Re: [-empyre-] Abu Ghraib and the image

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

Hi GH, SMS, and empyre,

Speaking of the notorious Abu Ghraib hooded prisoner photograph,


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/10/ 
wirq10.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/03/10/ixportal.html

 a recent debacle surrounding a tiny watercolor image by  the NYC/ 
New Jersy based artist Amy Wilson gives a telling
look into the reactionary mentality GH is talking about.   Amy works  
in a faux-naive style reminiscent of outsider art (think Henry  
Darger), with very 'femme' color palette and lots of cartoon bubbles
with little texts in them.   interpreting the Abu Ghraib image as one  
tiny  figure in a series of  panoramic, narrative watercolor  
drawings, Amy created
"A Glimpse of What Life in a Free Country Could Be Like," which was   
shown  at the Drawing Center in New York in September 2004.  The   
hooded figure was a small part
of the overall work: here is a detail

http://www.amy-wilson.com/glimpse06.htm

The entire work is reproduced here:


http://www.amy-wilson.com/glimpse.htm


The New York Daily News turned her use of this image into a scandal:   
this is an article from Time Out New York:

relating to the fact that the Drawing Center was going to be part of  
a new proposed World Trade Center arts complex, then on the drawing  
boards.



> http://www.bellwethergallery.com/images/artwork/tony_groundzero.jpg


The Drawing Center was villified as anti patriotic. Not long  
afterwards,  the Center withdrew from involvement with the World  
Trade Center plans.


It's worth having a look at Amy's statement about how she works.  In  
these times  the application  of critical thinking within art making  
is in itself an act of resistance.

> My paintings and drawings employ texts from both left- and right- 
> leaning political sources along with selections from my journal  
> entries, which are fused together to create an ongoing narrative.  
> This text is then interspersed with a backdrop of images cribbed  
> from political and daily newspaper cartoons of the 1800s and early  
> 1900s, as well as allusions to the work of Henry Darger.
>
> Although only the most engaged viewers are likely to read these  
> long texts closely, they are meant to reveal the limitations and  
> possibilities of such hard-line, reductive thought, to show the  
> complex similarities that exist in supposedly diametrically opposed  
> lines of reasoning. Skimming the texts-the approach favored by most  
> viewers-gives one a sense similar to that experienced while  
> watching the TV news: Words float by, a few notable names or  
> phrases stick in one's head, and the opinions that viewers start  
> with are confirmed by what they believe they've seen. It's not an  
> unusual occurrence for my work to be interpreted as pro-something  
> or anti-something-the same work interpreted in two different ways  
> by viewers who haven't actually read the text-when a close reading  
> of the pieces makes clear that I set forth no such easy conclusions  
> (at least not with such simplicity). Rather, I strive to give equal  
> time and voice to as many political views as possible while also  
> interjecting my own, using my work to lay out each argument as it  
> comes in, ushering each one to its own logical conclusion.

http://www.amy-wilson.com/statement1.php


-cm

On Jul 21, 2006, at 7:25 AM, G.H.Hovagimyan wrote:

> On Jul 21, 2006, at 7:28 AM, Susana Mendes Silva wrote:
>
> > I find this sentence quite intriguing. Why this images are art  
> > works for you? Because you find in them some aesthetical value?  
> > Because they mimic the "transgressive art that is part of a fairly  
> > standard Avant-garde position essentially épatez du bourgeois"?  
> > They seem to me like war trophies...
>
> gh replies:
>
> Hi SMS,
>
> There's a TV show and web site called, "how art made the world that  
> talks about the power of the image and how it has been used  
> throughout history by sovereigns to assert their power. Going back  
> to Agamben, it is the sovereign that creates both the polis and  
> through the ban or excommunication the bare life. Art is always  
> wrapped up with those in power. It is used to represent power. The  
> Abu Ghraib images are aesthetic, composed presentations of power  
> images.  The debate in art is who decides what is art? The answer  
> is that the artist defines what is art.  Trying to work through the  
> 21st century media-scape and produce art is an interesting  
> endeavor. Artists are slippery characters. They may need the  
> support and patronage of the powerful elite but they are not on  
> anybodies side but the side of art and creativity.
> Richard Serra took the most iconic image of Abu Ghraib, the hooded  
> man in chains standing on a box with his hands out stretched like a  
> Christ figure and made a paint stick drawing and billboard. He  
> immediately recognized the aesthetics of the situation.
> The larger debate for all of us is how artists can live and expand  
> creativity while critiquing the power structures that support the  
> activity of art. One can be excommunicated from the art world. For  
> those who present the images of power such as Damien Hirsch, the  
> rewards are unlimited. They re-inforce and represent the power elite.
>
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