column
Downtown, A north star Che Applewhaite
illustration by adam gordon
62 Winter 2020 column
The quotes in this article are taken from Frederick PROFITEERS OF STATE VIOLENCE ance, will never want for an audience.” Douglass’ lectures on photography. Most come from his An image creates its own audience, he 3rd November 1861 lecture “Pictures and Progress” giv- WARREN KANDERS MUST GO! believes, when it reflects the world around en in Boston, Massachusetts. Other quotations are pub- us into the innermost parts of conscious- lished in primary and secondary accounts of his life and ness. self-portraiture. ENOUGH In the blur of smoke and shouts, his * * * Douglass asks me to confirm that we ar- seeing en’t at the Seneca Falls Convention; he’s and mine “The thing you should know is this: not prepared a speech. I tell him that this meet. the dead don’t stay where they are buried.” day in New York is like any other I’ve - John Berger, Here Is Where We Meet seen in cities across the world. I wonder By action and by utterance, why he doesn’t want to rest his voice after Decolonize This Place demon- * * * lecturing; they won’t be able to hear him strates. anyway. I tell him that I want to know pring, 2019. Frederick Douglass what we can learn by listening. Their demonstration creates an and I walk up Washington St on embodied image of a system protected by our way to the Whitney Mu- We enter and more signs emerge, one in- mystique, revealing the profoundest mys- seum of American Art. We’re forms us that people here aim to Decol- teries of the human heart to the eye and touring art galleries for as much onize This Place. It seems like this isn’t ear. Stime as his schedule permits. He’s recently their first demonstration; voices rise and arrived, triumphant after giving a lecture fall on cue. An audience has gathered to Holding the mirror up to nature, in Boston. sit and listen. they reflect the magnitude of suffering -le gitimized by Kanders presence within. With every other step, the tap of his cane We learn that Warren Kanders is the punctuates the rustling of tree leaves. vice-chairman of the Whitney’s trustee An organizational coalition of Other people don’t see him, but that board and that his name lines its central different groups over nine-weeks, they doesn’t matter to me. If you want to find staircase. We learn that through contracts curate their demonstration themselves. out something you’ve forgotten, he says, for tear gas, with ICE and the Israeli De- this is the time and place to ask fence Force, he and his company stay out People sit or stand, but most im- me. of the red. We learn that Layla al-Ghan- portantly, stay: to see the bloody source dour, an eight-month-old baby from Gaza of their entertainment. They exhibit the I remember that he was the most photo- who died in 2018 after tear gas inhalation, suffering and attract an audience. graphed man of the 19th century. could not. Decolonize This Place demonstrates that I forget that he was the era’s most prolific Smoke from imitation canisters engulfs the roles of ‘artist’, ‘curator’ and ‘exhibi- writer on photography. the space. It momentarily obscures our vi- tion’ can align to attract a public. sion, but we don’t leave. Douglass turns to A faint chant crescendos to meet his cane’s me, thinking aloud. He remembers some- Is the Whitney? rhythmic pulse; loud, louder, and louder thing he told the Boston audience on the still—we turn right towards the musuem’s ethics of picture-makers: The smoke clears and an official sign Gansevoort St entrance. We face green, tells us that an Andy Warhol retrospective red, yellow and blue banners that read: “He who speaks to the feelings, who en- spans three floors of the museum. We join ters the soul’s deepest meditations, hold- the public contemplating the work of a DISMANTLE PATRIARCHY ing the mirror up to nature, revealing the curatorial team led by Donna De Salvo on profoundest mysteries of the human heart the fifth-floor main space. The program WHITNEY MUSEUM NO SPACE FOR to the eye and ear by action and by utter- they wrote tells us that it’s the most com-
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prehensive survey of Warhol’s oeuvre in age’s iconic status around the world. Its portraits of himself and others to the over 30 years. Constructing a narrative, power. His intervention jogs my memo- public as much as possible. He craved they begin with his drawings from the ry: during the late 60s, the United States fame, holding a prescient fascination 1950s then follow with the 1960s paint- feared Chinese Communism’s influence with images that celebrated one’s exis- ings of mass-produced objects: soup cans, in Southeast Asia, looking away as mil- tence. What is a selfie, after all? coke bottles and newspaper prints. After- lions were slaughtered in the Indonesian wards, the silkscreen prints: using a me- Genocide. He cannot understand how a I pull out my phone to savour this mo- chanical technique that reproduces imag- picture so public and so important can be ment, to allow our seeing to meet in the es by ink transfer allowed Warhol to mass so humorous. What we see, first bright camera’s eye too. A selfie makes an archive produce images of his own. These are the and sun kissed, now subtly unsettles. It is of oneself; I think Douglass will appreci- show’s highlight. They continue on for the fame associated with an image’s mass ate our personal history. He asks me to rooms and rooms. circulation, not just the man Mao himself, explain what a selfie means—repeating We reach Mao (1972), an imposing four that Warhol made his text for creative ma- the word as if an unsavory taste had in- meters high by three meters wide. But I nipulation. vaded his tongue. But as I outstretch my can’t help but laugh at how sardonic it Douglass and I take the elevator down arm so we can face ourselves in the shiny feels. Crimson acrylic smudged over his to the third floor. Lobby-like, analogue liquid-like screen, I can only see my smile lips and cheeks. Warhol makes Mao blush. televisions stand stout in front of soft grey and a space beside me where he should be. Blue eyeshadow brightens his hooded seats, showing Warhol’s documentary film I put my phone away. eyes to the same tone as its background. work. I find myself in front of a Fashion Waves of paint crash on his chest: brown, documentary from 1979. Auburn-haired As we sit, people pass on by, the small rose, then forest, violet and yellow. white boys on screen complain that