"Can we all just get along? Can we get along?"
—Rodney King
I've always thought that "political correctness" (PC) was for the most part a shibboleth, a cudgel fashioned by the political right for its own ends. The first four paragraphs of the Wikipedia article about it have it about right; the pull-quote might be, "in public discourse and the media, [PC] is generally used as a pejorative, implying that these policies are excessive or unwarranted," a sentence girded by no fewer than seven footnotes. An article I read in Harper's when I was visiting my liberal mother and Harvard-professor stepfather in 2016 makes the point that examples of political correctness on the left are catalogued and prized by conservatives and conservative media because it's an issue that plays so reliably to their base.
However, one problem with that contention, a thorn in its side you might say, is that there's no question political correctness exists. Excessive and unwarranted political correctness, I mean, not just people trying to be fair and considerate to others.
If you want a fascinating example, peruse Danielle Jackson's article "What the Whitney Biennial Tells Us About the Future of Photography—and the Artists Who Will Shape It" on Artnet. It struck me as a review written from the perspective of political correctness about a show that appears to be mainly about political correctness.
Both the artists and the curators of this year's Biennial come from a carefully calibrated mix of "historically marginalized group[s]," and much of the art is accepted by the reviewer to comment on "identity politics," "codes in multiple layers," "the Museum's project of historicization," and so forth. The actual photographs in the show seem to be secondary to the positions they take on various political implications. Disappointment is registered that the work is not more overtly angry, among other things, and that the artists aren't "announcing identity so loudly." The reason, the review proposes, is that they're the new majority and are no longer outsiders. (Can anyone really be an outsider and be included in the Whitney Biennial? That's what I'd like to know.) "Though the photographs are made by artists who are queer, gender nonconforming, Asian, Latinx, or black, almost none of them discuss these cultures directly in their work," writes Jackson, with disapproval. "Looking back, I’ve also wondered if, in some ways, this is actually a post-identity show that has managed to be framed around identity politics simply based on who was included." Whew. That makes me need to go lie down.
I didn't even recognize some of the language in the review as traditional artspeak, which, oddly, is annoying and refreshing at the same time. The work is definitely "framed in relation to recent trends and jargon." Although I've seen it before I had to look up "Latinx," for example. It's a gender-neutral coinage for a person of Latin American origin that obviates the need for the gendered "Latino" and "Latina." (Has someone alerted the Filipinx?)
Does the art world, I wonder, really want to stake itself out as the home venue, ground zero, for the ever more fastidious expression of political correctness issues and themes? Because those are bound to be neverending, never mind also being a very limited and not very natural subject for art. Art is about personal expression, among other things, and it seems counterproductive on its face to dictate in advance what art must express. At any rate, what this review seems to tell us is that if you aren't up on your Yale-inculcated political identity and sexual identity semiotics then there are some art shows that you're not going to "get." In the case of the Whitney Biennial, that's apparently the subject, on every level.
Of course, I'm an older white male, so whatever I think about identity politics is irrelevant by definition anyway**.
Protest like it's 1989
The review made me think about another series of articles I read this past year, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Mapplethorpe debacle at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington in June of 1989—which arguably ended up torpedoing that grand old institution (my alma mater) and sinking it with all the agonizing slowness of an aircraft carrier going down.
If you're not familiar with the Mapplethorpe flap, basically the Corcoran had scheduled a show by the homoerotic classicist photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who at the time had just died of AIDS. Because the show was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), various figures from the neoconservative movement, led by the reactionary archconservative Southern congressman Jesse Helms, seized on the exhibit as proof that the government was funding immorality and that, by extension, the NEA should therefore be abolished (along with, by further extension, every other nonessential government program).
The Flagg Building, appropriately beflagged. It was not known
by that name in 1989. Photo by Daderot [CC0].
The Corcoran bowed to the pressure and cancelled the show. The stated reason was that the institution wanted to remain above politics; instead, the Corcoran's cave-in resulted in a much bigger and even more intense storm of criticism from the other direction. A public protest organized by freelance curator Andrea Pollan and gallerist William Wooby featured Mapplethorpe's self-portrait projected on the side of the beaux arts Corcoran Gallery building (now known as the Flagg building***).
At the time, I was a recent graduate of the Corcoran School of Art (as it was called when I was there), and I once worked for Bill Wooby—I was his exhibition printer for the jazz photographs by Charles Peterson that Bill exhibited in his restaurant gallery and arranged to have shown at the Monterey Jazz Festival. I remember these events and many of the names involved. Pretty much everyone from every side was mad at the Corcoran for a while. "The gallery stood at the center of a firestorm of protest and controversy," writes Ruth Steinhardt in GWToday. "Fellow artists canceled D.C. shows in solidarity, gallery members withdrew their support and hundreds of protestors gathered in front of the Flagg Building, across from Ronald Reagan’s White House, to register their disapproval." The Director of the Corcoran who had cancelled the Mapplethorpe show, Christina Orr-Cahall, eventually resigned.
The whole imbroglio is as good a marker as any for the beginning of the end for the old Corcoran Gallery and School of Art, which, while it was still independent, was the largest independent art museum in Washington. But the Corcoran had became uncool. It slipped and slid downhill from then on and was dissolved, riddled with debt, in 2014. Its treasures now belong to the National Gallery of Art and the rest of its collections are flung to the wind, and the School, although it continues to exist under its own name, has been absorbed into George Washington University. As an alumninx, I've become a wanderer.
