Unnecessary antitheses:
Perspectives on ‘realness’
JOSEPH FRALEY/ DAILY
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
B-SIDE LEAD
I read Monica Youn’s “Stealing
the Scream,” a poem narrativizing
the theft of Edvard Munch’s
famous
Expressionist
painting,
and, without hesitation, I rooted
for the thief. How could I not? In
the third stanza, Youn scoffs at
the museum security, outwitted
by the thief, only for the walls of
the museum itself to join in: “the
guards rushing in — too late! —
greeted only / by the gap-toothed
smirk of the museum walls.” By the
next, Youn paints the picture of a
misunderstood vigilante-prophet.
A rogue Moses? “Someone has the
answers, someone who, grasping
the frame, / saw his sun-red face
reflected in that familiar boiling
sky,” Youn concludes.
Then, I second-guessed myself.
Cheering on art theft would
certainly make me an enemy of
museums, which, on the contrary,
I have always cherished and
respected. I wondered: Was I also
making myself an enemy of art?
At the same time, I don’t think
Youn’s ultimate aim is for her
readers to weigh the ethics of
art theft. Rather, Youn seems
to be posing a more reasonable,
worthwhile challenge, and that is
to interrogate assumptions about
the proper place for a work of art.
She dares us to ask ourselves: where
does art live? Where can art live? Is
it always ideal to keep art cooped up
inside? What does art gain and lose
when it flies the coop? And I think
the underlying question here is:
Is it an artwork’s place in a
museum that gives it meaning —
that makes it real?
I spoke to three women with
backgrounds in museum work and
studies, and I asked them the same
question, though perhaps not in so
many words. They had some things
to say about the traditional, fixed
conceptions of what makes a work
of art real. They had much more to
say about possible alternatives.
Is art only real if it’s inside of
a museum?
Jillian
Reese,
community
program manager at the Detroit
Institute
of
Arts,
respectfully
disagrees with that question. She’s
uniquely poised to make such a call,
as a figure in the museum world at
once invested in the DIA itself and
the external communities with
which it engages.
One of the most successful
programs Reese has helped bring to
multiple communities in Southeast
Michigan is Inside|Out, in which
the DIA exports reproductions of
original artworks housed inside
the museum and installs these
reproductions in various outdoor
venues of Detroit’s surrounding
communities.
“There are things that an art
museum can’t do,” she began, then
chuckled and corrected herself,
“I shouldn’t say can’t. There are
things that museums don’t do that
community collections can do.”
Reese
identified
one
chief
advantage of this transportation
of reproductions beyond the walls
of the museum: “We’re meeting
people where they’re at … they
don’t have to come down to 5200
Woodward Avenue to see the art.”
In
addition,
rather
than
de-contextualizing art, Inside|Out
re-contextualizes art in new, open
air environs. “When you remove
these images from their context
in the gallery, and you put it in
unfamiliar space, it adds this sort
of whimsy. It’s fun and funny and
irreverent for a Van Gogh to be
in a park where it can get rained
on,” and Reese laughed as she
continued, “pooped on by a bird,
all that sort of stuff.” On a more
serious note, she addressed the
osmotic
meaning-making
that
this recontextualization enacts,
arguing that it “allows people to
have a chance to really notice it and
to look at it a little deeper. It starts to
inspire you in thinking about your
environment in a different way.”
Along a similar vein, Inside|Out
proceeds
from
a
teaching
methodology
that
the
DIA
espouses called “visual thinking
strategies,” which prize the role art
appreciators play in constructing
the meaning of a work of art. “You
bring something to an artwork,”
Reese stressed. “How you read the
artwork is influenced by that.” In
turn, she said, “We really try to use
Inside|Out pieces and images that
will spark that sort of explanation.”
In this way, Inside|Out provides
an opportunity for individuals to
make a personal connection with
artwork that a gallery in a museum
may not, our eyes tempted by the
explanatory labels that seem to
accompany every artwork. The
authenticity of these Inside|Out
reproductions
notwithstanding,
is that connection anything but
real? Would anyone dare call those
processes
of
meaning-making
inauthentic?
The progressive gestures of
Inside|Out have not proceeded
without
resistance.
“I
think
that the people who had the
the largest pushback against it
was our curatorial staff,” Reese
explained. “Librarians, registrars,
programmers,
educators
in
the art museums saw this as a
democratization of art: access
to the arts for more people,” in
Reese’s experience, whereas “A
lot of curators thought, well, why
would they come to the museum if
they could just Google the image
to see it on your screen,” carrying
a similar attitude toward physical
reproductions.
