One of the striking aspects of the controversy around Kelley Walker’s exhibition at the Saint Louis Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) is how many important issues it raises, including, obviously, the perilous state of race relations in the country; the dilemmas that arise when one person’s freedom of speech is perceived by someone else as hate speech; whether white artists, or writers, musicians, etc. can tackle the subject of black experience without engaging in cultural appropriation; and the extent to which social media may now put pressure on museums and other public institutions to bring more transparency to their curatorial process (many protestors want to know who decided to show Walker’s work and why).

All these topics urgently require discussion, but there is another one, perhaps less linked to social problems, that I would like to examine: Whether artists are under any obligation to explain themselves or their work? This issue is relevant to the St. Louis Debate because it was Walker’s (and the show’s curator Jeffrey Uslip’s) unresponsiveness to public questioning during a September 17th artist’s talk that really galvanized the protests rather than the work itself. In reading accounts of the event and subsequent reactions to it, I have the impression that if Walker had made a cogent argument for his art, if he had been able to openly share his intentions, if he had offered a counterargument to the accusation that his work was racist, there would have been far fewer expressions of anger and outrage, and the CAM would probably not have felt it necessary to erect walls and post trigger warnings around Black Star Press and Schema. (Unfortunately, the video of the artist’s talk has remained unavailable since it was live-streamed, so it’s hard to know exactly what questions were asked or just how Walker and Uslip avoided them.)

I firmly believe that artists are under no obligation to explain themselves or their work. If an artist chooses not to reveal anything about his or her intentions, so be it. The making of art, great or atrocious, is the only thing required of the artist qua artist—everything else is optional. And yet there is a common expectation that artists can and should provide accounts and interpretations of their work to viewers. In fact, there seems to be an unwritten social contract between artist and audience stipulating that its part of the artist’s role to discuss his or her work and to respond helpfully to questions about it.

Of course, not every artist adheres to this contract. Indeed, two of the most influential artists of recent decades—Sigmar Polke and David Hammons—are famous for their elusiveness and the paucity of their public statements. With both of these artists, viewers are on their own, challenged to figure out what the work is about, to makes guesses about the creators’ intentions. As a critic, I actually prefer writing about this kind of artist even though it’s harder – nothing to go on except your own perceptions – and scarier – you might get it totally wrong. At the other extreme are artists who write extensively about their work, who give long interviews, who make themselves available. Think, for instance, of Polke’s erstwhile friend Gerhard Richter whose collected writings and interviews run some 500 pages or the late Mike Kelley, as unconventional and influential as Hammons, whose published writings comprise two large volumes.

Although few artists are as prolific in writing as Richter and Kelley, it is rare to come across any as reticent as Polke and Hammons. Most artists are more than happy to grant interviews, and the vast majority of them write statements that turn up as gallery handouts of exhibition catalogue texts. Just look, for instance, at Social Medium: Artists Writings 2000-2015, a 544-page anthology recently published by Paper Monument. It is, in part, the ubiquity of such discourse that rendered Walker’s reticence unacceptable, though clearly his frustrated questioners were keenly aware of the proximity of the CAM to Ferguson, where the 2014 death of Michael Brown sparked the ongoing Black Lives Matter protest movement.

The prevalence of the self-explaining artist has much to do with how artists are trained. Anyone who has spent time in an MFA program (or read Howard Singerman’s Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University) will be familiar with the emphasis on teaching students how to offer interpretations of their work, whether via verbal presentations or in written form. One factor driving this trend is the pressure on MFA programs within a university setting to match other disciplines and professions in academic rigor. The demand for self-interpretation is also driven by the persistent emphasis on critical theory in MFA seminars, which has been a feature of art education since the 1980s, and, to cite an even longer-term trend, how artists have more and more become their own spokespersons, a task once fulfilled by critics. (As evidence of this one need, look no further than Art21, the popular PBS series on contemporary art that features only the voices of artists, and never critics or scholars.)