The Corcoran as it exists now is having a show about that show that never was. Called "6.13.89: The Cancelling of the Mapplethorpe Exhibition," it's an archival exhibit that documents the unfortunate events of the Summer of '89. It will be on view until October 6th in the atrium of the Flagg Building. The outgoing Director of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design (as it is now called), Sanjit Sethi, is quoted in the GWToday article saying "The Corcoran suffered a significant fracture to its philosophical foundation." "As a museum dedicated to 'American genius,'" continues the article, "the Corcoran had in some ways betrayed itself by adopting a definition of genius that excluded marginalized communities."
This isn't going to stop us
You would think that one party, at least, would have been pleased by the cancellation of the show: Jesse Helms, the Senate crusader against government-funded obscenity. Not so. Kriston Capps, in the Washington Post, writes, "One of the very first outraged phone calls that [Director Christina] Orr-Cahall received was from Helms’s office. The senator was displeased that he would not have the opportunity to stump on a show that he considered to be liberal obscenity.
"'This isn't going to stop us. Your cancellation isn’t going to stop us,' Orr-Cahall says now, recalling what a Helms aide told her. 'Looking back, the Helms call, it was clearly the start of the culture wars.'"
There's political correctness in a nutshell from both sides, if you ask me. You'd think we could all just get along.
Mike
"6.13.89" is on view until Oct. 6th. Exhibition hours are Tuesday to Friday, 10 to 6, and weekends from 1 to 6, at the Flagg Building, 500 17th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
*This is TOP's longest-ever post title.
**Maybe I should start a movement for "individualist-identifiers"—those who are aggrieved that they're not being considered as individuals who might have non-identity-group-conforming thoughts, opinions, or values. We stage protests against people who insist on lumping us in with all the other idiots and boneheads who happen to look like us. I'm joking, that would never work.
***After its architect, Ernest Flagg, not Colonel Flagg from M.A.S.H. Frank Lloyd Wright considered it the most beautiful building in Washington...which was in part a poke against the neoclassical Greco-Roman public architecture for which Washington DC is far better known, but never mind.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Gordon Lewis: "Re: '"Though the photographs are made by artists who are queer, gender nonconforming, Asian, Latinx, or black, almost none of them discuss these cultures directly in their work," writes Jackson, with disapproval.' This is nothing new about this line of thought. I explored much the same idea in a Shutterfinger blog post years ago, under the title 'Am I Still a Black Photographer?' The question is/was, does being black and a photographer make me a 'black photographer,' or does it mean that my photographs center on visual expressions of the black experience? Personally, as long as white photographers can enjoy the luxury of not having to be labeled as such, I would prefer to enjoy the same luxury of not having arbitrary labels and expectations attached to me or my work."
Mike replies: Well said. You sound like another individualist-identifier. :-)
Robert Roaldi: "The Rebel Sell by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter has a lot to say about 'nonconformity' and 'outsiders.' The culture we live in absorbs all of this and packages it back to us as products to buy. It's easy to look at suburban streets and come to the superficial conclusion that all those people are leading 'Leave it to Beaver' lives, but it isn't actually true, is it? Many of them are wife swappers, they take various drugs, they watch a lot of porn, etc. We draw these imaginary lines between progressive and not, but even the most right-wing person in our culture probably thinks it's OK to marry for love, or that we should be able to work at whatever job we like, or that women should vote. Those ideas were rebellious not that long ago. PC culture can get silly, but lots of ideas at the fringe are silly. They get modified a lot before they migrate throughout society. It makes for interesting argumentation but it's not worth freaking out over, in my opinion."
Sanjeev Arora: "I went to the Whitney Biennial with visiting relatives from India, who are a.) not young b.) not well-versed in modern art (i.e., wouldn't be able to tell even a Picasso from a Mondrian) c.) definitely unaware of US identity politics. They enjoyed the show, so I guess the art has some innate appeal. So please do not fret too much."
John Krumm: "Well, I just listened to a podcast interview of the English professor who wrote the book Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism and it was pretty good.
"He talks about how critics have always viewed language as in part a political struggle for power. So corporations obscure bosses and what they do in new language, for instance. For the young, there is a struggle for power too. Asserting new gender neutral pronouns and other words can seem very off-putting to some people, but if you are involved with politically active young people, or have a kid around the right age, you get used to it. That's how it works. After a while, if they succeed, it's the new normal.
"Here's some information on the term Filipinx."
Mike replies: Damn, and I thought I thought of that.
Amin Abdollahzadeh: "Re: 'Does the art world, I wonder, really want to stake itself out as the home venue, ground zero, for the ever more fastidious expression of political correctness issues and themes?' Good Lord Michael! The adage about the ship having sailed does’t begin to cover it. It sailed, circumnavigated the world, its crew was ravaged by scurvy and succumbed to cannibalism, and finally limped back to port, a very long time ago."
Richard Parkin: "I thought the gender neutral term for Latinos/Latinas in English was 'Latins' ;-). "
Robert Roaldi: "In the intro to one of recent podcasts, Joe Rogan said (I am paraphrasing) 'Ladies and gentlemen and other people, including people who don't identify as people....' I thought that was pretty funny. Is it still OK to poke fun at things?"
