Art and Human Rights

Hosier Lane, Melbourne City, 1998-

So Melbourne prides itself as the capital of street art in Australia. The iconic Hosier Lane sits between Flinders St and Flinders Lane opposite Federation Square, and attracts 5000 tourists a day.

Outrage erupted when ten masked people sprayed much of the lane with multicoloured paint from fire extinguishers on the evening of Saturday 8 Feb, covering up the artworks underneath. Melbourne’s Lord Mayor and Victoria’s Tourism Minister labelled the action “vandalism”. The police are seeking to apprehend the perpetrators for “criminal damage”.

An anonymous spokesman for the “paint bombers” explained that the action expressed graffiti in its purest form and made a stand against the commercialisation and mainstreaming of street art. Melbourne City Council was hypocritical, in his view, in promoting Hosier Lane as a site for tourism and commercial activity (with most artists getting nothing), and yet expressing outrage at their stunt. “You can’t promote creativity and inclusivity and then promote censorship in the same sentence”.

It is not clear that the paint-bombers committed any crime. All art in Hosier Lane is overpainted routinely. The paintbombing itself has already been covered over, as seen from my photos above from 14 Feb, referencing the debate. Having said that, the legal situation in Hosier Lane is ambiguous, with its mix of public and private property rights.

Situated in the middle of the laneway since late 2017 is Culture Kings, one of the many Australian offshoots of a US “streetwear” giant. While it trades on a supposed synergy with street artists, US hip-hop basketball chic isn’t so relevant to most of the art in Hosier Lane. Culture Kings has commissioned murals in Hosier Lane, and in an apparent misunderstanding in 2018, one of its staff called the cops to stop someone from painting over one of them. The company apologised after excoriating criticism.

Melbourne should be proud of its street art heritage. In an overreaction to the 8 Feb paintbombing, Melbourne City Council has suggested that it is “considering new street art guidelines” for clarity. Perhaps, but that clarity could kill off the essence of street art, which is by its nature unruly, ephemeral, and unguided.

“Ellen DeGeneres Explains George W Bush Friendship (Now with Iraq War Footage Political Commentary)”, Rafael Shimunov, 2019 

On 8 October 2019, US talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres delivered a monologue, responding to criticism of her sharing jokes and a good time over the previous weekend with President George W Bush and his wife Laura at an NFL match. People were apparently shocked that “a gay Hollywood liberal” would get on with a “conservative Republican President”. She responded that she was in fact friends with President Bush, and got on with many people with whom she disagreed, including people who wear fur and put Christmas trees up too early. That sentiment had apparently prompted one fan to tweet that seeing Ellen and Bush together had given him “faith in America again”. Ultimately, her message was to “be kind”.

So far so rosy. But Ellen failed to mention any of Bush’s worst failings. There was, for example, no mention of his launching of an illegal and devastating war in Iraq, the official toleration of torture, and long-term internment in Guantanamo Bay.

Digital artist Rafael Shimunov responded with a devastating edit of DeGeneres’ monologue, cutting in images of the Iraq war, including the perfectly synced image reproduced above. DeGeneres responded by claiming copyright infringement and forcing Twitter to take Shimunov’s video down. But it remains on Youtube, and the copyright claim is hardly clear-cut with the US’s fair use defence. Predictably, the legal action backfired, as the video went viral as the Streisand effect took hold. 

Shimunov explained his motivations:

Ellen's rubbing elbows with Bush was enough to inflame many critics. However, for me, it was her follow-up statement on her talk show announcing her friendship with Bush and using her platform to lecture millions of Americans about being nice and maintaining relationships with not only people you don't always agree with but also people who harmed millions without apparent regret, repair or accountability.

In that speech, with a single stroke, Ellen portrayed people who advocate for human rights, including those who do so because their personal safety is threatened, as an unreasonable mob unable to appreciate nuance and diplomacy. Ellen also dismissed Bush's long-buried victims and still-suffering survivors, casting them aside as one might differences with a friend about a fur jacket—to borrow her example.

