Ink Image& 14th Edition | Spring 2022
- 3Ink & Image Spring ElizabethDesignHannahAinsleyCarolineCo-EditorsEmilieNiallEditorsElizabethCoverAnushkaCarolineJoeyElizabethContributorsVolume202214BaltusnikChenCookMaqboolArtistBaltusnikinChiefFinnLowrieMeyerCookDeanJavensEditorBaltusnik
- 4Table of Contents Letter from the Editors............................................................................................................Page 5 From Gay Liberation to Guerilla Art: LGBTQ Monumentalization in New York City Elizabeth Baltusnik.................................................................................................................Page 7 Creating an Open Stage: Media and Post-Studio Practices in the Work of Cao Fei Joey Chen..............................................................................................................................Page 21 Photographing Egypt: Opposing the Expression of a Colonialist Lens Caroline Cook.......................................................................................................................Page 38 The Continuous Struggle for Washington Square Park Anushka Maqbool.................................................................................................................Page 52 About Us...............................................................................................................................Page 65
Happy EmilieSincerely,reading!Meyer,Co-Editor in Chief
Niall Lowrie, Co-Editor in Chief
Running through these papers are themes of justice and debate; on who monuments are built for and who they should be built for; on who took photographs and what their biases were; on who uses Washington Square and who it was designed for. These debates are central to the advancement and expansion of Art History, as well as being directly related to the lived experience of daily life. We hope that in reading these papers you, too, begin to question the structures and artworks around you. We would like to take this opportunity to not only thank our faculty advisor, Professor Carol Krinksy, and also Professor Ritter, Peggy Coon, and the countless other NYU faculty and staff who have helped us bring this year’s edition to print. The advisors and authors of this year’s papers must also be thanked for their tireless efforts and their wonderful research.
- 5Dear Reader,
Central to the mission of Ink and Image are the notions of inspiring new research, encouraging creativity, and furthering connections. We hope that as you read this journal you are inspired by these notions/ ideas and learn a thing or two.
As the editors of Ink and Image we are delighted to present the fourteenth edition of NYU Department of Art History’s journal of original undergraduate research. This journal was founded in 2009 with the intention of granting undergraduates the opportunity to present work typically reserved for graduate students. The original founders Malcolm St. Clair (Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘09) and Alexis Wang (Art History ‘09) intended to create a dialogue between Art History departments and researchers, both within NYU and other academic institutions. We are proud to say that vision has been maintained throughout the thirteen years we have been running. This year we present to you a selection of papers with topics ranging from a history of LGBT monuments in New York City to nineteenth century photographs of Egyptian antiquities.
The Gay Rights Movement has undeniably come a long way since the first brick was thrown at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village of New York City in 1969. In the decades since, social attitudes and acceptance have shifted both locally and globally, and New York has continued to be at the forefront of advancing the rights of the LGBTQ community. However, given how few memorials and monuments have been erected in a city that prides itself on its queer history, it is unclear if social attitudes towards publicly acknowledging the community and its struggles have evolved as rapidly. While both artists and the government now seek to commemorate the Gay Rights Movement through acurate and representatitve memorials and monuments, many city works fall short of these ideals. Though it should not be revolutionary to respectfully and compellingly memorialize the actual leaders of an important movement, a consistent failure to act in this way can make it seem that these goals are unattainable. In analyzing what has been a shift from covert to overt memorialization, we see that the “Gay Village” and its nowrecognized queer spaces are at the center of a discussion about who and how we memorialize. Though labeling the pride-flag-lined streets of the Village as liberating queer spaces celebrates the LGBTQ community, it may also be causing commodification and touristification which displace members of that same community. As the government builds monuments and encourages tourists to visit these sites, what limitations does that place on individuals who have called these spaces home for decades? From Gay Liberation to guerilla-art statues of Marsha P. Johnson, there has been an apparent intentional shift in attitudes and methods of monumentalization, but by whom and for whom?
Elizabeth Baltusnik
From Gay Liberation to Guerilla Art: LGBTQ Monumentalization in New York City
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George Segal’s Gay Liberation (Figure 1), the world’s first work of public art to commemorate the LGBTQ struggle for equality, introduces the idea of memorializing the movement and continues to inform LGBTQ art. Now situated in Christopher Park outside of the Stonewall Inn, the memorial was not well received when it was proposed in 1979. The sculpture is a life-like, life-size bronze statue group, painted white, which depicts a standing male couple and a seated female couple. One of the men gently holds the shoulder of his partner, while one of the women delicately touches her partner’s thigh, emphasizing the physical intimacy of relationships through non-dramatic poses. According to critic
As passive and unassuming as Gay Liberation might seem, the work has been at the center of controversy since its inception, facing criticism from both the LGBTQ community and its opponents. It is difficult to find a group that Gay Liberation actually satisfied. While the LGBTQ community complained that the depiction was not explicit enough, opponents argued that merely representing LGBTQ couples was too explicit. Some critics took issue with the fact that the figures look too sad with too much emphasis placed on the interior lives of the couples. Others protested that the sculpture only featured privileged and committed relationships between middle class white couples, ignoring other elements of LGBTQ life. Many local residents opposed the sculpture, objecting to the subject matter much as they objected to the gay men and lesbians who were moving into the Village. Possibly attempting to hide their prejudice, some residents claimed to oppose the work on artistic grounds, saying that the sculpture was out of context with the neighborhood’s architecture and that it was too large for the park.2 The criticism of Segal’s work illustrates the difficulties some people have in accepting something as simple as the existence of gay people, as well as “the impossibility of completely satisfying the needs of a diverse and sometimes divided community.”3
Claude Summers, this quiet depiction “makes the delicate point that gay people are as feeling as anyone else,” contributing to Segal’s goal of normalizing and domesticizing LGBTQ relationships, in contrast to the sensationalized and over-sexualized representations in the media.1 Without the title or site-specific context of the work, viewers might have difficulty recognizing that the figures were, in fact, couples.
