At just a mere fourteen years of age, young Emmett Till, an African American boy, was lynched on August 28, 1955 after allegedly flirting and offending Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, at a local family grocery store. Upon confronting her husband, Roy Bryant, about Emmett’s offensive verbal advancements, Mr. Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, promptly arrived to Emmett’s residence to abduct the young boy. After taking him to a remote location near a seventy five pound cotton gin fan on the Tallahatchie River, the two men beat and disfigured Emmett’s body before shooting him in the head, throwing him into the river. It was not until three days later that Emmett’s mutilated body was found by local authorities. After seeing her son’s horrifying condition, Emmett’s mother, Mamie Bradley, insisted on holding an open-casket funeral to expose this act of barbarism and racism acted against her son in the United States, and open the eyes to the closed minded world around her.
More than half a century later, in 2016, Emmett Till’s brutal murder inspired Dana Schutz. Ms. Schutz, a white painter, was known for her figurative abstract paintings that tell enigmatic stories, carrying veiled references to what is going on the world to open eyes and turn heads to controversial instances. Usually, Ms. Schutz paintings are not based on off of specific events, so when Ms. Schutz released “Open Casket” in 2016, depicting an unrecognizable young and disfigured Emmett Till lying in his casket, the world was alarmed but such a vulgar piece that there were movements to call for the work to be removed from the public’s eye and be destroyed. At first, Ms. Schutz painting was displayed in a museum in Berlin, Germany where there was no controversy. It was not until the artwork was showcased at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan, New York that the public finally took note of Ms. Schutz’s work. Instantly, people began making complaints about such a barbaric painting and wanted it taken down, and destroyed because Schutz’s interpretation of white free speech and creative freedom was disrespectful. Thus, the disturbed public viewed Dana Schutz’s artwork as being founded on the need to transmute African American suffering into profit, disregarding its’ constraint and implications on others.
Many people were against “Open Casket”, in particular, Hannah Black, a black-identifying biracial artist from England who currently resides in Berlin. After being stunned by Ms. Schutz’s work, Hannah Black promptly wrote a letter to the museum’s curators, demanding the removal and destruction of the painting. Black’s letter wrote: “I am writing to ask you to remove Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket with the urgent recommendation that the painting be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum. As you know, this painting depicts the dead body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the open casket that his mother chose, saying, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” That even the disfigured corpse of a child was not sufficient to move the white gaze from its habitual cold calculation is evident daily and in a myriad of ways, not least the fact that this painting exists at all. In brief: The painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun…”. Black believes that she can presumably speak for all African American men and women when giving her input on how Schutz’s artwork is disrespectful and makes everyone who view it believe that Schutz is purposely being malicious, racist, and disrespectful towards African Americans. Black’s letter also argues that Schutz is using an economically selfish approach to her artwork, in hopes to make a pretty penny out of abstracting another’s suffering. Because artwork is another freedom of speech, this accusation is in a sense disrespectful towards Schutz because Black is claiming that it is not okay for Schutz to express how events make her feel through her visual strategy of abstract artwork.
The term ‘cultural appropriation’ refers to the act of taking or using things from another’s culture that is not one’s own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture. This action typically occurs when a person of a superior race projects or imitates the culture of an inferior race. Cultural appropriation of these items, without the cultural meaning depicted, allows an item to become more fashionable and marketable. Without the context of an items origin and history, we engage with the item in an exploitative manner rather than being respectful to that culture. Thus, leading to the unappreciation of the original culture. Examples of cultural appropriation most often include costumes, hair styles, art and food from other cultures and inferior races. The most common form of cultural appropriation are Halloween costumes. For example, “Men’s Arab Sheik Costume” draws false stereotypes of Middle Eastern culture and appearance, and the “Día De Los Beauty” costume is patronizing, disrespectful and offensive to ancient Mexican traditions. These costumes that rely solely on imitating another’s culture are disrespectful and depict appropriation of an inferior race.
Dana Schutz’s painting is also an example of cultural appropriation. As a white woman, the community believes that Ms. Schutz will never know what it’s like to go through issues like murder due to her race. Dana claims to have created the painting because “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. Their pain is your pain. My engagement with this image was through empathy with his mother. [. . .] Art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection. I don’t believe that people can ever really know what it is like to be someone else (I will never know the fear that black parents may have) but neither are we all completely unknowable.” Many critics of cultural appropriation insist that they are opposed not to cultural engagement, but to racism. They want to protect marginalised cultures and ensure that such cultures speak for themselves and are not simply to be seen through the eyes of more privileged groups.
I feel that since Dana Schutz’s “Open Casket” is an example of cultural appropriation, the Whitney museum should have removed the painting immediately. Although artists have artistic freedom, and Ms. Schutz’s intent was to let the world know of problems in a troubled world, the extent of freedom of an artist to produce art to his/her own insight should be disregarded because in the case of the differences of race between Schutz and the Till family, Ms. Schutz should be more respectful to the Till family’s lost son.
Understanding that the argument brought against her was based on the her social and racial status as a white person rather than the actual painting, Schutz herself tried to legitimize that she painted a work about the brutal killing of a young boy by referring back to her personal identity not as a white person but as a mother. She said “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension.” Some may argue that the art should not be censored in any way. This is because it raises awareness for racial problems within today’s world.
The 2017 Whitney Biennial brings to light many facets of the human experience, including conditions that are painful or difficult to confront such as violence, racism, and death. Many artists in the exhibition push in on these issues, seeking empathetic connections in an especially controversial time. Dana Schutz’s painting, Open Casket (2016), is an unsettling image that speaks to the long-standing violence that has been inflicted upon African Americans. For many African Americans in particular, this image has tremendous emotional resonance. By exhibiting the painting we wanted to acknowledge the importance of this extremely consequential and solemn image in American and African American history and the history of race relations in this country. As curators of this exhibition we believe in providing a museum platform for artists to explore these critical issues.