If an artist is attempting to call attention to a particular issue that in some way either oppresses a group of people or includes imagery of unethical actions, is their artwork also unethical if they intentionally include or use oppressive tactics or graphic images to do so?

Eva Lake. Judd Montage No. 13, 2007; photomontage; 5 ¾ x 8 in.

There is no permanent, fixed equation that we can apply to art—especially art that intends to become activism—and I’m not amenable to making an ultimate pronouncement on work that exists as a hypothetical. It’s better to be aware of the concerns surrounding art and activism in general and proffer judgments on a case-by-case basis. An artist who wishes to take an activist stance in regard to an issue must think very carefully through the problem at hand.

I contacted a few artists that are currently making work that intends to be activist, but for the first time in the brief history of this column, not one of them responded. Perhaps they were afraid to go on record regarding the conflicts and contradictions their work presents? In any case, Anuradha Vikram, Curator of the Worth Ryder Art Gallery at UC Berkeley, kindly shed some light on this matter. She asks would-be activist-artists to ponder some art-world assumptions: “When seeking to call attention to any troubling issue, one key maxim to consider is that of the physician: ‘First, do no harm.’ Too often, artists seem to mistake demonstrating a set of conditions for critiquing them. If the work is replicating unethical behaviors, what is the artist doing besides perpetuating those behaviors? Perhaps, if one assumes that the context for art is a neutral one (the proverbial ‘white cube’), then it could be argued that by isolating and framing such actions, the artist makes the critique implicitly. However, if the last forty years of art-world controversy have taught us anything, it is that ‘neutrality’ is often interchangeable with ‘privilege.’ Re-creating oppression within a space of privilege is simply oppressive. A critique needs to go farther than that, and a sophisticated critique does not need to replicate such dynamics in order to unpack them.”

I agree, and can’t emphasize that last sentence enough: A sophisticated critique is what any artist-activist should be working toward. I also think the issue of commodification is important here. Can art truly make a change if it doesn’t materially aid the victims whose cause it purports to advance? If it only “raises awareness” of an issue by replicating abuse, it’s possible that its main consequence is simply to turn the expression of subjugation into an exchangeable commodity (for money, status, notoriety, etc.), which primarily benefits the artist or the art establishment. And on a personal level, if your activism turns you into a celebrity but does nothing to change the brutality you supposedly decry, your innocent intentions become worse than worldly cynicism. Emancipation cannot be achieved by oppressive means.

Related reading: groundswellcollective.com and the books Art & Agenda and Wild Fire: Art as Activism.

Diane Arbus. Female Impersonator Holding Long Gloves, Hempstead, L.I., 1959. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC.

Diane Arbus: In the Beginning is a meandering, somewhat maudlin journey through the subterranean layers of “unusual” midcentury American society. An endearing lack of mastery over the medium is apparent in the quality of the photographs, and it is important to note that the work constituting the majority of the exhibition (with the exception of a few canonical medium-format prints) is on display for the first time.[1]

Every canonical artist carries critical baggage. Arbus’ ethical intentions have been critically deemed exploitative[2], and the exhibition does very little to suggest an alternative perspective, as it does not reevaluate or grow the artist’s repertoire and only adds to its mass. With that in mind, the work that stood out to me is a scattered series of drive-in movie and movie-theater screens, taken mid-film, capturing an often-blurred moment of the cinematic narrative. While static portraits of circus clowns and peculiarly marked headstones strike a dissonant chord (curiously juxtaposed with numerous photographs of “female impersonators,” suggesting that these gender-queer individuals are to be considered among the grotesque), the frozen film stills speak much more evocatively to depiction and viewership as a dynamic relation. Many of the stills contain a horrific quality, such as a man being strangled, or a woman bleeding from her eyes. Arbus explores the representation of the macabre (as opposed to her greater body of work, which appears to be largely concerned with naming it as such). This work feels like the seed of Arbus’ inquiry into the representation of the surreal.

Several short quotes by Arbus herself are peppered throughout the exhibition in the form of wall text, the most striking of which was: “My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.” This quote is meant to illustrate an adventurous and free-spirited character, which perhaps Arbus was, in her own way. Leaving the exhibition and stepping into the streets of the Tenderloin, I am struck by the realization that to go where one has never been is a great privilege—which entails leaving behind where one has been. Arbus photographed those who inhabited the places she had “never been,” taking a memento of them away with her (one which eventually became commodified), while those same individuals did not share the same privilege of mobility, whether trapped in poverty, in a body they didn’t identify with, or on the silver screen.