they space indicating that’s all the attention I assume Douglass’ muted reaction to should be valued for more than their ap- these works require. But as we see it, they the flowery print requires me to explain pearances. Footage concentrates on them are the culmination of his aesthetic vision. the joke. Mao was China’s dictator for getting ready: close-ups of thighs, hands Warhol’s career goes like this: from being over thirty years; this photo was the most and chiseled jawlines. A pale-haired, pal- fame’s manipulator, he became its source. reproduced of the 20th century. By put- er-skinned Warhol meets Douglass’ eye It’s disconcerting that the all-encompass- ting him in drag, Warhol makes fun of his from a 1983 episode of Andy Warhol’s TV, ing retrospective relegates works of such masculinized stature. originally broadcast on MTV. For Andy importance to a waiting room. Between Or so I think. Douglass listens and turns Warhol’s TV and the next show he created, us, we rest knowing of how the condi- and points to the smaller Mao copies that 15 Minutes of Fame, Warhol brought over tions under which narratives are shared the curators have helpfully placed on the 100 guests, many of them underground can alter how they are interpreted. Before adjacent gallery walls. He raises his cane artists, to a mainstream audience. In my the Boston lectures, Douglass didn’t want and circles around the purple-printed peripheral vision, I see Douglass stifling his skin to color his words, but white edi- faces in his reach. I hear him counting exclamation at the fact that these stills tors urged him otherwise: under his breath: “two, four, six…” He move. His excitement increases when I tell then turns to count the number of peo- him these stills moved in people’s homes “[M]y speeches were almost exclusively ple watching it along with us: “two, four, all across the country. Another thought made up of narrations of my own personal six…” and continues: rises out of him: experience as a slave…‘Tell your story, Frederick,’ would whisper my then “It is evident that the great cheapness “A man who peddles a patent medicine, revered friend, William Lloyd Garrison, and universality of pictures must exert a writes a book or does anything out of the as I stepped upon the platform. I could not powerful, though silent, influence upon common way, may, if he does not give his always obey, for I was now reading and the ideas and sentiment of present and fu- picture to the public, lay claim to singular thinking... It did not entirely satisfy me ture generations.” modesty. But it so happens that nobody to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing thinks of such an omission.” them.” Douglass concentrates on how the im- Warhol cannot lay claim to modesty; age’s reproduction contributed to the im- with these television shows, he gave William Lloyd Garrison formed part of a
64 Winter 2020 column contingent of white abolitionist editors in artistic tools for activist purposes might the middle of the 18th century. Their tales of How might art stand up on its right? What allow it to fall into fine and defined the enslaved began with prefaces claiming might it oppose? categories, weakening its oppositional they were “plain” and “unvarnished.” character. Indeed, the Whitney’s In truth, they decided the conventions As we leave the Whitney’s revolving leadership seems to have accommodated and prioritized propagandistic texts of doors, time and space compresses in our their efforts as performance art— allotting slavery’s brutality. When I tell him that the mind’s eye—pictures produced since certain hours for activity in a confined first autobiography they sponsored, The the 1840s, Israel-Palestine cleaved since space and repeating the tired defense of a Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1948, Warhol pioneering since the 1950s, “safe space for unsafe ideas”. Garrisonian- is still in print, a thunderclap of an echo Chelsea gentrifying since the Whitney’s like, a liberal PR machine seeks to control fills the gallery space as Douglass angrily 2014 move. the narrative of carceral abolition. knocks his cane. In 1855, he separated We ascend onto the High Line and its from his editors’ influence and published a wooden tracks roll into the horizon. The A copy of The North Star appears from second autobiography, My Bondage and My Hudson breeze crests on our backs and the his overcoat pocket. Freedom. He calms when telling me about air between us is no longer so stiflingly its story, his story: overcoming challenges silent; we realize our differences in time It reminds me that the difference of with the respectable intelligence that allow us to see more in place. partisan opposition lies in innovation of enslavement denied himself and others. form as well as content. It’s inspired by the legacy of his first wife Time doesn’t count, but place does? Anna Murray-Douglass, whose freedom Wher— “Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no helped secure his own. Murray-Douglass When Color—God is the Father of us all, and sewed a sailor disguise that he wore are we? we are all Brethren,” reads its 1847 on the way to marry her in New York motto. City, his travel facilitated by a freedman’s In the blur of intersecting temporalities, protection certificate that she lent him. our seeing tries to make sense of art in What might be the art world’s North Star? worlds where we reside. ‘Artist’, ‘Curator’, “Your humble speaker has been branded ‘Exhibition’—we’ve seen how these roles How might it set an intersectional agenda for as an ingrate, because he has ventured to can be aligned in Decolonize this Place the future? stand up on his own right, and to plead and Warhol’s work. How the aims of each our common cause as a colored man, can nest within each other. How a public Lost in coffee-colored newsprint, I’ve led rather than as a Garrisonian. I hold it to can form around the image artists create Douglass ten blocks up the High Line be no part of gratitude to allow our white and curate. Seeing is one sense of which without realizing and have missed most friends to do all the work, while we merely we are sure. smaller galleries in the area— hold their coats. Opposition of the sort Douglass expects Decolonize This —Is that me? now referred to, is partisan opposition, Place’s picture-making ability will attract and we need not mind it.” larger audiences. But I wonder. Using END OF PART ONE OF TWO
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