Of course, artists have been talking about their work for a long time. What’s different about the current protocols of discourse is the assumption that the artist will be forthcoming, always happy to elucidate and explain. New York artists in the 1950s, for instance, were probably more voluble than today’s artists, but the circumstances, content and tone of their discourse (arguments among themselves at places like The Club, defiant manifestoes in obscure magazines) were very different from the generally polite realm of artist talks, slide lectures, public “conversations,” and extensive interviews. There’s much to celebrate in the shift from the embattled artist of the 1940s and1950s to the university trained media-savvy, user-friendly figure of today. Despite persistent hostility toward contemporary art on the part of many elected officials, the artist is far less of an outsider in 21st century America, and enjoys, even when exploring extremes of experiment and transgression, a degree of social recognition and economic reward that would have been unthinkable to midcentury avant-gardes. As always, privileges are accompanied by responsibilities and obligations, and for the professionalized artist, one of these is the artist’s talk, a de rigueur ritual that I suspect every American artist (apart, perhaps, from Hammons) who is given a museum show is asked and expected to deliver.

Kelley Walker could have declined the invitation to give an artist’s talk, but he didn’t. And while I believe that artists don’t owe us any explanation, I also believe that once an artist agrees to appear in public, as Walker did in St. Louis, he or she is under an obligation to be forthcoming and responsive. You don’t agree to do a Q&A if you’re not willing to provide some substantial “A”s. So, what went wrong? Why did what should have been simply another instance of “This is why I made my art” and “This is what I was trying to say” turn into a storm of “How dare you” and “Those are not acceptable answers”? From the accounts I have read, it seems as if Walker, Uslip and the institution were in some kind of bubble that insulated them from—or simply prevented them from imagining the existence of—dissenting voices. Among the voices that apparently didn’t penetrate this bubble were those of three museum staff members who in an open letter described how they and other employees, especially people of color and women, had expressed “great discomfort and disdain on numerous occasions” about the work prior to the opening.

As I suspect other people did after hearing of the CAM controversy, I looked for writings – by the artist and others – about the works in question. I didn’t find much, although in a September 22 letter of apology, Walker insisted that he had spoken about the works “in depth in prior artist talks and interviews.” One article I came across did stand out, in part because it seems to speak to the very issue that is at play now, Glenn Ligon’s “Kelley Walker’s Negro Problem,” which was published in Parkett in 2010. In it, Ligon notes “the profound silence in the critical writing on Walker’s work (and in the art world more generally) about how race operates.” Approving of Walker’s work, Ligon argues that the silence is troubling “because Walker is quite aware of the intractability of the ’problem’ of his racial identity in relationship to images of black people, and part of the impact of his work is that it calls attention to very difficult and still unsettled questions about the politics of representation” and laments the fact that critical writing on his work tends to sidestep the issue of race “by quickly mentioning race only to move on to yet another discussion of Warhol and appropriation.”

It’s strange that six years after Ligon wrote about the glossing over of race in favor of discussing safe aesthetic topics, artist and curator seemed willing to prolong that “profound silence.” Without hearing more from Walker and Uslip, it’s impossible to know precisely why they didn’t adequately answer the questions being asked of them, but I would like to propose a theory: it was because they were confronted with the emergence of an audience whose voice had never been heard before. Of course, this wasn’t the first time that black activists and artist have criticized how African Americans are depicted in art, but this may have been the first public occasion for such discourse since the anger and empowerment that has arisen in the wake of Ferguson. Walker and Uslip didn’t know how to respond because they were hearing inconceivable things being said, inconceivable from within the privileged, and still deeply segregated, realm of the contemporary art world. The extreme discrepancy between how Walker’s work was perceived within the art world and how it was seen by St. Louis’s African-American art community is not, as some might conclude, the result of philistine ignorance of avant-garde practices—it was the consequence of two incompatible languages confronting each other. And in the unpoliced discursive space that opened up around these incompatible languages, the artist and the institution sponsoring him lost control of the work’s meaning, which is precisely what most statements and texts by artists seek to avoid.

Thoughtful artists know that it’s ultimately impossible to control how art is received and interpreted (although that doesn’t mean that they are wrong to try to have the work understood in the way they intend). As literary studies long ago proved, the intentions behind a work of art are in no way determinant of its meaning, and in any case they are nearly impossible to establish. What this means for the St. Louis situation is that Walker’s statements, past or future, about Black Star Press and Schema can never erase the perception that his works are complicit with racism. Ultimately, as history, and the field of Reception Theory, teach us, it will be the audience who decides on the meaning of the work, not the artist. Should we take into account whatever an artist has said about his or her work? Of course we should. Do artists sometimes achieve things in their work that were nowhere in their intentions? Yes, thankfully, for otherwise art would be merely a technical exercise. If the controversy in St. Louis tells us anything, it is that meaning is always up for grabs, a fact too often forgotten in the face of contemporary art’s smoothly running interpretative apparatus (of which I, too, am a part).

