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

["John Haber" <jhaber@haberarts.com>]

My take is a lot going on here in the thread, too much at once really.  Do I
follow that this began when SMS said that the infamous photos from Abu
Ghraib show the ability of art to alter awareness and thus events?  Then GH
expressed puzzlement at the example because it had to assume those images
are art, and he asked if SMS is taking them as art because of their visceral
power?  Then SMS said that art is what artists say it is, and noted that
Richard Serra had made it art?  And Christina gave more context,
particularly in the controversy over Amy Wilson's drawing?  So where do I
start...

So one issue is whether the photos were art or the image itself is.  I'm
surprised, too, one would think so.  The photographer didn't have that in
mind, and people generally haven't spoken of them that way.  One can't
abstract to something called "the image" apart from which work is at
stake -- Serra's, Amy's.  I've my doubts whether we need even bother to take
Serra's poster here as art rather than as a political poster from an artist,
just as we don't take Bono's statements on politics as music, but I'm
willing to grant that the poster was given out at the 2006 Whitney Biennial
and that we should all cut Serra a heck of a lot of slack!

Another is what makes something art.  That's way too much to settle here,
for sure.  I've joked that art is whatever artists do and artists are
defined in turn as whoever makes a work of art, but I meant at least a
half-serious statement of the impossibility of resolving the definition of
art so easily.  Did Serra, say, just declare himelf an artist, thereby
getting to make what he does art, or did he go about making art?  I doubt a
definition is possible.  The closest to the idea that the artist decides is
Danto's, but his point really is that an artist makes something art by
imbuing it with meaning that an identical object would not have had, and
that's close in fact to GH's looking for the visceral power.  The point
could come up when, say, war photograph has become exhibited in places like
the International Center for Photography or famous war photographers have
had books dedicated to them and sold in museums.  That could happen with
these war images at some point in the future, too.  But we're then up
against who gets to decide on the meaning -- the artist, the audience (as in
Dickie's theory) -- and in fact who then gets to decide what constitutes the
artist or audience.  Anyhow, it's a long one, and I don't think it'll be
resolved in philosophy any time soon.

Amy was really a pawn in a political game, as you can guess, just as
Mapplethorpe became convenient to Jesse Helms on the retrospective's third
stop or Chris Ofili to Rudy Giuliani.  (When "Sensation" showed in London,
it was the Chapman brothers whose work was set aside with a warning to
children.)  The Daily News was looking for a scandal.  They sent a reporter
to the Drawing Center when they heard it might become part of the
International Freedom Center.  The reporter saw the usual dull crap and
returned without a story.  They sent him back and had him rummaging through
old catalogues until they found something.  They made sure to run it on the
front page before soliciting comment from anyone involved, so that they
could set the terms in which others would talk.  Governor Pataki went along
and did the real damage, as at the time he was thinking about a presidential
run and worried more about his image in the Republican party base than in
how delays of plans at Ground Zero were hurting his image as a leader and
thus viable candidate.

Amy was really hurt, even though friends told her there's no such thing as
bad publicity.  (I actually emailed her first thing that morning to say she
had better see the Daily News; she hadn't yet known about it.)  She felt
misrepresented, not to mention taken out of context of such a large work.
(She thought of the five sheets as a single drawing, believe it or not.)  I
think the emotional impact has a lot to do with her change in subject
matter.  Her latest work, a full room in a small group show through July,
moves the little blond girls from politics to art.  They romp around a
museum, and the thought balloons contain cryptic statements about the power
of art to help us.  It's well worth seeing.

Ok, last, self-promotion.  I've written about Danto's theory at least a
couple of times, and it'd be great to rework them for a book chapter one
day, more cohesively.  But here's a book review that's more about his
exhibition reviews (so read down halfway) and a consideration about how his
ideas apply to Duchamp's "Fountain":

http://www.haberarts.com/fsg.htm
http://www.haberarts.com/hypo.htm

Here's a capsule review of Amy's original drawing, before it became
notorious:

http://www.haberarts.com/wilson.htm#wilson

Here's a long, opinionated account of the Drawing Center controversy:

http://www.haberarts.com/drawingc.htm

Here's a panel lecture I was invited to give on art and censorship, where
Amy spoke earlier the same evening and is a key example:

http://www.haberarts.com/pierro.htm

Last, I've got a much shorter capsule of that summer group show at
Bellwether.  It'll be on my home page only for a couple of weeks longer, and
then I'll figure out if I can still use any of it in an essay:

http://www.haberarts.com/myintro.htm#071506

John