How could a lesbian woman so brazenly absolve someone who harmed so many women and LGBTQ people? How could a Louisiana native wash over the devastation Bush caused after Katrina?

(another Shimunov mash-up shows Ellen in front of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a reminder of Bush’s negligent response to that disaster.)

It is too easy to forget Bush’s crimes in these days of information overload, especially given that he seems quite statesman-like compared to the current occupant of the White House. His paintings get more media attention now than his record. But the truth is that Bush is a war criminal who is unlikely to ever atone for his crimes. Shimunov, and inadvertently Ellen, has punctured that collective amnesia. As Shimunov stated:

Most moving of all were the private messages from young people who admitted to me that Bush's crimes had indeed been erased from their lives and thanked me, and all of those who supported the video, for unerasing them.

“The Private Bench”,  Fabian Brunsing (2008)

This striking piece of installation art is over ten years old, but received renewed attention when Ken Rutkowski, a syndicated radio show host in the US, tweeted about it to his one million followers. Rutkowski either missed the point, or led his followers to do so, in seeming to treat the bench as real, leading to some misguided vitriol directed at the artist.

The piece is a commentary on the increasing number of measures across urban centres which combat homeless people. Yes, you read that right, measures that combat the people rather than the homelessness. Examples of such “hostile architecture” include, yes, spikes and sloped seats which prevent people, particularly the homeless, from resting there. These measures effectively treat homeless people like vermin.

Brunsing takes the idea a step further, as seen in the video, to marry hostile design and unabashed capitalism. Alas, communist China may not have quite got Brunsing’s point, where his video apparently inspired real coin operated spiky benches in Yantai Park in Shandong Province (tho, given the source link seems to be broken, I am not 100% convinced that story is true).

“Butcher Shop” (1931); “Damenclub” (1931-32); Polish Peasant Woman during the War” (1939-42); Photogenic Monarchs (1967), all by Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976), Exhibition at Berlinische Gallery, 2017

Jeanne Mammen had a long artistic career in Germany, using numerous mediums such as painting, drawing, lithography, sculpture and collage. After her German family was forced to relocate from France due to WWI, she made her early career in the Weimar Republic in magazines with observations on Berlin types, such as the butcher in the quadruptych above. Her favourite subject in the first half of her career was strong women. 

In the early 1930s she created some sensitive and realistic lithographs of lesbian love for a gallery based on a 19th century poem, The Songs of Bilitus.

Unsurprisingly, the Nazis disapproved of her work and especially her portrayals of independent women. The Bilitus lithographs were banned, and most of the publications for which she had worked were shut down.

Mammen continued to develop her style, and adopted cubism during the war, as seen in the picture of the “Polish peasant” above. This was a brave act of internal resistance, given such forms of modern art were banned by the Nazis as “degenerate art”. Only her closest friends could view her considerable body of work in this period.

After the war, Mammen linked with a (West) German surrealist cabaret group and provided set designs, before a period of sefl-imposed exile. Her final years were marked by increasing and impressive abstractionism, including collage with easter egg wrappings. “Photogenic Monarchs” (above) is her response to the 1967 visit to Berlin of the Shah of Iran and his wife, which sparked protests leading to the police shooting of  a protesting student, Benno Ohnesorg. His death in turn radicalised the West German student movement, and also the violent Baader Meinhof gang. Mammen used Mexican motifs to portray the Shah and his wife as the dead undead, with their rule perhaps ossified and doomed (as it indeed was albeit over a decade later), and the name was a sarcastic take on the tabloids’ insistence that these brutal royals were nevertheless photogenic.

I had never heard of Mammen til attending the Berlinische retrospective yesterday. A long, accomplished, humane career conducted on her terms in the still male-dominated world of art.