Reese’s response? Increasing
access to the arts, whether in the
form of digitization or material
reproduction and exportation via
programs like Inside|Out, does
not make the museum obsolete.
“There’s enough space for both,”
she argued, adding that “anyone
who has gone to a museum knows
there’s a big difference” between
the originals housed in the DIA and
their reproductions on the internet
and in Inside|Out installations.
“There’s no comparison. They
serve two different purposes.”
Yet
these
two
forms
of
participation are not mutually
exclusive, either, and Reese has
the research to back it up. “With
Inside|Out, we have evidence that,
in every community that we install
in, during and after the installation,
for about a year, we see a spike
in attendance at the museum.”
Laughing, she elaborated, “People
look at (an Inside|Out installation)
and say, ‘Maybe the DIA isn’t as
stuffy as I thought it was.’” Rather
than sapping the authenticity of
art, Reese’s program attests to
the amplification of an artwork’s
meaning once it moves beyond its
walls, to the multiplication of the
authentic experiences with art. In
many ways, art becomes more real
if it is allowed to leave.
Is art only real if it fits the
(ethnocentric) narrative?
Dr. Lisa Young, a lecturer in the
archaeology
and
anthropology
departments at the University
of
Michigan,
challenges
that
assumption in a course she teaches
called
“Frauds
and
Fantastic
Claims in Archeology.”
For part of the course, Young
covers the history of the Michigan
Relics: a group of tablets found
in central Michigan and falsely
attributed
to
pre-Columbian
visitors to the Americas due to the
imitation cuneiform inscribed in
them. When teaching this story
of how several political, religious
and economic elites made absurd
attempts to pass off these fraudulent
artifacts as evidence of untold
Old World influences on Native
American
civilizations,
Young
stresses what is at stake when those
with the power to declare what is
real and what is fake wield their
power irresponsibly.
Specifically,
the
purported
existence of these tablets were
weaponized in favor of what
Young identified as “the myth of
the mound builders: (That) these
mounds could not have been built
by Native Americans,” referring
to the monumental landforms left
behind by Native American tribes
in Midwestern states.
Young went on to explain
the political reverberations of
such denials of authenticity to
Native
American
civilizational
achievement: “You can see how
that can really start to become a
narrative, which it did, to deny
native people their traditional
homelands.” In fact, she pointed
out that Andrew Jackson invoked
the Michigan Relics “in a speech
to Congress in 1830 to justify
why Native Americans should
be removed off their traditional
homelands and shipped out to
Oklahoma.” Because they were not
allowed to lay claim to real art —
“Because they’re just in the way.”
Of course, in the case of the
Michigan Relics, we’re talking
about archaeological objects, but
as Young herself warned, there
are various parallels outside of
the archaeological sphere. In the
discussion section of her class,
students examine knockoffs of
brand names. The resonance of
this archaeological conflict over the
facts with contemporary trends of
political debate and “fake news” are
addressed.
It makes you rethink the weight
of the accusation of fraudulence,
even when levied against a work
of art. It reminds you: There is an
artist behind that work of art that
you’re disenfranchising.
Is art only real if it’s the
“original”?
(Resisting
the
ethnocentric
narrative,
part
two).
Dr. Natsu Oyobe is a curator
of Asian art at the University of
Michigan Museum of Art. As a
curator, she falls into the camp that
the DIA’s Jillian Reese identified
as the staunchest defenders of
art’s rightful place being inside
the museum. Oyobe has a distinct,
refreshing take on what counts as
“real” and “fake” in the world of
fine art.
“Copying is a really important
sort of training and mastering,”
followed by interpretation and
the creation of “something of your
own,” in the East Asian tradition,
Oyobe explained. She added that
in response to nineteenth century
Western influences, “the idea of
copying really is tarnished in a
way. Because of that Western idea
(that the original has the) only true
authenticity. That’s something that
also embedded into the minds of
Asians as well.”
Oyobe
will
confront
these
conflicting notions of authenticity
in an upcoming UMMA exhibition
she is curating. Called “Copying
and Creativity in East Asia,”
Oyobe’s exhibition will showcase
art that prizes imitation, like
that of the Chinese and Japanese
literati painters. “The way they
create their own work is to first
copy brushstrokes of the masters
who came before them,” Oyobe
explained. “You have to have
knowledge. If you paint this way,
that really refers to this painter in
the fifteenth century.”
Through her exhibition, which
will open Aug. 17, 2019 in the
Taubman I Gallery at the UMMA,
Oyobe seeks to “argue against that
kind of binary,” which arbitrarily
sets
imitations
at
odds
with
originals.
