The Citizen

Issue date: 11/14/07 Section: Culture

As in politics, there is a tradition in the art world of the less-quali!ed artist stooping to sensationalism and scandal as a means of drawing attention to his work. What he lacks in form, technique and creativity, he compensates for through deliberate provocation.

Mark Steven Green!eld displays this tendency in his photo exhibit, "Incognegro," on display at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, California, through December 15, 2007. Green!eld's photographs revisit the infamy of blackface minstrelsy, an indisputably racist form of American satire dating back to the nineteenth century. As recently as the 1960s, white minstrels painted their faces black and performed on stage, dancing, singing and lampooning African Americans as ridiculous, simple-minded buffoons. The cheap laughs generated by these performances were a direct attack on the dignity of an oppressed black minority. Sadly, it is not so hard to imagine that, not long ago, insult and humiliation of an entire culture was a popular form of entertainment in this nation.

In the "Incognegro" exhibit (along with previous exhibits "Post Minstrel" and "Blackatcha"), Green!eld uses old photographs of blackface minstrels to force the viewer to confront and overcome their own repulsion by these images. According to the artist, "Generations of African Americans have suffered grievous injury at the hands of people whose livelihood was derived from creating and reinforcing stereotypes through blackface minstrelsy." Yet, Green- !eld's attempts at a modern interpretation of this genre are no less harmful and racist than the form he is challenging.

Green!eld contends that certain black entertainers actually harm their own culture through bigoted performances. Through his art work, he claims to connect the negative impact of black minstrelsy in the past to the degradation of African American culture today by some modern hip-hop artists and black comedians. Yet, in his attempt to expose these entertainers, Green!eld becomes just as insulting and destructive as they are. Looking at his photographs raises the question: if the artist has to use an unambiguously offensive format to provide meaning to his work, then how is it any less degrading than the subject it aims to critique?

Unsurprisingly, Green!eld cloaks the perversity of his expression in the language of abstract good. "Out of this examination will come enlightenment," he writes in his artist's statement. But because of the limits of the art, the viewer is less likely to make this transformation than to feel bewildered, if not disgusted by the moral repugnance of Green!eld's content.

One of the most exalting qualities of photography in modern art is its ability to comment on and interpret the most controversial issues in our society. It raises awareness of the way these issues color our human experience - in how we respond to the forces of life, war, politics, sexuality and inequality. This kind of art - like the unsettling silhouettes of one of Green!eld's contemporaries, Kara Walker - helps us confront challenging, sometimes painful prejudices through re"ection, examination and discussion, instead of through brute force and abuse. The inherent value of this dialogue is one of the many reasons our society so highly prizes and protects the freedom of expression, even in its more base forms.

But in "Incognegro," Green!eld fails to understand or respect the essential power of such art. As a result, his work merely in"ames public emotion and insults a race of minorities - not for the sake of drawing attention to an important and ongoing social crisis - but for the sake of drawing attention to his art.

An online gallery of Mark Steven Green!eld's "Incognegro," as well as the artist's statement, can be viewed on the 18th Street Arts Center website: http://www.18thstreet.org/currentexhibitions. html.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools