A New Beginning

No remnants,
No borders,
No fucking apologists and their supporters.

Response to Anne Wagner's "Warhol Paints History, or Race in America"

Wagner's full text is here. I RECOMMEND IT! 

Wagner is firstly destroying the mainstream critique and assumed meaning of Warhol's work by highlighting specific instances in which his work deviates from that assumed meaning. The deviant category is history painting, and she further points out, is its subject of race. The first critics of Warhol's work were focusing specifically on 'art as concept', whereas after a few years, there is a shift to the notion of 'art as critique,' in which he could point out the hypocrisy and absurdity of modern 'culture' and its social systems. The viewer is almost tricked when they first take sight to a Warhol because of the familiarity of objects, or the initial realism that photographs can provide. But that familiarity fades quickly as the viewer begins to reach inside of the familiar to point outside of itself. This is the point, Wagner states, that it becomes a history painting. Warhol was precise when deciding which images to choose, and that 'why' factor is what makes them so powerful. They have a resonant narrative, one that can encompass the most micro, the individual narrative, and the most macro, the societal narrative, at the same time. The best example of this, she provides, is 'Race Riots,' which was originally a Life magazine photograph by Charles Moore. Here we see an antagonism that is societally applicable to modernity, but also allows for a certain drama within its content, one that can hold a cohesive, realist circumstance in which the viewer can attach themselves (In this binary, as black or white, as oppressed or oppressor). At this point in the text Wagner shifts into a critique of her own. She questions what the history of race in America is, and then blatantly states it as the "physical confrontation of men." This act is repeated through the society of the spectacle of images that are circulating through the media (referencing Debord here).  Warhol's downfall is his focus on a single issue, one that has been fetishized, still to this day. There are no photographs of women, or children, or labor, of any race. Why are they left out of the narrative? Do they not exist? No… They must. Were there women's struggles and labor struggles happening? Absolutely. When women were pictured in magazines like Life, they are picketing, holding premade signs, and the assumption is that never could they ever have been involved in violence like riots, or used militant tactics. This happened through the curation of which photographs were chosen. It is the same with Warhol's curation of particular narrative photographs for the work of Race Riots. I believe Wagner is ending here with an intersectional feminist critique (it has some remarks of class struggle as well) of Warhol's work to ask us to question our own curations and our own narratives, how we construct them, and who they represent once they become objects or images to be viewed. Are we just echoing the dominant ideologies and narrow narratives that have been constructed for us? Or do we push against them, expose them, appropriate them and ironize them? Can we use them as tools of revolt? 

The Barbershop That Changed My Life

A friend and community organizer, John Rasberry, invited me to come down to his barbershop on Myrtle Avenue in January of 2011 to join in on a community meeting. This meeting included residents from the micro-local neighborhood, as well as adults and minors who have lived in the villages of Bushwick, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York.  The discussion during the meeting was centered on the heightened police presence in the immediate area surrounding their homes, and what this presence would mean for them, their families, and their safety.

Mr. Rasberry started out by having us go around in the shop, stating our names, where we were from, and why we were here. When it was my turn, I explained, “My name is [redacted], I’m originally from Providence, and I moved to Brooklyn to study photography at Pratt over on Willoughby. I am committed to social justice, and that’s what brings me here.” I looked up to see faces of surprise; I was looking for acceptance. It was more than just an acceptance to pacify, to make me feel less intimidated and uncomfortable. I was looking for an acceptance, a trust, that would allow me to be a constructive member in such a gathering.

This night would have a more profound effect on me than I had originally anticipated. It was a humbling experience to be in this space, to sit in solidarity. No matter how many times I put myself in situations where I see a dire and immediate need for social action, the same feelings reoccur. This one was particularly intense.

For the most part, I listened. After all, this meeting was about them, their homes, and their human rights being violated. It was about these white police with no sensitivity nor connection to the area’s deep seeded and systemic social and economic issues. I was captivated by their forwardness and honesty when recounting their experiences.

The only woman other than myself in the room had a compelling story to tell. She was beautiful, and you could see it immediately, even through the thickness of her skin. She spoke of how she had some degrading experiences at the 79^th precinct while she was in an abusive relationship. The precinct’s refusal to help her forced her into staying in a dangerous situation with her children. It was not the police, but other members of the community in Tompkins housing, that pulled her out of her situation and helped bring her life out of darkness.

As I heard more and more stories I became increasingly more depressed about the state of their lives. I had barely walked a mile down the road to find a group of seriously oppressed individuals. All I could do was internalize this information. It weighed heavier on my mind as we sat and talked. My life as a young white woman is no comparison. I do not have these daily struggles. I tried to imagine these experiences happening to me, the constant harassment, the violation of my personal space, the helplessness that comes with asking for help and receiving none, but they just plain don’t. At one point the room silenced for me to speak and all I could do was look down at my hands. I said “I truly wish I could relate to you all better, but all I can say right now is that these hands of mine are white, and it disturbs me that a certain pigment of skin has eliminated all of these worries throughout my life. Because it’s so ludicrous an idea. ”

After the meeting adjourned, John came up to me and told me that he had a lot of respect for my openness and honesty towards my skin color. It was refreshing to have a conversation about race in what they are calling a ‘post-racial’ world. I’m sick of hearing that there is no need to talk about it. We need to talk about it.  It is not an underlying problem, or a single issue, but rather an intersectional reality in peoples everyday lives. This experience taught me it was possible to feel acceptance as the other. It was to eliminate the feeling of otherness, to see the commonalities, and to let the differences fade away, if even for a brief moment.

Donnell Alexander’s essay “Cool Like Me” explains something that has been fluid throughout the history of African American culture. They have been able to create and maintain despite their oppressions as a people. “Cool is all about trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents…they devised a coping strategy called cool, an elusive mellowing strategy designed to master time and space. Cool, the basic reason blacks remain in the American cultural mix, is an industry of style that everyone in the world can use. It’s finding the essential soul while be essentially lost.” (Alexander)

Alexander’s essay is essentially a comment on the revolutionary nature of black people. When economic and racial systems pushed them one way, they pushed back in a genius manner. Now their ideas have dominated mainstream culture whether it is through hip-hop music or “Air Jordans, Tupac, and low-riding pants.” All of these styles and movements are reactions to how society has declared their human lives somehow inferior. (Alexander)  

Cornel West is a leading scholar in racial justice. His book Race Matters speaks of intense black nihilism in which “the accumulated effect of the black wounds and scars suffered in a white dominated society is a deep-seated anger, a boiling sense of rage, and a passionate pessimism regarding America’s will to justice.” This could have easily and understandably caused the majority of those sitting in the barbershop to react to my presence with a number of different, but nonetheless negative, emotions. After all, we were discussing brutality and ignorance among the mostly white people of the 79^th precinct police. (West)

But otherness disappeared this night at the barbershop. It was powerful to witness it. The beauty in this situation is that I was supposed to be the perceived ‘other’ because I was with people who were in very different situations in comparison to my own. In the context of patriarchal, capitalist, white supremacist society, though, these black and brown people are constantly perceived as the ‘other’. The roles were reversed, but there was this intangible cohesion between us. We never left race out of the discussion. We didn’t tip toe around it. We didn’t pretend like the differences did not exist. We were, however, honest about our differences, and with this came an overwhelming amount of respect. I walked out of the barbershop feeling renewed. It’s that intangible feeling that I must hold onto, hold onto it with everything, I thought. Call it trite, but I still think it’s worth saying. I have hope, and hope is powerful to possess.

Works Cited

Alexander, Donnell. Cool Like Me.

West, Cornel. Race Matters. Boston: Beacon, 1993.