Inspired by “Mao” by Andy Warhol, Knowledge Bennett’s “Mao Trump” combines President Trump’ face with Chairman Mao. Image courtesy of The KNOW Contemporary.
By Jack Taylor
Art offers the chance to create dialogue between the artist and the viewer. Add in the factor of politics and art becomes more than just watercolors and self portraits.
The concept of how political art impacts the way viewers consume it, provided the source of discussion at the Teaching Learning Academy’s most recent discussion on March 4. With a panel consisting of Western professors from the art department along with human services and history departments, students and community members had the opportunity to listen as well as speak on how political art impacts them.
Lined with art by Knowledge Bennett, an Los Angeles based artist whose work combines politics with art, and taking place in the Western Art Gallery, each of the speakers gave their take on how they have responded to politics through their art.
Peter Pihos, a history professor, whose focus is on African American history, spoke about the contemporary art surrounding the audience during the panel. Pihos, specifically spoke about Bennett’s “Obama Cowboy” painting.
“In the American West, nearly a quarter of people working in raising cattle between 1860 and 1890 were black,” Pihos said. “So this piece in a sense represents politics of recovery, and politics of lost history.”
Cynthia Camlin, a professor of art, spoke about her work and how it connects to contemporary politics.
“I’m making work because of the political times, I’m aggravated at the political context on purpose,” Camlin said.
Camlin used to create art that was inspired by the environment, such as landscapes, but after the 2016 election, she couldn’t stop herself from changing gears.
“I just suddenly couldn’t make the same work anymore, and I needed to make some changes in my work,” Camlin said.
Camlin was particularly taken aback by the white supremacist march that occurred in Charlottesville in 2017.
“I grew up in the southeast in small towns in South Carolina and North Carolina and Virginia,” Camlin said. “I began making work that was specifically related to white supremacy in those towns, not feeling myself as a perpetuator or victim but trying to get at what it means to be implicated in racism.”
Art History Professor Monique Kerman, who was a part of the panel, discussed the controversial “Open Casket” by Dana Schultz in conjunction with discussion on who is allowed to create certain kinds of art. The painting drew controversy as it depicted Emmett Till’s mother mourning over her son’s brutally mutilated face. Emmett Till was a 14 year-old boy who in 1955 was falsely accused of flirting with a white woman and was murdered.
Schultz was a white woman attempting to draw on a mother’s grief for her son, but received harsh criticism due to Schultz’s race.
“Schultz herself acknowledged that in painting this image she foresaw a certain amount of political dialogue, perhaps even controversy, and pledged never to sell it,” Kerman said.
This incident caused a big debate in the art community over who gets to paint what.
“My question for discussion is, what is the responsible way to have conversations about difficult subjects, about traumatic subjects and when is it feasible to discuss a destruction of a work or a silencing of an artist,” Kerman said.
This question brought up the idea of white artists painting the struggles of Black communities. Camlin believes artists shouldn’t try to reflect on backgrounds and identities that are not one’s own.
“It’s the presumption to represent a history that is not your own and speak for and represent for,” Camlin said. “That is the issue, less than sensitivity.”
As with each getting a chance to speak, the panelists left the audience to ponder as the event broke up into small groups. But before the audience broke up, Panelist Brett Coleman gave his take on what art means to him.
“Art is not something that exists in a gallery, it’s something that exists in people’s lives for the sake of survival,” Coleman said. “And for the sake of educating one another about things that school is not educating them on.”