Grenfell Tower: A Poem, Ben Okri (1959-)

On 14 June 2017, Londoners were horrified at the fire which engulfed a 24 storey public housing block, Grenfell Tower. The current death toll sits at around 80, but the final toll may not be known until 2018, so charred are some of the bodies. The burnt out husk of the building still looms eerily over west London. It has also been reported that twenty survivors and witnesses have attempted suicide since the fire.

The building was woefully unprepared for the inferno, lacking fire escapes, sprinklers and working fire alarms. It was encased in a cladding which added to the building’s aesthetic, and its flammability. The disaster was eerily predicted in a blog post from January 2016 from the Grenfell Action Group, which pointed out the building’s firetrap nature. One blogger from that group had in fact been threatened with legal action by the relevant Council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, on the grounds that some posts constituted defamation and harassment.

Nigerian poet Ben Okri has penned a poem about the Grenfell fire, encapsulating much of the anger, especially over the class divide and greed which contributed to the tragedy. His poem has inspired London street art, such as a new mural in Shoreditch from street artist Ben Eine.

If you want to see how the poor die, come to Grenfell Tower ...

The poor who thought that voting for the rich would save them ...

Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation from its secret shame

And here it is every name of someone burnt to death, on the stairs, in their room

Who had no idea what they died for or how they were betrayed ...

Here, I intervene with this 2012 statement from former Prime Minister David Cameron, who vowed to “kill off the health and safety culture” to help get the British economy moving. Okri’s words seem like an apt response:

They did not die when they died

Their deaths happened long before 

It happened in the minds of people who never saw them

It happened in the profit margins

It happened in the laws

They died because money could be saved and made

On the infamous cladding, now known to be attached to multiple high-rises all over the world, Okri remarks:

They named it an eyesore …

10 million was spent to encase the tower in cladding

Had it ever been tested before

Except on this eyesore?

Had it ever been tested for a fire, been tried in a blaze?

But it made the tower look pretty

Yes it made the tower look pretty

But in 24 storeys not a single sprinkler

In 24 storeys not a single alarm that worked

In 24 storeys not a single fire escape

…

That’s the story of our times, make it pretty on the outside

But a death trap on the inside

…

There’s cladding everywhere

Political cladding

Economic cladding

Intellectual cladding

Things that look good but have no centre, have no heart, only moral padding

Out of the tragedy has also emerged human bravery and perseverance:

But if you go to Grenfell Tower

If you can pull yourselves from your tennis games and perfect dinners

…

You will see banks of flowers and white paper walls sodden with words

And candles burning for the blessing of the dead

You will see the true meaning of community

Food shared and stories told and volunteers everywhere

The end of the poem is a plea for a different way of thinking about our society:

In this age of austerity, the poor die for others’ prosperity

…

A sort of fate hangs over the deafness of power

See the tower

White Flag (2014), Mischa Leinkauf (1977 -) and Matthias Wermke (1978 -), Brooklyn Bridge, New York

In the height of summer in New York in 2014, two Berlin-based performance artists secretly climbed the Brooklyn Bridge in the dead of night and replaced its US flags with bleached ones. 

The incident caused enormous concern at the time, as New York authorities were embarrassed by the security breach. White flags of course stand for “surrender”, so many wondered if the flags were some sort of message from terrorists. People were genuinely scared about what the flags might portend. Others were outraged at a perceived desecration of the US flag.

The reaction was quite stunning for the actual perpetrators, who chose the date of their stunt to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the German engineer who had designed the bridge, John Roebling, in 1869. The artists said that their work was a celebration of public space, and a message of peace. They did not intend to send a message of disrespect to the US. They have documented some of the reactions, including some extraordinary levels of hysteria, in a short documentary, Symbolic Threats. 

After a month, the artists finally revealed their authorship of the work, and its purpose. They are now worried that they will be barred from ever visiting the US again.