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Another area for criticism was George Segal’s identity as a heterosexual man. Segal, however, was not bothered by the criticism. He had at first been hesitant to accept the commission on the grounds that he was not a gay artist, but he eventually accepted, stating that he was “extremely sympathetic to the problems gay people have” and “couldn’t refuse to do it.”4 Important for the context of Segal’s selection is that all the gay and lesbian artists of comparable fame who had been approached for the commisision first, had turned it down. These artists rejected it for a multitude of reasons, but especially for the fact that most of them were “deeply closeted.”5 Ultimately, although Gay Liberation is a thoughtfully executed monument to the community and there is contextual justification for Segal’s selection, it is hard to argue that community consultation or LGBTQ artist involvement would not have improved the reception of the 1work.Claude J. Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” GLBTQ Arts, (January, 2015): 1. 2 Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” 4. 3 Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” 2. 4 Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” 4. 5 Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” 4.
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As the AIDS crisis grew in severity during the 1980s, communities turned towards memorials as a way to commemorate and honor those lost to the disease. The large gay male population of the Village meant that the neighborhood was disproportionately affected by the epidemic, though small memorials began to appear elsewhere in Manhattan. The majority of these memorials were private rather than public, and those that were public typically did not articulate the reason for the memorial. For example, the first recorded AIDS memorial in New York City is the 1985 National AIDS Memorial at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, consisting of a book of names enclosed in glass and stored in the medical nave of the church.9 Although the acknowledgment of the LGBTQ community and of the AIDS crisis by the church is a significant step in and of itself, the inaccessibility and lack of outright
The New York sculpture ended up in Madison, Wisconsin, where it was defaced but also embraced by the local community who enjoyed dressing up the sculptures with hats and scarves.7 The New York cast was finally moved to the original proposed location of Christopher Park during the 1992 Pride celebrations. At the dedication ceremony, Segal noted that there were no longer any religious protestors, and, after speaking with locals, he learned it was because they had all died.8 Today, the sculpture continues to face criticism over its literal “white-washing” of the Gay Rights Movement, but controversy has mostly died down. Gay Liberation might not be a very “loud” monument, but its managing to upset both sides of the LGBTQ Movement is emblematic of the difficulties encountered in monumentalizing such a diverse and embattled community, and its status as the first work of public art to commemorate the LGBTQ community places it in a central role in the history of queer public art.
The original commission called for two castings of Gay Liberation, one for installation in Christopher Park and one destined for Los Angeles. However, in 1980, Greenwich Village was not socially ready for Gay Liberation, no matter how often it was referred to as “the Gay Village.” The sculpture was supposed to be a gift to the city, but, although most Village political leaders supported the project, City Hall received threats to blow up the statue and failed to provide the necessary funding to install the work. The Los Angeles cast faced a similar rejection when the local government refused to accept the work. Eventually, the Los Angeles-bound cast was installed at Stanford University, where it was repeatedly defaced, consequently moved to storage, and then defaced again once it was reinstalled.6
6 Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” 3. 7 Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” 3. 8 Summers, “George Segal’s Gay Liberation,” 4. 9 “National AIDS Memorial at Cathedral of St. John the Divine,” AIDSmemorial.info, NAMES Project Netherlands Foundation, 31 Oct. 2020, memorial_at_cathedral_of_st_john_the_devine.html.https://www.aidsmemorial.info/contribution/id=801/mid=0/national_aids_
- 10representation of the victims demonstrates a hesitancy to fully memorialize the crisis and the community.
11 “Hope Garden at Battery Park,” AIDSmemorial.info, NAMES Project Netherlands Foundation, 31 Oct. 2020, https://www.aidsmemorial.info/memorial/id=183/hope_garden_at_battery_park.html.
10 “AIDS Memorial at Church of St. Veronica,” AIDSmemorial.info, NAMES Project Netherlands Foundation, 31 Oct. 2020, https://www.aidsmemorial.info/memorial/id=238/aids_memorial_at_church_of_st_veronica.html.
