The Writer's Life 3/24 - Judgments

Brooklyn-based Dana Schutz is under fire for her painting Open Coffin, a featured work at the Whitney Museum Biennial in Manhattan. It depicts in abstract the horribly mutilated face of lynching victim Emmett Till at his 1955 funeral. Schutz, born in 1976, is white, and a growing chorus of African-American artists believe “it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun.” Some take particular offense that Schutz is the same race and gender as the woman whose unfounded “wolf whistle” accusation led to Till’s killing, arguing that her work perpetrates “the same kind of violence” he suffered. To its credit, the Whitney refuses to remove the painting, but it also won’t interfere with protesters who maintain a vigil in front of the painting, obstructing it from view. The anti-free-speech yahoos want it not just removed but destroyed. Schutz created the work in reaction to Black Lives Matter protests. She has no intention of ever selling it. Asked if the protests would change the way she paints, Schutz replied: “I’m sure it has to.” Here's a pic of the painting, which I found at the Washington Post website:

What do the following atrocities have in common? Columbine, Oklahoma City, the Brink’s cop-killing robbery, the Gabby Giffords shooting, and the 2005 London transport bombings - all the attackers owned a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, a step-by-step manual for revolution by William Powell, published in 1971 when he was 19. In an article in today's NY Post, Kyle Smith cites a new documentary, American Anarchist by Charlie Siskel, on the author. At one point Powell says he feels “remorse” but not “regret,” whatever that means. A child of privilege, now dead, he spent his life teaching the disadvantaged. If God exists, wouldn't it have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when Powell received his judgment?

No luck selling books on the street today.

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