Does art become real when we
build a relationship with it?
I’m circling back to Youn,
and I’m taking some of Oyobe’s
wisdom with me. Both women have
refreshingly radical conceptions of
what makes art real, though they
approach it from two very different
angles. I think their unexpected
harmony is where the answer
to my initial inquiry may lie, the
answer to my question of whether
believing art should exist outside
of a museum makes you an enemy
of art.
Youn says, “The policemen …
stand whispering/in the galleries:
‘ … but what does it all mean?’ /
Someone has the answers, someone
who, grasping the frame, / saw
his sun-red face reflected in that
familiar boiling sky.”
Oyobe said, “Sometimes the
donor or collector who owns
objects comes to us and says they
want to donate these pieces, or
they have these art objects but they
don’t know anything about this.”
And they ask Oyobe, “Would you
tell me what this is?” She told me
she often screens these inquiries
and often has to be the one to
disappoint them. “But I always say
that, if you like this reproduction,”
she added, “I think that really
becomes authentic to that person.”
She said, “If you love that piece,”
then that inscribes the work with
authenticity all the same.
And I say: The answer to my
opening question is no. No, none of
us are in enmity with art. Museums
provide a beautiful home for
artwork. They pay homage to the
complexity of art, the individuality
and collectivity of art objects. The
DIA, UMMA and numerous other
museums are on the front lines of
affirming the value and meaning
of art. But they are not keepers
of that meaning and they are not
what makes art real. We make art
real. Think about it: Could it exist
without you? Without your eyes
upon it? Without your body in
front of it? Receiving its message,
interfering with it, making it
dynamic and communicative and
rich and resonant?
That is why I want osmotic
art. I want art that can be rained
upon. I want art that subverts
the
norms.
Perhaps
all
this
concentrated thought and talk has
made me sentimental, but I want
art that becomes real when I have a
relationship with it, the way a child
wants a toy that becomes real once
they love it.
I want to be someone who “has
the answers,” to see my own face
reflected in a work of art. And I don’t
want to have to steal art in order to
experience that. I don’t want to be
told my experience with a work of
art is fake. I want people like Jillian
Reese, Lisa Young and Natsu Oyobe
at the helm, expanding our notion
of what makes a work of art real.
I want to escape the unnecessary
antitheses set up between what’s
“real” and what’s “reproduced,”
and I want to focus instead on
the reality of the meanings we
construct when we take it all in.
Don’t you?
Unemployed
Tierra Whack
Interscope
SINGLE REVIEW: ‘UNEMPLOYED’
Tierra
Whack
is
a
multifaceted
rapper
and
R&B artist. Her many hues
are established not only by
her bright-colored, evocative
style, but also by her ability
to take on multiple personas
across her creative work.
Inspired originally by the
immersive
worlds
of
Dr.
Seuss, Whack established her
ability to take on different
personalities with her debut
album Whack World, released
in 2018. The album consists
of fifteen tracks, each only
one minute in length. It’s
considered both an auditory
and visual project, as it’s
paired with a 15 minute
music video that visualizes
its scenes entirely.
Whack’s
most
recent
single,
“Unemployed,”
epitomizes her keen sense
of blending visual art with
her sound — the vividly-
colored, couch-potato cover
art serves as a manifestation
of her enemies who can’t
match
her
clout.
Whack
disses challengers with her
characteristic
satire
and
eccentric
style,
perfectly
weaving the connotations of
her cover art through each
lyric:
“You’re
overweight,
you ate a soda (Yo) / I’m
super sober, you doin’ coke
(Yo) / Coca-Cola (Yo, yo).”
Building on the success of
her debut, Whack continues
to establish herself as the
queen
of
idiosyncratic
formatting. Since Feb. 19, she
has released five singles — one
per week — that all fall under
the umbrella of what she
titles #WhackHistoryMonth.
With
“Unemployed,”
Whack continues to trailblaze
a path for unconventional rap
and the creative expression of
women in the contemporary
rap space. Her recent merch
design, which is a play on
her last name, encompasses
her approach quite perfectly:
Weird Hype And Creative
Kids. Whack is on the come-
up, and she’s changing the
norms for female rappers.
Sit back, and watch Tierra
Whack take her throne.
— Samantha Cantie, Daily
Arts Writer
RACHEL STERN / NOISEY
DEB JACQUES / C&G NEWSPAPERS
Perhaps all this concentrated thought
and talk has made me sentimental, but I
want art that becomes real when I have
a relationship with it.
6B — Thursday, March 28, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com