Say Something Dammit!
Dan Wasserman, Cartoon: Hillary Yoga, May 2016, pen and ink on bristol board with Photoshop color; 7 x 9″.
As the tawdry carnival that is the 2016 presidential campaign moves toward conventions this month and voting in November, it creates mottled imprints on the arts landscape. Some are sharp-edged and candidate-focused; others are more nuanced and broader in scope.
Visual and performing artists I talked to around the region fell into two camps on political activism in this election year: those who feed off the daily news cycle—cartoonists and standup comics; and those stepping back to take a longer view—artists, filmmakers, photographers, songwriters. In the latter camp, inquiries to over a dozen art museums, colleges and curatorial agencies around the region yielded only a few who were actually addressing the election in their work. More were focusing on broader issues in the national debate—violence, inequality, racism.
Among the exceptions were photographer Eric Gottesman, who teaches at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA; and New York-based conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas. Asking themselves “What would it look like for an artist to run for office and have the campaign be the medium for the artwork?” they formed a super PAC, “For Freedoms,” as a vehicle.
“Our idea was that if we inserted the language of art instead of advertising, we might change the political discourse,” Gottesman told me.
They’ve enlisted dozens of artists to create work for billboards, social media and print advertising; raised $40,000 toward a goal of $500,000 for advertising outlets; and have an exhibition this month at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.
The goal is less to promote specific candidates than to elevate the content of debate. “The artist’s job is to be perceptive,” said Gottesman, “to go deep into the recesses of society and our minds and come out with something that’s truer than political discourse, which is all about positioning and imaging and superficial relationships to deep issues.”
Capitol Steps cabaret performs You Can’t Hide That Biden Guy, starring impersonators of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Photo courtesy of Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center.
Others were less sanguine about art’s moral force in today’s market-driven, celebrity-obsessed, politically polarized culture. “The political system is so corrupt and so big that it’s hard to fight against it without money,” complained Denise Markonish, curator at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA. “Look at the Occupy [Wall Street] movement and how it fizzled out.”
“Generationally,” she said, “younger artists are further away from the radical politics of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and don’t have a real, first-hand sense” of how much easier grassroots action was back then.
Yet even those who do are discouraged. “I’ve grown weary of attacking the big targets,” said Shelburne Falls, MA, folksinger Charlie King, who in the ’60s idolized songwriter Pete Seeger for authoring counter-culture anthems like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer.” “How many times and ways can you say/sing the same thing?” King asked. “I’m on the lookout for fresh perspectives and stories, and I don’t find these among the presidential candidates.”
Part of the reason is the shift in mainstream values since the mid-20th century, which has undermined longstanding political, religious and cultural institutions. When winners are worshipped, diversity sows discord, and the Internet empowers voices of hate and intolerance, achieving solutions for the common good can seem an impossible goal.
Today’s artists may hold strong personal political views, but their work reflects less on answers than about the way power operates. Simply stirring debate is considered an achievement.
Even so, Rachel Chanoff, an independent film and performing-arts curator, who consults for Mass MoCA and Williams College, challenges the idea that political activism is stagnating. “We are at the edge of an apocalypse,” she warned, where no artist can stand neutral.
Chanoff praised visual artist Carrie Mae Weems’s Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, an immersive song, text and video production on the role of grace in the pursuit of democracy, staged at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, in June.
In the same vein, Markonish pointed to performance artist Nick Cave’s Until, an installation addressing social justice, gun violence and police shootings of young black men, opening at Mass MoCA in October.
Known for his psychedelic, race-and-gender-disguising Soundsuits—shown at the ICA in Boston in 2014, but not in the MASS MoCA show—Cave said he feels compelled to be a voice for underserved communities, to give people platforms that show what’s possible in their lives. “It’s my job,” he said. “I’m a messenger first, an artist second and I do civic work.”
Painter Laylah Ali, who is teaching a course at Williams College next spring on activism and art (view this ANE’s profile on Ali), said the campaign holds no inspiration for her since her work already references extremism and intolerance. But, she said “I have students who are engaged and hungry for these kinds of socially and politically charged questions to be addressed in their classes.”
Those who feed off the daily news cycle for their art, like Dan Wasserman, political cartoonist for the Boston Globe; and Elaina Newport, songwriter for Washington-based Capitol Steps cabaret—appearing at numerous venues across New England this summer, including: Cranwell Resort in Lenox, MA; Jane Dickens Auditorium in Newport, RI; the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, CT; and others—said the campaign offers them superabundant material to work with.
Describing Donald Trump as “the nation’s nightmare and the cartoonist’s manna,” Wasserman said, “There are moments when the exaggeration on which satire depends cannot match the reality of what’s actually happening.”
Songwriter Newport said much the same, adding that jokes about serious issues may seem thoughtless, but politicians are fair game, and well-aimed humor has the potential to lighten tense situations.
New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly, who sees herself as more of a cultural than political commentator, said most cartoonists are “pessimistic optimists.” “You can’t keep drawing if you think it’s hopeless,” she told me.
Donnelly is encouraged by the sense she can galvanize those who agree with her—particularly women—on feminist issues like supporting a female candidate for president. Although she still works in pen and ink, she has stepped over the digital divide by covering events on her iPad for online platforms like Medium.com and tweeting images to followers.
Visual and performing artists like these have long taken progressive positions on sociopolitical issues. The challenges they face in these divisive times are not just what to say and how to say it, but who will listen.
Charles Bonenti, a former editor and art critic at The Berkshire Eagle, lives in Williamstown and is a regular contributor to Art New England.