Last week, I noticed that my blog was receiving an unusual amount of traffic from various cities and towns in Vermont. I was able to quickly discern that most of this new traffic was to my account of parting company with Bread and Puppet Theater over what I regarded as a distortion of the historical record of the Warsaw Ghetto, and misrepresentation of Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Peter Schumann's Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories and in the show which he was having us rehearse, The Battle of the Terrorists and the Horrorists.
I was aware that Independence Paintings was being exhibited, having read it on someone else's blog, but I was more than surprised to read Jack Thurston's article, "Art Display Draws Criticism" on the WCAX website. Rabbi Joshua Chasan of the Ohavi Zedek congregation in Burlington was taking a public stance regarding the exhibition of the painting. To quote Jack Thurston's article:
The rabbi hasn't seen the art. Neither has Channel 3. In fact, only a handful of people in Vermont have because it won't be installed on Pine Street until the end of the week. But based on reviews of when it showed in Boston, [...Chasan stated that] "Peter is a very gifted artist. I have delighted in his art over the decades. I have marched behind his puppets. I think when you make the comparison between the Holocaust and what the Israelis are doing, you've gone across the edge."
Chasan has much more to say in the article, and it is well worth reading.
I did contact Rabbi Chasan by email to thank him for making a stand. He noted that he had read my blog and had found it very helpful, though suggested I might have gone too far by psychoanalyzing Schumann. Perhaps this is a valid criticism, and I will be rereading that particular entry with that in mind. At the time, however, it seemed important for me to discern why certain facts were presented accurately, others were wildly distorted, and why yet other facts were omitted.
Schumann is quoted as making a number of statements in the article but none to which I have not analyzed and responded to previously, although I am compelled to point out one line because of its disturbing implications:
[T]he self-described pacifist sees both nations as guilty of violence, he calls Israel an occupier, even instigator.
I should point out that in neither "Independence Paintings" nor in Battle of the Terrorists and the Horrorists does he ever portray Palestinian violence (except for throwing stones at the West Bank wall) and when terrorism is even mentioned, it is to make light of the deaths it causes. If he sees both nations as guilty, should not his art represent that view?
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Independence Paintings in Burlington, Vermont
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2 comments:
Well, here's the obvious answer: because that's supposed to be what a polemic piece does. Such pieces are meant to express a one-sided viewpoint that an artist feels strongly about and may even thinks is underreported or hidden away by other forces (government, media, etc). Polemic pieces don't try to be journalism (though maybe in some cases that might be better, more useful).
I just quickly read through your posts about Schumann, including this one. Without drawing a line in the sand, I just wanted to write that it's not entirely fair to (as you seem to) challenge someone that his or her art must represent all views (at all times?).
I'm someone who makes it a point to try and observe several sides of a debate (especially with close friends and family on both sides), and a statement like that bothers me.
A statement like that veers too close to the old crap I deal with whenever I criticize Regan or Bush in the vicinity of my family. It's almost a knee jerk reaction that someone brings up the "what about Clinton and how horrible he was" argument. By the time I move around their mandatory roadblock (ultimately by agreeing that, yes, I think he was an asshole too), they have successfully derailed any point I was making.
Sometimes, the point is to make a statement, and address the facts later (as Susie tried to, unfortunately receiving taunts, which is sad no matter what side of it you're on).
Not that this is the best parallel (might not even be good), but what if an anti-war protest group was told to be fair and march the streets with familiar pictures of the tortured Abu Ghraib prisoners AND pictures of the 3 executed American contractors left to hang on a bridge? Though they are equally disturbing image, having both around doesn't really work in those circumstances.
Ah polemics.
Maybe it was better when I abstained from posting on blogs.
Yes, the work was polemical-- but that was not the primary issue. Everyone is entitled to being polemical and everyone is entitled to criticize a polemicist. That's how freedom of expression works.
The primary issue was that Schumann's polemics amounted to what Deborah Lipstadt calls "softcore Holocaust denial" which, instead of denying that the Holocaust ever occurred:
1.) Involves rhetorically using imagery of the Holocaust further an often anti-Semitic agenda (Schumann's claims that the relationship between Israel and the West Bank is equivelent to that of the Germans and the Warsaw Ghetto-- that is, there is a genocide in process that somehow no Western journalist notices.)
2.) Involves a minimizing of the Holocaust (the death of one-fifth of Poland's Jewish population by engineered starvation, overcrowding, and disease is only as bad as the high unemployment rate in the West Bank.)
3.) Misassignment of blame (Schumann's statement that the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto bear responsibility for their fate because they did not reach out to the Poles-- which was false on two counts as I pointed out: a.) The ZOB and ZZW did in fact coordinate with three of the main Polish resistence groups both before and during the uprising, and b.) the primary responsibility still goes to the Germans and their allies-- Schumann oddly never mentions the Germans.)
The point is not that he's taking a side, the point is that he's a.) making false claims, and b.) that these claims amount to Holocaust denial and an incitement to Antisemitism (he's cagey to not make an explicitly anti-Semitic statement, but he was content not to comment when those who were asking reasonable questions were shouted down with anti-Semitic slurs.)
The final bit is that, leaving aside the issues of Antisemitism and Holocaust denial, part of the reason that most "politcal art" sucks is that it is too polemical, that it often lacks subtlty, nuance, insight, or factual basis. If art is as important as we say it is, shouldn't we hold political artists to at least the same standard of quality we hold contributors to the Op-Ed page of a major newspaper? As artists, Chad, shouldn't we be holding our community to high standards? I might be a denizen of post-modernity, but truth is still important to me.
If he claims that he's capable of making a more nuanced and more insightful statement, that might better aid the cause of peace he claims to support isn't it wrong that he doesn't?
(On an tangential note, "chad parenteau" is the single most commonly used search term used to find this blog this month.)
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