William Blake Exhibition Catalog 2022 - Flipbook - Page 15
a figure is not neutral. Obviously, a white painter painting another
Other than for members of the Grand Army of the Republic, the
white figure is just as much about race as if there’s folks of color in those
ceremony was segregated. The only Black speaker was censored before calling
positions. It’s hard to speak in generalities, I don’t have the overarching
it a mockery; the Chicago Defender started a boycott of the memorial.
project that someone like Kerry James Marshall has, so I try to rely on my
own sensibilities.
When choosing reenactors, I try my best to have that come organically.
1922 was only three years after the Red Summer, one year after the
massacre in Tulsa, and three years away from the largest Klan march in
Washington.
The paintings come from a collaborative process and for some reenactors,
So when the Marine Corps (only white men at the time) stepped onto
racial justice is at the forefront of their portrayal and others it’s not as
the battlefield to reenact Pickett’s Charge, I would say the sentiments were
much. I want to be critical enough to not cause harm but also to not be so
closer to that of the Lost Cause. Like water to fish, that’s what they were
didactic. Some of Homer’s images do this very well and some not so much.
swimming in. For me, the paintings Union and Palm Sunday acknowledges
JP: You’ll have to remind me of what exactly you said, but the last time
those sentiments.
we chatted, you mentioned (if I remember correctly) that in the original
It’s a hundred years after the reenactment, and I think it’s worth thinking
1922 Gettysburg Marine Corp reenactors didn’t exactly shy away from
about what that battlefield means to me today. Gettysburg has been used
presenting the Confederates in a positive, honorable or triumphant way.
as a microcosm of the US since the battle... the whitewashing of the Blue
Am I remembering that correctly? In any case, can you speak on how our
and Gray reunions, the Civil Rights/Cold War battles during the centennial
troubled legacy concerning race is present in this new series?
celebrations, militia groups on the lookout for Antifa, someone with a BLM
WB: Yeah, I’d say a month before he viewed the reenactment at
t-shirt being escorted out of the National Cemetery. It’s all there for me.
Gettysburg, President Harding gave a speech at the dedication of the Lincoln
I think that’s why I look to reenactment so much; it’s always changing
Memorial, where he celebrated Lincoln, not as the great emancipator but
even if it’s recursive. The battle didn’t change, just how we understand it. n
simply the man who kept the union intact, “...he [Lincoln] doubtless believed
in its [slavery’s] ultimate abolition through the developing conscience of the
American people, but he would have been the last man in the republic to
resort to arms to effect its abolition. Emancipation was a means to the great
end—maintained union and nationality.”
IMAGE CREDITS (LEFT TO RIGHT): Majas on a Balcony; Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes); 1800–1810
(detail) | The Balcony; Edouard Manet; 1868-1869 (detail) | Perspective II, Manet’s Balcony; René Magritte; 1950 |
The Deposition from the Cross; Jacopo Pontormo; 1528 (detail) | Finding a Pulse; William Blake; 2018 | Civil War (Guerre
Civile); Edouard Manet; 1871–73, published 1874 | The Dead Toreador; Edouard Manet; probably 1864 (detail) | President
Harding snaped at the dedication ceremonies of the Lincoln Memorial today; 1922 May 30; Photograph (detail). www.loc.gov.
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