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ArtsJournal linked to this Washington Post story last week.
Today, Carolyn Zwick at Dangerous Chunky enlarged upon it, herself linking to the Politics and Culture Forum on Artdish.
I'd been meaning to comment on the topic but didn't get to it.
There's too much to say, really, so many ways this story fails its subject, which is a dip into the White House art collection in the Green Room, focusing on a recent addition with Laura Bush as art critic and tour guide.
While not Jackie Kennedy, Laura Bush did not disgrace herself in discussing a 1947 Jacob Lawrence tempera-on-board painting titled "The Builders," a theme that would become a series.
The disgrace belongs to the Post. Staff writer Jacqueline Trescott identified Lawrence as "one of the greatest African-American artists of the 20th century."
Aren't we past this? I look forward to the day the Post identifies Jackson Pollock as one of the greatest white artists of the 20th century. Because white appears to be this writer's assumed context, she notes only difference, black as a special case. (Diversity trainers: The Post needs you!)
In the photo, Laura Bush is standing to the side of the Lawrence, which is not in focus. If the Post is going to bother to take a picture of a Lawrence painting and print what the First Lady has to say about it, maybe the evidence of its existence shouldn't be a blur.
Dangerous Chunky found a better version.
Laura Bush gets the camera's scrutiny, and the painting is wallpaper. All that attention to the First Lady's face becomes startling for those who click on the close up. She seems to have applied her makeup while still asleep. Her eyebrow pencil veers thickly off her left brow, like a car skidding on ice. It might mean nothing, but it suggests that the weight of her role is wearing her down.
A smart newspaper would have printed a clear image of the painting and accompanied it with a sidebar by an art critic, covering the information Dangerous Chunky had about its market history as well as an assessment of its merits and its maker's place in history.
Oh wait. I forgot. The Post doesn't have an art critic. It has Blake Gopnik. Jaunty, arrogant and uninformed, he's easily the worst art critic at a major newspaper in the country.
Lawrence spent the last three decades of his life in Seattle. Here's my most recent story about him.
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Posted by Tim Robinson at 9/25/07 6:21 p.m.
I take exception with you on two points:
1) that the Post writer sinned in her comment. That assertion -- the writer's -- has long precedent. Lawrence has been served that encomium countless times. Why? Because, as an artist, he so directly and consciously identified his art with a race...a culture...his race and culture. Of course, I am speaking of his series "The Great Migration." Saying he is one of the greatest African American artists does not limit the scope of his greatness; it simply places it -- as it pertains to the subject at hand...the picture's place in the White House -- within a context that Lawrence, himself, embraced and identified with. Frankly, I think you picked some low-hanging, politically correct fruit...and rapid-fire blogged...without taking the time to think of the broader context. I'm sure that in your experience -- and given that you're not so awful like that horrible Blake Gopnik -- you are well informed about Lawrence's place in a that context.
2) your snarky comments about Laura Bush's eyebrow. Odd that in the same blog where you're demanding...more sophistication from the Post...you'd make an errant eyebrow pencil-like veer into silly insults.