“Back in the USA”, Chuck Berry (1926-2017)

Rock legend Chuck Berry died this week. This song, released in 1959, expressed Berry’s joy at returning to the US after a trip to Australia, where he was horrified by the living conditions of Australia’s Indigenous people, which he witnessed after an Australian tour in 1959. The song is a homage to the US rather than an explicit indictment of Australia, so the motivation behind the song was not obvious until Berry revealed it in 1992. 

The widespread segregation, oppression and voter suppression of African Americans in the 1950s is well-known. Yet Berry chose to laud that US experience, after having witnessed much much worse in Australia.

“Strange Fruit” (1939), Billie Holiday (1915-1959), from the poem (1936) written by Abel Meeropol (1903-1986)

This haunting song protests the lynching of African Americans in the south of the US. Lynching involves vigilante mob “justice”, where a crowd takes the law into its own hands and hangs a person over some alleged wrongdoing. Most of the victims in the US were African Americans. Official statistics record that 4743 died of lynching in the US between 1882 and 1968, with 3446 being black men or women. The real numbers are far higher. Perpetrators were rarely punished for this extrajudicial murder.

“Strange Fruit” was originally a poem written by teacher Abel Meeropol, horrified by lynching and in particular by a photo of the mob at the Indiana lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930 - a disturbing depiction of merciless brutal death and self-satisfied threatening vengeance.

It is uncertain if Meeropol set the poem to music himself, or if he did so with jazz icon Billie Holiday - either way hers is the signature version of the song. Though do also listen to this version from Nina Simone (1933-2003) in 1969 (warning: video contains images of lynching).

“And they still say fish are expensive!” (1894), Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923), Museo del Prado, Madrid

Ms Dhu, Spinifex Gum (featuring Felix Riebl and Marliya) (2017)

This song protests the death of Yamatji woman Ms Dhu, who died in a police cell in Western Australia on 4 August 2014. She was arrested two days earlier and placed in custody for unpaid fines. She complained of feeling unwell, and was taken to the Hedland Health campus three times.

On the first two visits, she was discharged after being found to have “behavioural” issues. Her temperature was not taken, nor was her chest x-rayed. The police assumed she was feigning illness, or was having withdrawal symptoms typical of an addict. She was barely conscious when finally taken for her third visit, where she died after going into cardiac arrest. The cause of death was septicaemia and pneumonia, stemming from an unhealed broken rib.

In December 2016, a coroner found that the police behaviour had been “inhumane” and that Ms Dhu’s life could have been saved by a correct diagnosis and the prescription of antibiotics. The police behaviour was said to be influenced by preconceptions about Indigenous people. The police neglect for Ms Dhu is shockingly revealed by CCTV footage of her incarceration.

The coroner recommended cultural training for police, and that people no longer be incarcerated for the non payment of fines. There are no current plans for any particular police officer to face legal sanctions for Ms Dhu’s death.

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett responded to the footage by saying that the relevant police behaviour “should never have happened” and should not be excused, before he went on to say that the police were in “a difficult situation”. It is not clear to me what particular difficulty he was talking about.   

“The Last of the Race”, 1946, Tompkins Harrison Matteson (1813-1884), New York Historical Society, New York

This painting was perhaps done as a counterpoint to the colonial and racist arrogance of “Manifest Destiny”, the inexorable expansion of white, Christian America to the West Coast, invading and eventually defeating Native Americans (and Mexicans) along the way. The term, “manifest destiny”, was coined in 1845, only a year before this painting, denoting the presumed God-given right (and duty) of Americans to seize the continent.

Matteson’s title betrays a common settler chauvinism, the presumption that the native race would simply disappear. It has also been suggested that this type of picture, that of a “doomed Indian”, helped to assuage collective guilt by somehow suggesting their demise as inevitable.

“Last Tango in Paris”, 1972, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (b. 1940)

This movie is an erotic drama about a widowed middle-aged American man (Marlon Brando) having an anonymous and doomed affair with a young woman (Maria Schneider) in Paris. The film shocked with its explicit sex scenes, and was lauded by many critics as a bold statement of cinematic art. Legendary film critic Pauline Kael gushed extravagantly over the movie, stating: 

“This must be the most powerfully erotic movie ever made, and it may turn out to be the most liberating movie ever made.”

