The painter Francis Bacon said "the job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." This and other such didactic work accomplish the very opposite.
We don't need art that attempts to explain to or lecture its mostly educated, affluent audience that, e.g., racism or misogyny or degrading the environment is bad; we need poetry; we desire to be moved.
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Apart from the ethical questions, how is this art?
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It should be cut and dried, as it is in journalism: if your name and story are published, those are facts on on record and they can be used for other stories. For this installation, had the person who put it together (I don’t consider this to be art) been of a kinder nature, she would have checked with the subjects before using their stories. But I think that is a voluntary, extra step. It would have been the nice, polite thing to do. But in my view, neither Andrea Bowers nor the curators crossed an ethical line. Bowers was insensitive, but only that.
I’m not sure this piece even has much relevance now. Unfortunately, the #metoo movement morphed into “Me, Too!” in the media. There were a few well-known women who took advantage of the all-eyes-on attention and did all they could to redirect it to themselves. When the #metoo momentum was running at full speed, everyone competed everywhere with their stories of harassment or abuse (I have my own tales, and I was as exhilarated as anyone that women were talking about this). Perhaps the women who complained about Bowers’s piece were similarly caught up, and did not think of the possible consequences of going on the public record. But should that ignorance protect them, legally or ethically ? I don’t think so.
7
"Profiting off off Victims" Do they teach this in art school now?
Not the first time we've heard this story, there should also be a class called, "Learning from other peoples mistakes." News stories become content or outright material for art, which I can be fine, as no one OWNS content, BUT if you use the content of another person, alive or dead, you better have a really SOLID reason for involving this person in your art. Permission is always a good idea too.
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"As socially conscious art has become increasingly popular..."
This sort of highlights the problem, doesn't it? Is there ONE person attending Art Basel who's blithely unaware that sexual misconduct and harrassment are bad, or that, societally, we should be "sensitive toward women"?
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@day owl
You would be surprised...
Now survivors who survived the first time must endure the second surviving.
1
The writer quickly glosses over the case of the Emmett Till images used as inspiration for an artwork. That fracas was less about “fair use” than it was about overt racism. Protesters claimed that a white artist had no right to use those public images of a black man, nor the story behind the image. That is it’s own discussion.
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@Passion for Peaches Yet a black man could play Thomas Jefferson in a popular success Broadway staged around the world?
3
The far Left's push to censor free speech will be the end of Art.
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@D. This is not censorship, the Artist just thought better to remove a part of the work and did so at their own free will.
If someone posted your address here or your bank account number or embarrassing pictures of you, I am sure you would feel the same and be glad to have it removed. This is totally different than "censorship".
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“The last thing that we wanted to do was to do more harm to one of the survivors.”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. But I’d wager that the last thing the gallery wanted was to attract the amount of scrutiny that would force them to pull the piece from auction.
2
And this is art because ... the texts and photos hang on pretty red panels in an 'arty' industrialish space?
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Show-and-tell projects are NOT ART. The sooner the art world recognizes this, we will all be better off. It degrades art in the worst way. You cannot put anything in a gallery and call it art. Art has a definition. It requires skill, technique and talent, as well as vision, interest, and thought. Sensitivity, taste, color, texture, rhythm, form, expression, all these values are necessary in art. Not so in putting up posters.
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Au contraire. Indeed, one can put anything in a gallery and call it art.
When Duchamp's "Fountain" can be called the most influential artwork of the 20th century, what doesn't qualify as art? For those who are unfamiliar with that piece, it is a porcelain urinal he signed "R. Mutt."
3
@Sneeral,
Duchamp was a genius and his idea was genius: an artist doesn't need to CREATE art, an ARTIST can just SEE it, beauty and harmony can be hidden in plain view in any mundane thing, an urinal, a wheel, a shovel. The only must is an ARTIST.
But Warhol's next brainless step led art to its demise: we don't need even an artist, EVERYBODY can call ANYTHING a piece of art.
1
@areader
Sorry. A shovel, a bottle rack, a bicycle wheel.... taking prefabricated everyday items and putting them on display strikes me as falling well short of "genius." Unless, of course, everyone is of the opinion that that it must be.
By that standard, I suppose that the Emperor's tailor was a genius when he designed his new clothes. Everyone said how magnificent his suit was.
3
People seem to think they can post things in the public forum, and then complain when what they put out in public gets used for other purposes. The public forum is just that, public. If someone does not wish to have their personal stuff in public, then don't put it there.
The abuse which the women in question suffered is real and deplorable. But if they chose to post images of it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other public places, they might as well have taped them to a lightpole in Times Square.
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@rlschles
I disagree, someones story wass put in a publiccontext of their choosing, in this case , originaly it was a magazine article, a very different context than an art exhibit. Context is everything, a lamp pole and a well researched sensitive and thought out article are two very different contexts.
Yes, moral lines should be drawn. The perpetuation of unproven allegations of sexual misconduct here packaged as "art" is nothing more than topical exploitation.
Bowers' pretension of sensitivity to women is a zero sum game that vilifies people who are, at least in some cases, innocent. This solves nothing and helps no one.
That prestigious galleries would condone this is shameful.
13
@Nadia, the ethics of republishing unproven allegations is the only interesting and truly relevant question raised in this piece. However, it was not the accused who complained. It was two women who wanted to control their own stories and images. I sniff a hint of, “Look at me, look at me...Don’t look at me!” in this.
4
.....hmmm.....’art’ lost its way....?
5