Art Heals: Power

As we hope for systemic changes effectuated by the recent and ongoing protests for justice and racial equality, we do know that the protests will enter the history books.  And I am happy to know that the Smithsonian Institution is collecting and preserving the signs and posters and artwork that give visual power to the movement.  Art has the power to illuminate injustice and spur social change.  And that power belongs to all of us, those who make art and those who are inspired by it.  I have long written and talked about mural art and graffiti art, which have become mainstream, whether in a pavilion in the Venice Biennale or in the fame of the artist-provocateur Banksy.   The latest powerful images I saw protestors making and carrying stood out in my mind because they were so personal and original.  I didn’t see the pre-printed posters, professionally designed, distributed in advance of many earlier protests.  People took their broken hearts and made it into art.  Thinking about all this made me remember an important exhibition I curated some years ago and of a small art-world controversy that reminds me why some daubs of paint can carry so much weight.   Let me tell you about that, with a little digression into history.

A few years ago, in the sometimesrarified world of art and artists, there emerged a controversy that I think served to illustrate a greater truth. World-famous (and rich) artist Sir Anish Kapoor acquired the exclusive rights to a type of carbon-based pigment called Vantablack, “the blackest shade of black ever made,” according to numerous published articles. Without trying to explain the arcane science behind this pigment (which is actually not exactly paint, but tiny tubes of carbon that need to be applied wearing a gas mask), suffice it to say that the substance is so light-absorbing that the human eye cannot look at it and distinguish the kind of shadows which help the brain to interpret shapes. The example shown in all the reports is that of a crumpled piece of tin foil covered with a layer of the pigment. You cannot see any shapes—the foil appears flat.  Addressing the furor regarding Kapoor’s exclusive rights to Vantablack, artist Christain Furr commented “This black is like dynamite in the art world. We should be able to use it. It isn't right that it belongs to one man.”

For a little art-historical perspective (before we get to the social justice part of this commentary) artists throughout the centuries have tried to monopolize or be associated with particular colors. A blue pigment made from lapis lazuli, only found in Afghanistan, was once highly prized and exorbitantly priced. Eighteenth century painters like Joshua Reynolds paid enormous fees to use a deep black paint called “Titian’s shade.” In 1960 the French artist Yves Klein patented a vibrant blue forever known as “International Klein Blue” (but he did not keep it for his exclusive use.) *

Thinking back on this, and seeing the protest posters bravely held aloft against military riot shields, I was reminded of an exhibition I held called “Forbidden Colors.”  I asked artists to consider the use of color both objectively as a way of arousing certain feelings in both artist and observer, and metaphorically exploring artists’ responses to various forms of censorship or political pressure. The show took its name from a 1980 Israeli law forbidding art of "political significance," which in effect banned artwork composed of the four colors of the Palestinian flag: red, green, white and black. Palestinians were arrested for making or displaying such artwork. The ban was lifted after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. The significance of this ban is enormous. I am often reminded of Picasso’s words, “Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.” Red, green, white, black. Mere colors, colors that exist in the world, independent of human intervention, possessing such power that an authoritarian government seeks to ban their display! Color possessing such power that the mere sight of red, green, white, black, could incite riot, rebellion, demands for justice, hope, despair, nationalism, pride, love. Artists instinctively understand this power. They are willing to pay any price, make any sacrifice, to be able to penetrate the gaze and touch the soul with a dab of cerulean blue or the deepest black. And anyone who makes a poster, paints a portrait, draws a mural, illustrates a cartoon, picks up a pen or a crayon or chalks the sidewalk, possesses that power.  Art is a strong weapon in the fight for justice, for the rights of patrimony, peace, freedom. Art continues to hold our gaze; it forces us to look, and hopefully, to see. Protest is a right.  Expression is a right. Colors cannot be forbidden. My hope is that repressive regimes here and everywhere will look into that blackest black and see not the depths of despair but the infinite freedom that is the birthright of all humanity.  Art Heals.

*(For more on this subject, read “Color: A Natural History of the Palette” by Victoria Finlay or “Blue: The History of a Color” by Michel Pastoureau.)

From the “Forbidden Colors” exhibition, this is Censored Memory, by Adam Chamy