But it didn’t turn out to be a very liberating experience for Schneider. She never spoke to the film’s director, Bertolucci, again. She also claimed in 2007 that she felt “a little raped” by Brando and Bertolucci in a particularly notorious scene of anal rape.

Few paid attention to this claim in Schneider’s lifetime (she died in 2011). Yet Bertolucci admitted in a 2013 interview, which for some reason only attracted significant attention at the end of 2016, that he and Brando had conspired to use butter as a lubricant in that scene without telling Schneider. Bertolucci wanted her to react as a humiliated and violated girl rather than as an actor. 

While Bertolucci has since tried to defend himself by saying Scheider was aware of the violence in the scene but not the butter, the fact remains that the scene was enacted without her full consent to it. 

And so, in watching that scene, audiences are actually watching Brando perpetrate a sexual assault on Schneider in full view of and with the full knowledge of Bertolucci. One is watching an abuse of human rights. All for “art”.

It is difficult to see how this film can continue to be commercially available, that is for anyone to make money out of a film built in part on a sickening act of sexual assault. And its artistic credibility must also be repudiated. As noted by academics Cesar Albarran Torres and Dan Golding:

“Blue Poles”, 1952, Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

“The Central Intelligence Agency,Art CIA, Original Headquarters Building Langley”, 2007, Taryn Simon (b. 1975)

Abstract expressionism was pioneered by superstars such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. The movement took the post-war art world by storm, and moved the centre of the art universe from Europe (specifically, Paris) to the US (or New York). It is the subject of a major retrospective at the Royal Academy in London (until 2/1/17).

But why, or how, did this movement become so influential and popular? If it is because of the vicissitudes of artistic taste, perhaps that is a little odd, considering the conservatism of 1950s America.

An alternative theory is that abstract expressionism was covertly boosted by the CIA as part of the cultural prong of the Cold War. This 1995 article from The Independent by Frances Stonor Saunders, widely republished, posits that the anarchic abstract expressionist movement was a perfect vehicle for promoting the Western value of intellectual, creative and cultural “freedom” against the rigid Socialist Realism prevailing in the Soviet Union. Hence, CIA operatives secretly funded and promoted the movement, with for example the cooperation of Nelson Rockefeller, president of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, himself a man with extensive intelligence connections.

The artists apparently did not know, and one would assume would be horrified by the idea. Indeed, CIA patronage of non-conformist “misfits” might seem unlikely. However, Saunders counters that the CIA in its early days (it was only founded in 1947) was “a haven of liberalism” staffed by Harvard and Yale graduates, especially compared to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and McCarthyist politics:

“If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trostkyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.”

So, is this story true? The BBC reviewed the issue in October 2016, and seems to conclude that it is highly plausible.

Does it matter? Is this a stain on the reputation of great artists, and even those who appreciate that art? Throughout history, powerful and rich patrons like the Medici and the Guggenheims have fundamentally influenced the trajectory of art history, including who is recognised as “worthy” and who is not. Who cares if the CIA has done the same thing? 

Well, the idea that we have been unknowingly manipulated into “appreciating” an artistic style for propaganda purposes is pretty icky. Having said that, good art and propaganda, or at least ideology, can go hand in hand (see, amongst many examples, Battleship Potemkin). And a Pollock is still a Pollock.

Let’s Dance, 1983, David Bowie (1947-2016)

Rock giant David Bowie died this week - this blog is offered as a small tribute. (and thanks to Melissa for putting me onto this story)

While Let’s Dance is not one of my favourite Bowie songs (there are many ones I love more like this one and this one), the music video was ground-breaking in its social commentary about Australia’s treatment of Indigenous peoples.

