Down with art
And speaking of censorship – the San Francisco school board has decided to go ahead and destroy a mural in a high school because some people don’t understand it.
The fresco was painted in 1936 by Russian emigre Victor Arnautoff, a Communist artist who also painted some of the murals in Coit Tower and other locations in San Francisco.
I’ve seen the Coit Tower ones, and loved them. Think Diego Rivera type of thing.
The “Life of Washington” 1,600-square-foot mural at the high school, part of the federal Works Progress Administration’s art commissions, features scenes from the first president’s life, including images of slavery and white settlers stepping over a dead Native American.
Supporters of the mural say it’s a historic piece of art and painting over it is the equivalent of a book burning. The artist meant the work to be subversive, they say, showing an ugly side to Washington’s life. Critics say the images are offensive and violent, depicting African Americans and Native Americans only as victims. Students shouldn’t have to see that every day, they argue.
Well you could always blindfold them.
translated: students should have their feelings protected from learning. Ironic for a school.
Here we are.
“depicting African Americans and Native Americans only as victims.”
We can’t have that. Let’s add murals depicting a slave rebellion and Custer’s Last Stand.
Also, I think the slaves at this time were not US citizens and arguably, therefore, not African Americans.
If, before the whitewash, They™ make a complete, detailed, high-quality, digital record of the entire mural and make it available to everyone on the internets, I’m OK with the whitewash.
hit Post too soon
after the whitewash, that space should be available for the students to do their thing
But pointedly not depicting and recognizing atrocities like that is (legitimately, I’d say) criticized as whitewashing. So which is it?
It’s probably making too many white people uncomfortable to be confronted with such a stark image of their history. Besides, it was painted by an evil, Godless Commie.
Erasing the past guarantees that students won’t ever need to think uncomfortable thoughts. Everyone can have the ‘official’ Ken Burns/Steven Spielberg pearl-clutching version…and remain practically ignorant of everything.
The mural should have depicted Indians winning the war against colonisation! I’m sure they won’t have a problem with that…?
Prediction: “by depicting a false narrative, this mural erases history and whitewashes the suffering experienced by people of colour”
TL;DR the article, but it seems to me that it’s the glorification of the successful conquest that’s seen as objectionable. So the whitewashing doesn’t remove the history, it removes the glorification. I don’t have a problem with that, even though I’m a great admirer of the WPA-commissioned murals that helped the artists who did them.
This is the ongoing problem with subversive and satirical art–when removed from context or commentary, interpretation can be so open-ended as to completely flip the creator’s intent. The best way to correct for that sort of thing would probably be a plaque with a quote from the artist explaining the piece in more detail, which many artists refuse to do because they want the piece to speak for itself.