Hi everyone,
A new art exhibit opened in Los Angeles that had culture critics from the East and West coasts raving, which gives you an indication that the work was probably terrible. And it was. The point of the exhibit was for artists to take toppled Confederate statues and remake them and in so doing combat "white supremacy."
Arguably, "white supremacy" was already battled when the movement began in 2017 to remove the statues that stood in southern cities like Charlottesville, Richmond, Washington, DC, and others. But for these galleries and artists, erasing history wasn't enough, it had to be dismantled.
When the statues were removed, sometimes by protest, sometimes by legislation, back in Trump's first term, the allegation was that these statues of Confederate generals, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, hadn't even been erected until decades after the end of the Civil War. Which is true.
They were commissioned by the Daughters of the Confederacy which sought to give the defeated side and their decedents some sense that they were not just total losers who had no reason to go on living. The wreck of the south was real and thorough. The need for the nation to be unified was desperate.
And so the statues went up. Perhaps the most contentious removal fight was over a statue of Stonewall Jackson astride his horse that stood in the historic district of Charlottesville, VA. It was the subject of protest from the left that wanted to see it removed and the right that thought history, even when it's difficult, should be preserved. A 2017 rally saw a woman killed.
That statue was removed from public view by the city in 2021. They gave it to a gallery in LA. The gallery gave it to artist Kara Walker who is obsessed with slavery and gruesome imagery. She dismantled it and put it back together as a "monster mutant" called "Unmanned Drone."
The first time I saw a Kara Walker exhibit, at The Frist Art Museum in Nashville, I walked away thinking it was the worst art I'd ever seen. But Ms. Walker has topped herself: this desecration of American history, from an artist who claims that all stories of American history, no matter how difficult, must be told, really is the worst piece of art I have ever seen, both in content, composition, and form.
Libby