The video was partially shot in the outback town of Carinda. The video, released internationally, depicts a love story between two Aboriginal people, at a time when Australian Indigenous people were largely invisible on screens anywhere. And Bowie is pretty blunt in the imagery condemning Australia’s record, addressing dispossession, domestic servitude and British nuclear testing at Maralinga in South Australia, which contaminated the homeland for the Maralinga Tjarutja people.

Bowie visited Australia several times. In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he stated:

As much as I love this country … it’s probably one of the most racially intolerant in the world, well in line with South Africa. I mean, in the north, there’s unbelievable intolerance. The Aborigines can’t even buy their drinks in the same bars –– they have to go round the back and get them through what’s called a ‘dog hatch.’ And then they’re forbidden from drinking them on the same side of the street as the bar; they have to go to the other side of the road.

He consciously set out to highlight injustices in the Let’s Dance video, as well as the video for China Girl, at a time when music videos were a very new art form. As he said to Rolling Stone about the videos:

Very simple, very direct … They’re almost like Russian social realism, very naive. And the message that they have is very simple –– it’s wrong to be racist! … But I see no reason to fuck about with that message, you see? I thought, 'Let’s try to use the video format as a platform for some kind of social observation, and not just waste it on trotting out and trying to enhance the public image of the singer involved. I mean, these are little movies, and some movies can have a point, so why not try to make some point. This stuff goes out all over the world; it’s played on all kinds of programs. I mean – you get free point time!

“The Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach of Málaga” (1888), Antonio Gisbert (1834-1901), Museo del Prado, Madrid

Gisbert’s historical painting, in the Romantic style, depicts a real event from 1831. Historical painting was very popular in Spain in the 19th century. 

Spain was ruled for three years by a liberal government, the Liberal Triennium, from 1820  to 1823. In 1823, Spanish royalists overthrew that government with the help of France, restoring the absolutist rule of King Ferdinand VII. Liberals, such as General José María de Torrijos y Uriarte who had been the Minister of War, fled the country. In 1831, he was lured from England back to Spain by General Vicente Gonalez Moreno, the Governor of Malaga, who assured Torrijos that his arrival in the country would spark an uprising in favour of restoration of the liberal government.

However, Moreno had set a trap: his troops captured Torrijos and his (approximately) 60 followers while they were en route from Gibraltar to Malaga. After a week in prison, all 60 were executed by firing squad without trial on Malaga beach in December 1931. The men are depicted here (largely) facing their deaths with stoic bravery, in spite of their dead companions in the foreground showcasing their imminent fate.   

This painting was commissioned by a later liberal government of Prime Minister Práxedes Mariano Mateo Sagasta y Escolar. Gisbert had tracked down family members of the dead men, to understand more about their appearances and personalities. 

Drone Carpets, Afghan weavers, Pakistan

Carpet using traditional style, but depicting tanks, Afghan weavers, Pakistan

Decorative carpet-weaving is a magnificent and ancient tradition across Asia, often utilising styles and patterns which have passed down for centuries. However, the carpets can also depict contemporary events, so war has been a common theme for Afghan weavers since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Hence, it is unsurprising that a new motif has appeared - US drones, a terrible feature of life in certain parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

The US drone programme is shrouded in secrecy, and is of very dubious international legality. At the least, there must be greater transparency and accountability: what is the legal basis for drone warfare, who is targeted, who makes the decision as to who is targeted, on what evidence are they targeted, on what legal basis are they targeted, who is actually killed, how many have been killed? 

Thousands have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia, though it is difficult to know how many of those deaths are somehow legitimate targets, and how many are civilian “collateral damage”. A recent leak to the Intercept indicated that at least some US drone campaigns have killed many more unintended targets than intended ones. Drones have also featured in another post in this blog.

The drone rugs, along with other war rugs, are now a feature of marketplaces in Pakistan, normally made by Afghan refugees. They are also available via warrug.com, an experienced rug dealership. Of course, the increasing popularity of the design means that the rugs will not be made to express some political opposition to drones, but to appeal to Western consumers.