grace is choosing to love ourselves unconditionally.
grace is accepting that we can’t run from suffering.
grace is knowing we are not a part of someone else’s story.
grace reminds us we are larger than what happens to us.
grace is the doorway to the mystery of our human selves.
grace is our partner in the universal dance of love and compassion.
-Sharyll Burroughs
Photo: Silvana Lingg
In October of 2014, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City staged The Death of Klinghoffer, a 1991 opera based on the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish passenger killed during the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. Suffering ill health and confined to a wheelchair, Klinghoffer was shot in the head and thrown overboard by members of the Palestine Liberation Front. The critically acclaimed opera had been staged globally to little controversy. Yet in one of the most culturally sophisticated cities in the world –– the sh*t hit the fan.
Protesters, many of whom hadn’t even seen the opera, demanded the Met cancel the production. According to the New York Times, one protester labeled the baritone a fascist and another called for the set to be burned to the ground. Peter Gelb, the Mets general manager, received death threats. Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish organization, praised the Met and said the opera was not anti-Semitic. He received vitriolic emails, one labeling him a “kapo,” an insult referring to a Jewish inmate who oversaw fellow Jews in concentration camps.
The histrionics around the Met affair reminded me of a similar ruckus involving LEGO Concentration Camp, a 1996 work by Polish artist Zbigniew Libera. In 2002, the seven-piece set was exhibited at the Jewish Museum of New York City in a show entitled, Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art. The controversial exhibition received a great deal of press, most of it not so great. Troubled by the uproar, the LEGO Group urged Libera to withdraw the work from public view but eventually backed down. Polish officials pressured Libera to decline an invitation to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. "This is censorship all over again," Libera told the Los Angeles Times in 1997. "I created this work to inspire discussion, not to suppress it.” LEGO Concentration Camp continued to be shown internationally. Some people loved it. Many hated it, screamed bloody hell about it, and nobody died. There was debate, just as Libera had intended, and then it was over.
In my opinion, LEGO Concentration Camp is an exciting and compelling work. Libera pushed one of the most sacred and taboo subjects, the Holocaust, into a realm that was inconceivable: toys and play. And some 30 years later, his seminal work continues to provoke discourse. It now resides in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland.
The purpose of art is not to identify right or wrong. The great value of a work of art is that it does not tell people what to think or feel. Instead it offers them a window into their own experience of the object or image. And by observing their own individual reaction to what they are seeing (and experiencing) they are given the opportunity to examine their own feelings, assumptions and beliefs.
We can’t change the world. We can only change ourselves. Art is the way. Art challenges each and every one of us to decide what type of human being we want to be. To think for ourselves rather than conform. Art encourages us to be better despite cultural operating systems promoting apathy, prejudice, and hate.
The drama surrounding LEGO Concentration Camp and The Death of Klinghoffer reflects society’s inability to tolerate unorthodox ideas and differing points-of-view. The “agree to disagree” method of civil discourse is on life support. Individuals remain silent for fear of offending someone. Cancel culture is rampant, bullies use social media to shame and humiliate people, and censorship has become the norm though few seem to notice.
When a work of art is deemed offensive it does not mean it lacks value and I'm not talking about money. Art helps us to make meaning of why we exist. Someone once told me that we must turn toward our fears and lean into discomfort in order to break free of stories that don’t belong to us. Perhaps then we can create new perspectives and engage in more meaningful dialogues which embrace intolerance and suffering as well as acceptance and healing. The only way to find out is to be courageous enough to talk and listen to one another. We need art to help us with our journey along the path of the human condition because it provides a means from which to speak our deepest truths. Art is the doorway to the singular component vital to our very existence—freedom
The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington as Lord Macbeth and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth is Joel Coen's first film without his brother Ethan. Yet this 2021 adaptation of Shakespeare's tale of madness and violence remains firmly rooted in the Coen brothers' brand of idiosyncratic filmmaking. Washington in the lead role was an audacious choice.
But he's not the first black actor to inhabit the part. In 1825, American actor Ira Frederick Aldridge's Othello at London's Covent Garden was met with indignation and praise. Orson Welles 1936 staging of "Voodoo Macbeth" featured an all black cast with unknown Jack Carter in the lead. It has been reported that Washington was the only actor Coen considered. And as expected the internet, or Hissy Fit Guild, erupted into feverish whinging over matters of authenticity: Washington can't be Macbeth! There were no black people in 15th century Scotland!
I suppose authenticity depends on who's defining it, especially where white people are concerned. It would be remiss not to point out that for centuries multitudes have lauded white actors portraying Othello in black face, the most familiar being Laurence Olivier and Anthony Hopkins. Racism provided a convenient means to authenticate Othello on colonialist terms given that during the Bard’s lifetime black actors were supposedly nonexistent, thereby sanctioning white actors in black grease paint for all eternity. Or so they thought. Contemporary culture’s hypersensitivity around political incorrectness has rendered this travesty extinct. Black actors, including Paul Robeson, Laurence Fishburne, and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s quintessential interpretations of General Othello restored much needed equity.
Denzel Washington is a Shakespeare veteran, having played Richard lll at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Prince Aragon in Kenneth Branagh’s film, "Much Ado About Nothing," and on Broadway in the starring role as Julius Caesar. He is not only an astonishingly versatile actor but a movie star whose innate magnetism lends itself to Shakespeare characterizations. While it’s often necessary to define equity within the context of race and ethnicity, what is obvious is that Washington never defined himself by the narrow perceptions of others. He is committed to artistry, invariably choosing roles which stretch and challenge his abilities. Washington is first and foremost an actor. Not a black actor. An actor. So why shouldn't he play the paranoid murderous Scotsman?