Another lesson is to beware of every kind of bubble: media bubbles filled with like-minded partisans, class bubbles filled with socio-economic equals, linguistic bubbles filled with single-language speakers, and culture bubbles devoid of those who might look at things from an entirely different perspective. All of us—not least a white, male New York art critic—are ensconced within our respective spherical domains. I doubt that I would be any better prepared than Kelley Walker to respond to one of them being burst by an unanticipated question. I only hope that the next time something like that happens I will be ready to listen. And yet I also hope that explanations will never become compulsory, especially for artists who prefer to stay inside the best bubble of them all, the studio bubble.

Kelley Walker: Schema and Kelley Walker: Direct Drive remain on view at CAM through December 31, 2016. 3750 Washington Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63108, camstl.org

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I wanted out of my hometown of Baltimore, a city marked by racial unrest where, shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, there was looting, violence, and death. Despite its role at the forefront of the civil rights movement, Baltimore was burdened by a long history of segregation and racial polarity that still exists today. I wanted to get away and move to a place where racial tension could melt away. I wanted to do something where race was not an issue. I moved north to New York City where I studied and became a painter and a professor, beginning a life fully immersed in the liberal arena of fine art.

Recently, however, I am not sure that the place I sought actually exists. As I look around the art world, what I now see is a kind of racial tribalization that seems to trade on kinship-based organizations and reciprocal exchange. A social-club culture where exclusive membership comes with privileges: fashionable dinners, parties, entrée to certain galleries and collectors, etc. All are welcome at all events, but you must be enrolled as a member to benefit. In short, I see an art-world racial divide. I question the reasons for this divided structure and wonder if the art world now needs to rethink how black artists are included and promoted, allowing for a broadening of the visual dialog on race.

Back in the 1990’s, some New York curators began a movement to change the direction of museums by creating large exhibitions around ideas of racial and sexual identity. They fought for the right of minority groups to be seen and heard. They transformed the museum culture of the 1960’s and 1970’s, effecting big changes in institutions that seriously needed to be changed. Their work provided an opportunity for artists of color to have exhibitions in museums and galleries and to be included in major collections. Even though power inequalities continued to exist for minority groups, some progress was made by this formation of a group identity. Here racial difference became a uniting force, instrumentalizing art for a larger social engagement.

Despite those curatorial efforts, today all is not equal, and a divide remains. But the original intent of those who initiated a self-generated identity can become restricting when imposed by others. And I have begun to wonder: Is it still necessary for black curators to primarily curate identity-based shows? Aren’t these shows only serving to highlight perceived cultural differences while firming up the separations between groups? Can identity only be affirmed by pooling together sameness in a themed exhibition?

Just as the aspirations of the civil rights movement were reflected in the attitudes of black art and the art institutions of its time, perhaps the political climate of today is pointing us in a different direction – one that begins to transcend identity, albeit with some difficulty. Take a look at the circuitous discussion around whether Barack Obama is black enough. There is endless talk about how others want to identify him and how he self-identifies. No choice he could make would go without criticism. No choice would be without exclusion or acceptance of aspects of black identity. Similar issues of identification surround Hillary Clinton with the question of how “female” falls in line(or not) with the idea of the “feminine”. You can’t trust her if her feminine wiles are present. She can’t protect us if her maternal side is visible. We can’t be politically seduced if she is not seductive. For both Obama and Clinton, their attempts at a fluid self-representation keep them more firmly identified as individuals than as “club members”, unable and/or unwilling to take advantage of any membership.

For me, racial fluidity began not by choice but with my birth, and my skin color – my very light skin color. It grew with the neighborhoods I lived in and the education I received. I was neither instructed in, nor possessed of, a strong cultural or ethnic identity. I believe in and have sought a world where identity is so malleable that it is essentially obsolete. My friends and many of my friends’ friends are broad and varied in race, geographic roots, sex, sexual identity and religion. We eat, dance, talk, laugh, cry, work and play together. We liberals and artists do not subscribe to essentialist thinking – except somehow when it comes to the art career. Rarely do I attend an art exhibition, lecture, dinner, or party that possesses the diversity of my life outside of the art arena. Instead, what I am seeing are professional camps: a black art world and a white one, each with its own team of curators, art historians and collectors. And I ask myself: why does this divide exist? If you have chosen, as I have, not to participate in highlighting racial differences, where do you position yourself?

