the art of controversy -- who paints what

nbc news online -- #MuseumsSoWhite: Black Pain and Why Painting Emmett Till Matters
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/museumssowhite-representation-black-pain-why-emmett-till-painting-matters-n737931
  
They’ve been having a dumb argument about who gets to paint what, without bothering to look at the paintings. In this particular case the succinct answer is no one gets to paint this subject, the mutilated corpse of Emmett Till. The photograph is sufficient, there’s nothing more to say.

These two artists, one white, one black, have choreographed a fake news event over a martyr’s dead body, leap frogging up through the google search, the way we do things around here. Something overlooked in all the mad discussion is how marvelously ‘deskilled’ both these painters actually are. They’ve managed to present works of art at sixth grade level, we like to
keep them busy on rainy days -- kudos to you. Who needs to ‘learn to paint’ when just a simple smeary gesture says it all, makes all the national magazines, becomes an item on the news.

This is the bottom, no further down to go. At this point visual art has been reduced to a token for some current view-screen issue, just a place-holder, boring if it says too much. This is a sadly limited way to think about art, as a chic form of advertising for some social cause, made more potent, presumably, by its offhanded, could care less manner of presentation. Generate volumes of controversy if you can, but it still won’t be much to look at. Time to walk away.

Artists all around have moved on to something different, tired of earning the highly quotable press review but no money, a mostly academic privilege in the first place. With federal and state funding draining away, artists struggle with their own commitment as a way to imbue their art with substance, instead of borrowing from someone else's grief. Do the common folk respond? I don’t know, too early to tell. I am pretty sure they won’t ever give a damn about this dumb, disrespectful and demeaning artificial argument.