Traditionalists are plagued by selective memory. They conveniently forget that Shakespeare's plays are studies in human behavior, mirrors held up to our lamentable predilections to destroy one another. And while the naysayers would have us believe otherwise, Macbeth is not so much about cultural identity but the vicissitudes of human nature. The profoundly flawed Lord Macbeth traded his humanity for evil. Washington capably inhabited those flaws so as to create a human psyche gone awry. This is the type of challenge actors love. And the type of prowess directors seek. What does equity look like? Skill and merit. Nonconformity. The mastery of one's craft. Fearlessness. Washington's Macbeth is a singular performance in service to Joel Coen's distinctive vision of Shakespeare's tragedy of human suffering: The art.
As I descended the stairs onto a New York City subway platform, a strange fluttering caught my eye, something that resembled a bird, or more precisely, a bird preening its feathers. As I drew closer I realized it was a homeless man frantically twisting pieces of newspaper and placing them onto different parts of his body. He was creating a garment to keep warm on a bitterly cold November day. Atop his head, a paper crown bobbed erratically each time he added a strip to his sleeve or bodice. I could not believe how extraordinary it was, a wearable sculpture, something comparable to the work of avant-garde fashion designers such as Comme des Garçons or Martin Margiela. I asked permission to take his photo and gave him some money in exchange. He had trouble keeping still which is why the image is blurry.
Galleries and museums are the places we turn to for art, four walled white box receptacles showing precious objects made by people deemed as experts. However, French philosopher Michel Foucault once said, “...in our society, art is related only to objects and not life or individuals. Experts called 'artists' make art. Why can’t everyone’s life become a work of art?”
I don’t know anything about the man in the photo but I do know that he is a work of art. And while art institutions have their place, I agree with Foucault. Life can be a work of art, even in the most painful bits.
Pancho Villa, 1971
Artist Robert Colescott's explorations of human absurdity reveal ambiguous relationships between belief and practice, individual and culture, and sex and morality. His works illuminate what writer Barbara Babcock calls, "a tolerated margin of mess," which she defines as areas of duality that obliterate conventional societal codes.
Colescott’s provocative paintings are worlds saturated in satire, where mischief and transgression are not mutually exclusive. He colors outside the lines of societal standards by subverting our self-insulating insistence on the need for comfort and safety. With a wink and a mischievous smile, we’re invited to observe a rogues gallery of contradictions prancing through surreal "Taboos'R'Us" pastiches or bucolic settings –– some cloaked as stereotypes, others in Disney dayglo –– behaving in ways we'd rather not know about. Colescott lays waste to our preconceived notions of social order. Are women sexually harassed or willing participants? Is the Black man a victim or the aggressor? Are we trapped in history or is history trapped in us? Should we really believe what we’re seeing? These dichotomies are not meant to be understood concretely, but more as something to be seen through, offering something beyond the superficialities of consumerism, structures of the past, or plain old complacency. There’s always more than one story. Colescott shows us, in the words of James Baldwin, "the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
Colescott provokes examination of a kind of counter-culture experience, an immensely uncomfortable process of inquiry and shedding. I believe that this kind of assessment and the discomfort that results is the most powerful vehicle for transformation, a gateway to personal and societal accountability. In a culture where our worst attributes are treated as virtues to aspire to, Colescott’s art is a portal to different ways of thinking, imagining unconventional societies where broadmindedness, compassion, and wisdom prevail and all people are POC (People of Consciousness.) Then, and only then, can we evolve into a society where egalitarianism is categorically defined as a birthright. From this perspective we can reclaim our humanity.
What are you willing to let go of? What do you want to grow into? Whatever life you're in is a channel for change. Herein lies the beauty of Robert Colescott's tolerated margins of mess. He has shown us the way. It would behoove us to follow.
The outrage over the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery is justified. I hope that everyone responsible will be held accountable by receiving very long prison sentences.
Here's what's bothering me. What is lost in all the machinations for justice is a sense of who the victims were as human beings. In other words, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery are now and will forever be defined by the circumstances of their deaths, which by default, links them to, and amplifies the stories of the white men who murdered them. George and Ahmaud lived lives filled with stories of their own, chapters of experiences which are buried beneath headlines, pundits, and soundbites. The media hangs around until it's distracted by a random Kardashian or another black man murdered for no good reason. Then the cycle begins again, the new name placed alongside previous victims, and so it goes, and goes and goes.
Perhaps some of you are already doing this, but while you're reading about or posting information relevant to these tragedies, please take time to also discover whatever you can about the lives of Ahmaud or George, or Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Rodney King, or Amadou Diallo. There's not much available about Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels, however, the gruesome details of their deaths will live on in perpetuity.
A human life should not be measured or valued this way. Do not only remember Ahmaud as the black man who was "chased after and shot," or George as the black man "on the ground with a knee on his neck." They did not deserve what happened to them. What they do deserve is to be defined as something immensely greater than senseless acts perpetrated by white men. Murder is not a legacy. A more powerful form of justice is to hold these men in our hearts and remember them by prioritizing their humanity, again, and again, and again, for as long as we draw breath.