Thanks for your thoughts, Lesley. I appreciate your wrestling with this along with the rest of us and sharing your point of view. I think you’re right. Because of the original letter and its framing, the debate and issues the young artist/writer Hannah Black tried to raise have been overshadowed by her demands to destroy the work and the emotive response balking at the fact that a white artist made it. (I think both of these positions are simplistic, and wrongheaded, by the way: should she as an artist only make work concerned with “bi-racial people who identify as black” issues, for example? No; of course not.) I wish we were able to get beyond these sensationalist claims and shorthand of her emotional response because destroying work or never showing things, as we know, is part of studio practice. I would like to have more dialogue about the moral dimensions you mention, and I know you have been grappling with this in your own work. Yes, this history is American history, but my question is still one about why we are only shown one side of it; what value does Schutz add by painting (yet another) a victim of a hate crime while the perpetrators get to stay in the shadows. I think this skews history and our understanding of it. I wish Schutz had made a more thoughtful contribution to this conversation. This one, to me, feels naive and fearful even though it tackles a big, messy subject.

Best,
Lee Ann

In my mind, there’s a similarity to the depiction of rape or female domestic abuse by male artists, especially in tv and movies. I’m sure there are many people sensitive enough to do it, but it’s easy to miss the mark and even intentions of empathy can simply come off as spectacle.

I’m very sympathetic to the response of many black artists here. But the anger expressed toward this white woman artist also makes me uneasy. Isn’t she just doing the best she can? Will she never again be able to paint a black person? It makes me question aspects of my work and reactions to my, as a white person, creating art inclusive of people of color.

Instead of dividing us all by the color of our skin or ignoring the clear reality and making this about censorship, Can we use this painting help us all engage in moral discussion instead of condemning it outright. Is actually already been done.

Can artwork about issues of race be about compassion? What about art relating to Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln and all the abolitionists? What about depictions in Mapplethorpe’s work, what about Leon Golub’s portrayal of perpetrators and victims in class and race wars, and I have also made photo based art featuring my black friends, like Sur Rodney Sur, Diane Edison, Auriea Harvey.

I want to continue doing art work about this country’s early years up to the American Civil War. This includes abolitionists and the developing sense of justice in our country. Perhaps I am just hugely naive, and this is not the time for white people to talk about anyone but themselves, but that seems narrow.

Yet- I also understand that I have not walked for a minute in a person of color’s shoes. I understand that if you are a person of color in this world, sometimes every minute since childhood on is a fight, is a hurt. My feeling and hope though, is that for justice, we must all fight for it. Especially in these times.