left or right? In a Times article "Guggenheim Museum is Criticized for Pulling Animal Artworks," NYT, 9/26/17) Ai Weiwei
is quoted as saying, “When an art institution cannot exercise its right for
freedom of speech, that is tragic for a modern society. Pressuring museums to
pull down artwork shows a narrow understanding about not only animal rights but also human rights.” The Times piece went
on to describe the three pieces which had been removed. Two were videos “Dogs
That Cannot Touch Each Other” and “A Case Study of Transference.” The third, “Theater of the World,” is described in the piece as featuring “hundreds of live
crickets, lizards, beetles, snakes, and other insects and reptiles under an
overhead lamp.” The Times piece also
describes how “Scaffold,” a work by the artist Sam Durand was taken down at the Walker in Minneapolis in
response to objections by “Dakota Indian leaders.” Amnesty International grades
countries in terms of human rights issues. If they did the same for museums, the Guggenheim and the Walker would get F’s while the Whitney would received an
A for exhibiting the Emmett Till painting despite attempts by protestors who tried to stop
museumgoers from viewing it.
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