Diane Arbus: In the Beginning is on view at SFMOMA through April 30, 2017.

Max Blue is in his third year at the San Francisco Art Institute, working toward a BA in the History & Theory of Contemporary Art, with a minor in Photography. He is a poet and critical-theory enthusiast.

[1] “Diane Arbus: In the Beginning” (exhibition summary), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, accessed March 4, 2017, https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/diane-arbus-beginning/.

[2] Susan Sontag, “Freak Show,” New York Review of Books, November 15, 1973.

Eric Yahnker. Angel in the Outfield, 2015; colored pencil on paper. Courtesy of the Artist and Zevitas Marcus.

Through the exhibition’s title, Noah’s Yacht, Yahnker reimagines Noah’s Ark as a “smaller, ritzier, and more exclusive one, in which the ticket to ride—or ultimately survive—is privilege and wealth.” The first piece in the show, Angel in the Outfield (2015), is a nine-foot-tall drawing of Christ in midair with a catcher’s mitt, about to catch a pop fly. The history of the Christian god is intrinsically tied to the history of white male privilege, spanning from the crusades through colonialism and post-colonialism. Yahnker is, himself, a white American male, and much of this show is his coming to terms with his own privilege and what it means in this vibrant and pivotal political climate.

Caged Birds (2016) is a sculpture made of handcuffs, leg shackles, jewelry, and marijuana pipes.  Hanging from the ceiling, the piece unmistakably alludes to the American justice system and the “War on Drugs” as both inherently broken and racist. It is placed in front of a powerful diptych, Abe Lincorn and Pierced Piety (2015). Abe Lincorn references Rachel Dolezal’s performed blackness, while in Pierced Piety, Donald Trump wears Christianity (and racism) as a style. Both pieces speak to power and privilege in the appropriation of culture for political gain. Together, they serve as brilliant bookends of the Republican Party, which will either implode or explode after this coming election.

Eric Yahnker. Abe Lincorn, 2015; colored pencil on paper. Pierced Piety, 2015, colored pencil on paper. Shell Game, 2015 (detail); 314 Purell hand sanitizer bottles, spire seashells. Courtesy of the Artist and Zevitas Marcus.

Southern Burn (2015) features a 1950s-style pinup girl looking at her sunburn in her vanity mirror. The sunburn on her back is in the shape of the Confederate flag. She looks like the Coppertone girl all grown up—an uncomfortably oversexualized corporate image of the toddler wearing the same facial expression of coyness, surprise, and allure. In context with the rest of the works in the show, Southern Burn does the work of establishing the deep racist roots of this nation’s history and the Republican party in particular. On another level, it considers the racial privilege inherent in tanning culture itself—to be able to darken your skin for cosmetic reasons without the social, personal, and economic consequences of actually being a person born with naturally dark skin.

Eric Yahnker. Southern Burn, 2015; colored pencil on paper. Courtesy of the Artist and Zevitas Marcus.

Shell Game (2015) is made of hundreds of hand-sanitizer bottles with a single shell placed inside each of them. The piece is displayed as a grid on the wall, surrounding the large-scale drawings like wallpaper. A shell game is the cup-and-balls trick: a gambling game that is usually, if not always, a con performed on the streets. The hand sanitizers suggest a fear of the other—the fear that the last person who used your shopping cart had some horrible germs that could infect you or your family. The current hysterical fear of terrorists or illegal immigrants is not a far leap to make. With just a few clever words and carefully picked objects, Yahnker uses his sleight of hand to imply that someone is making a profit from all this fear—that it is all a shell game.

Eric Yahnker. Erasing Time, 2006; completely erased Time Magazine. Courtesy of the Artist and Zevitas Marcus.

In the center of the room is Erasing Time (2006), in which the artist spent two and a half months erasing all the contents of an entire issue of Time magazine. The fact that Yahnker found this ten-year-old piece important enough to show for the first time is evidence of how crucial the piece is. Erasing Time implies that American history has regressed, folded in on itself, and is constantly erased so that we end up making the same mistakes over and over again. The piece further implies that history is written only by those who are in power, and that even having a recorded history is in itself a form of privilege. As Shell Game indicates, American media and politics is sanitized to such an extent that the truth is lost—the narrative bought, sold, and manipulated by those in power to insure that they keep it.

Eric Yahnker: Noah’s Yacht is on view at Zevitas Marcus in Los Angeles through April 30, 2016.