My black artist friends describe their MFA programs as being largely white. Having graduated, they attribute their successes mostly to black art-professionals and, with a certain ironic glibness, to affirmative action. Recently, I heard one black MFA student question why another black student had not yet spoken to him about how to succeed in the art world. I suppose at the heart of this student’s question is an impulse toward solidarity in support of becoming a visible artist. The assumption that this exclusive conversation increases inclusion is incorrect; in fact it is simply the beginning of affirming inequalities by highlighting differences that later become systematically sustained. This is not a “post-racial” attitude, but simply the beginnings of drawing lines of difference.

The commodification of race begins in graduate school, where questions of identity and personal subjectivity live. Here students work towards communicating an intelligible identity while fine-tuning a sense of personal differences. All of this work about the self is fine and good, but only if these self-representations can be directed to a collective public and not simply to a pre-selected, curated audience. When the work leaves the private space of art making and moves towards the public space of exhibiting, these visual self-expressions become mutated and manhandled for use in the promotional side of the business of art. The result is a complacency around the original intent to promote and honor diversity. Here, the foundation of identity politics shifts from political change to a tool of separation. The initial radical intent is emptied out: the art’s effect is diffused.

Many African-American artists feel the obligation to represent Blackness. My position as an abstract painter allows me to manifest my own sense of self – my black self – as an expression of self-determination and freedom, while avoiding an oppositional stance. I do not believe this position is “post-racial” since I am not sure that that is possible. Yet the current system of how to include black artists in the mainstream seems to be stuck in tropes from the past. I do not want to negate discussions of race and racism in art, but I do want to open the conversation by detaching Blackness from a narrow racial term, allowing it to be more pliable. This will not cause current and historical racial differences to cease to exist, but it will enable artists who are not foregrounding Blackness in their work to become equally important members of the conversation. By rupturing accepted racial boundaries, subtlety and aesthetics will play a social role in the expansion of that conversation.

The art world needs to renew its ideas of racial inclusion. It needs to activate art spaces for a fuller discussion of racial issues, with more investment in complex representations and less reliance on didactic displays of racialized, reified art. It needs to value art that is driven through inspiration, not calculation, while incorporating the politics of identity with the versatility of creativity. It needs a way to avoid the lethargy of categorization, while allowing more fluidity in the physical spaces of the profession. It needs an eradication of the racial professional divide, by expanding the visual presence of race and avoiding a branded, static depiction. By moving away from essentialist exhibitions, perhaps there is a renewed opportunity for a transformation in perceiving, acknowledging, and representing the inherent complexity of race.

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Joan Waltemath, artcritical contributing editor, is billed as one of three moderators. (Will the moderators need a moderator, one wonders?)  Waltemath was invited, she tells us, after fellow moderators Christopher Stackhouse and Jomar Statkun read her own intervention in the artcritical debate.  Waltemath concluded her remarks by asking: “If Johnson had erred on the side of sensitivity, could this much needed discussion have emerged?    Let us make the most of it, it is a rare moment when the issues are on the table and there is something at stake.”

The evening is billed as “Critical Inversions – Artist to Critic, and the Publics in Between,” and Johnson is joined at the podium by artists Lisa Corinne

Davis and Anoka Faruqee, who was one of the authors of the “open letter” first challenging the New York Times critic for his pointed remarks on race and gender.  The panel announcement also hints at “possible special guests.”

Audience looking for resolution of this odd affair may not actually find it this evening, however, if the blurb on the announcement is any indication: “This discussion will pursue a generative conversation about cultural production, societal value, and how critical faculty figures into the assessment of agency between artifacts deemed art and those potential audiences that might receive said objects, experiences, or material of whatever type as art.”   “Artifacts deemed art” sounds heavy, and the statement forgets to mention gender or race!

But the presence of Lisa Corrine Davis – a woman of color, a veteran educator and a fabulous painter to boot – and the moderating influence of our own Joan Waltemath, encourages us to believe that, notwithstanding the conversation getting anywhere, civility will prevail.

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