Terra Foundation Lectures in American Art 2019 - A Contest of Images: American Art as Culture War (1) Warhol in Safariland
History of Art: Terra Foundation Lecture Series in American ArtShow Notes
Dr John Blakinger talks about demonstrations against the Whitney Museum of American Art related to its connections with the tear gas manufacturer Safariland. In November 2018, an image of migrants fleeing tear gas at the US-Mexico border ricocheted across the internet, inspiring protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies but also against a more unlikely target: the Whitney Museum of American Art. The artist-activist collective Decolonize This Place stormed the museum in demonstration against the Whitney’s connections to Safariland, a manufacturer of tear gas. Andy Warhol’s silkscreen canvases, then on view for a major retrospective, took on new meanings during these events. The artist’s “Death in America” paintings depicting turmoil in the 1960s came to life in the gallery.
More from History of Art: Terra Foundation Lecture Series in American Art
The 2022 Terra Lectures in American Art centre on Latinx art, with an emphasis on Chicanx (Mexican American) artists, and the theme of migration – of people, ideas, and artworks, from the seventeenth century to today. Art and activism converge as these lectures move across disciplinary, chronological, and geographical borders. We consider new approaches to “American” art, its borders, and contact zones. By posing strategic questions, these four talks demonstrate avenues of inquiry to decolonise art history.
The 2022 Terra Lectures in American Art centre on Latinx art, with an emphasis on Chicanx (Mexican American) artists, and the theme of migration - of people, ideas, and artworks, from the seventeenth century to today. Art and activism converge as these lectures move across disciplinary, chronological, and geographical borders. We consider new approaches to "American" art, its borders, and contact zones. By posing strategic questions, these four talks demonstrate avenues of inquiry to decolonise art history.
Dr John Blakinger speaks about iconoclasm in American history and the vandalism of Confederate monuments. Iconoclasm is an enduring American value. In 1776, a mob destroyed a statue of King George III in Bowling Green, New York, establishing the new American Republic as a nation built on image destruction. More recent acts of visual violence have targeted Confederate monuments, transforming them both physically and digitally. Images of vandalism that circulate online are powerful enough to re-cast bronze and shatter stone.
Dr John Blakinger discusses 'Scaffold', Sam Durant's contentious sculpture. Sam Durant's controversial sculpture Scaffold, a wooden structure recalling specific gallows from American history, ignited a firestorm at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2017. The work resembled the scaffold used in nearby Mankato, Minnesota, where 38 Dakota men were executed just days after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation - it was the largest mass execution ever held on American soil. This historical reference prompted a backlash from Native communities, who called for the work's removal. Can art help us dismantle the past and loosen its shackles? Or are we always forced to remember?
Dr John Blakinger speaks about the controversy surrounding Dana Shutz's painting of the body of Emmett Till exhibited at the 2017 Whitney Biennnial. Who has the right to see in an age of image overload? At the 2017 Whitney Biennial, a painting by the artist Dana Schutz depicting the body of Emmett Till, a fifteen-year-old African-American boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955, incited outrage. The artists Hannah Black and Parker Bright condemned the work as "black death spectacle." The episode resuscitated debates over the use and abuse of traumatic pictures, and the way visual images propelling the Civil Rights movement also exploited their subjects.