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via Flickr/Paul Sableman, cropped
The Contemporary Art Museum-St. Louis.
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Bill Hudson, The Associated Press for the New York Times, via Wikipedia
Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs, May 4, 1963.
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Photograph by Chris Naffziger
The JeffVanderLou neighborhood.
There are many, many aspects of Kelley Walker’s work at the Contemporary Art Museum-St. Louis that bother me. And already, incredibly intelligent and thoughtful people around St. Louis have eloquently enunciated most of those concerns. In fact, I’m proud of St. Louisans taking a stand against the contemporary art world establishment. The pain Walker’s art has caused is real, and valid. Maybe a revolution in creating more introspective and responsible art has just started right here in the Gateway City. So instead of rehashing what others have already said so well, I will focus instead on one aspect that I feel still needs to be said.
First off, I suspect Walker is probably incredibly confused right now about the outrage in St. Louis. The controversial work in question, Black Star Press, fetched $616,785 when one version was sold at Christie’s in 2010. For comparison, you can buy a small, perfectly fine Italian Renaissance painting for about that much, if not slightly less. So his work has garnered a certain level of “respectability” if you think a work of art’s auction price conveys such a thing. Likewise, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, long considered the leader in contemporary art curation and collecting throughout the world, owns another version of the work in its permanent collection. St. Louis Magazine searched for any articles addressing previous controversy erupting around the work and were unable to find any before St. Louis. As far as I can tell, Black Star Press has existed for the last 10 years in a bubble of positive critical feedback, high auction prices, and residence in a preeminent museum collection.
That halcyon decade is certainly over, and deservedly so. Perhaps what is most concerning to me is that Walker has gotten away with earning a respected reputation in the New York art world, and only now is he being called out for his lazy art. Yes, it is lazy on multiple levels, foremost intellectually and conceptually, and it is lazy in its physical inception.
First off, it is lazy in how it dispenses with the humanity of the young man being savagely attacked by a police dog. Walker claims to be interested in concepts of racism, but at racism’s very heart is the dehumanization of the individual into a stereotype. Giving the artist and museum the benefit of the doubt, I searched for any reference to the young man’s identity; at no point in the explanatory text or other CAM resources does his name appear.
That young man’s name is Walter Gadsden, and he was answering the call of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963 to protest and challenge the segregationist laws of Birmingham, Alabama. The original photograph, taken by the late Bill Hudson, captures all of the ugliness of the South in the 1960s. Unarmed African-Americans are confronted by Bull Connor’s white policemen, armed with guns but also with German Shepherds, growling and gnashing their teeth at the peaceful protesters. The dog tears at Gadsden’s sweater in the central composition, while in the background, Hudson captures the name of the restaurant—Jockey Boy—its very name an ugly racist trope. (That sign is cropped out of the image in Walker's work.) The obvious, brutally skewed power dynamic of the photograph galvanized the Civil Rights Movement when the image was published in major newspapers around the United States. Hudson created a masterpiece of journalistic photography, a real work of art. But to Walker, even if he has good intentions, the “teachable moment” that he and CAM could have given to visitors is lost, covered behind splashes of chocolate.
In the same way, Aquafresh plus Crest with Whitening Expressions (Trina), while including the name of the renowned rapper who appears behind the splatters of spermatozoic toothpaste, the original person is robbed of her identity. Trina is actually a very interesting woman, the winner of dozens of industry awards, and the creator of numerous successful albums. But the viewer would not know that the woman behind the image is any of that, because again both Walker and CAM fail to include any biographical information about her in the wall text. Despite her hard work and talent, she remains an anonymous object.
Secondly, I am bothered by the laziness of the process of Walker’s art. From the comfort of a computer desk, he appropriates images that for the original producer and subject required real sacrifice and danger to create. For Gadsden, he caught the world’s attention after being attacked by a police dog, engaged in a demonstration that he very well knew could result in his death—the fate of many civil rights demonstrators. And the photographer, Hudson, according to his AP obituary, routinely faced threats of violence from whites as he sought to document the ugliness of segregation. Hudson’s art is more meaningful because he was dodging bricks while simultaneously composing and capturing his iconic images in the days before digital photography. Likewise, the chauvinism and sexism Trina overcame to become a successful artist disappears into swirls of toothpaste.
(In an added twist, photojournalist Robert Cohen of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Tweeted on September 24 that CAM reached out to the newspaper for its collection of Ferguson-related photography. The paper declined the request.)
Surprisingly, considering the amount of press they’re getting, the aforementioned works only encompass a small portion of the monographic show. The rest of the works are attempts to create art inspired by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. None of the works on display reach the level of those masters, and instead come off as attempts at besting far more talented artists: Marsyas vainly challenging multiple Apollos. A giant chocolate disco ball hangs from the ceiling; the controversial works almost seem like poorly conceived afterthoughts. One begins to suspect that courting controversy was an attempt at compensating for an otherwise thin show.
The St. Louis American, St. Louis Public Radio, and the Post-Dispatch are reporting that the works will stay up, all employees are remaining, and that walls will be built around the offending works (the irony of building physical barriers in St. Louis is hopefully not lost on CAM). If the museum refuses to reconsider its decision to keep these pieces on view, it should take the opportunity to more thoughtfully review these works—including further revising the wall texts, which do explain the controversy around the images, but do not go further than that. The people who suffered and made sacrifices for the original photographs must be acknowledged by name, and their stories told. Then, the works by Walker might come into context. And since the original Bill Hudson photograph of Walter Gadsden is easily available for reproduction, it should be included in the reinterpretation of the art on display. Gadsden’s sacrifice cannot, and should not be, hidden.
In a broader sense, where does St. Louis go from here? I’ve been thinking about my own work, and wondering about its relevance. How do I help silenced and marginalized people here in St. Louis? Does my work do anything to help those suffering in this city? One thing is certain, we need a lot less of the art world sophistry so prevalent in the dialogue here in this city and throughout America. Earlier last week, I imagined a mother walking down Spring Avenue from her home in the nearby JeffVanderLou neighborhood, and on a lark, deciding to come into the museum with her children. What is she supposed to think? What are her children going to get out of this exhibition?
There are tens of thousands of impoverished families living within a mile of Grand Center. At some point, can the powers that be in St. Louis, both in politics and in the arts, acknowledge that?
SEE ALSO: Boycott of Controversial CAM Show Reveals St. Louis’ Fraught History with Race, Art
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