The bench, situated in the Village section of Hudson River Park, is engraved with a quote reading, “I can sail without wind, I can row without oars, but I cannot part from my friend without tears.” With this touching sentiment, the bench provides an opportune location for people to reflect, mourn, or celebrate the memories of those who died from AIDS. Aside from the intentions and memories of those who visit the site, nothing at the memorial makes a direct mention of AIDS. Even as recently as 2008, just three years before New York State would legalize gay marriage, there was still a reluctance to acknowledge publicly the LGBTQ community or the AIDS epidemic.
Created six years after this first memorial, the AIDS Memorial at the Church of St. Veronica continues the idea of interior memorialization. The church was the site of one of the city’s earliest AIDS hospice centers, making it a fitting location for a memorial. In this case, plaques with names of certain victims were mounted in the choir loft– not easily seen, yet a more expressive location.10
In 1992, an AIDS memorial finally appeared outdoors: the Hope Garden at Battery Park. This simple rose garden, devoid of names or faces, is labeled with a Parks and Recreation sign reading “Hope Garden.” Below this title, on a much smaller plaque, three lines of text filling the same height as the “H” in “Hope” explain that the garden is “dedicated to those living with HIV and AIDS, and to the memory of those who have died.”11 Almost two decades later in 2008, another unassuming exterior memorial was unveiled at Hudson River Park (Figure 3). On the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, the 42-foot long curved stone bench was formally dedicated to “those who died from AIDS, those who live with HIV, those who have cared for people with HIV/AIDS, and the educators and researchers who will one day eradicate HIV/AIDS.”12
12 “AIDS Memorial,” Hudson River Park, Hudson River Park Friends & Hudson River Park Trust, https://hudsonriverpark.org/activities/aids-memorial.
In December of 2016, the city finally received an AIDS memorial that unambiguously represents the epidemic. After forty years of the fight against AIDS, there was still no highly visible public memorial to honor those who were lost or the caregivers and activists whose work helped to alter the trajectory of the epidemic. This absence was the reason that community activists first proposed the New York City AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle. Starting as a grassroots advocacy effort in early 2011, the New York City AIDS Memorial committee developed into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a robust board of directors. The memorial sits on a triangular site that was once part of the St. Vincent’s Hospital campus,
- 11a “unique crossroads of early AIDS history in New York City.”13 The hospital’s position between Chelsea and Greenwich Village meant that it was surrounded by a community deeply affected by AIDS, and it became the location for the first AIDS ward in the city. The site is also less than a block from the LGBT Community Center on 13th street, where many AIDS advocacy groups got their start, as well as within blocks of the former Gay Men’s Health Crisis headquarters and the office of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, a leader who pioneered community-based research trials for AIDS drugs. The proximity of numerous influential sites has led many to consider St. Vincent’s triangle as the “symbolic epicenter of the AIDS epidemic,” as well as the fight against it.
13 “About the New York City AIDS Memorial.”
15 The soaring triangular nature of the memorial seems to draw on a more hopeful tone– the community has survived the epidemic, overcoming and rising above the struggles of the 1980s. Beneath the canopy, passages from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” are engraved into the granite pavement. The poem is often referred to as a “transcendent celebration of hope, unity, and human dignity,”16 emphasizing the idea of a strengthened community while still providing space for remembrance of the men, women, and children lost to AIDS. Following the AIDS memorial, the 2016 establishment by executive order of the LGBT Memorial Commission seems to mark a shift in the form and quality of monuments for the LGBTQ community in New York City.17 The commission was intended to provide recommendations for the creation of a new monument to honor the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, as well as the LGBTQ community in general and all victims of hate, intolerance, and violence. Composed of ten members appointed by the governor, the commission included activists who fought AIDS, worked for marriage
The design of the memorial offers ample space for contemplation and reflection on the epidemic. The most visible element, the 18-foot tall white triangular steel canopy, provides shelter while still allowing sunlight to illuminate the space below. In fact, a plethora of triangles compose the memorial, from the triangular supports that rise from the ground to the geometric grid that fills the canopy. These triangles recall a traumatic experience from queer history, as in Nazi concentration camps, gay prisoners were forced to wear a pink triangle on their chests. Yet in the famous “Silence = Death” poster of the 1980s, which challenged society to acknowledge and take action against the AIDS epidemic, this same pink triangle is seen again, inverted, this time as a symbol of pride and defiance.
14 “About the New York City AIDS Memorial.”
15 Alexandra Scwartz,. “New York’s Necessary New AIDS Memorial,” The New Yorker, Condé Nast, December 8th, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/new-yorks-necessary-new-aids-memorial.
14
16 “About the New York City AIDS Memorial.”
17 In June 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed Executive Order No. 158, launching the new commission.
At the unveiling, Governor Cuomo highlighted the continued increase of social acceptance by the government and attempts at reconciliation with the LGBTQ community. After acknowledging that 18 Andrew Cuomo, “Press Release: Governor Cuomo Signs Executive Order to Establish LGBT Memorial Commission for Monument Honoring Fight for Equal Rights and All Victims of Hate, Intolerance, and Violence.” Just Facts, Vote Smart, June 26th, 2016. https://justfacts.votesmart.org/public-statement/1107118/governor-cuomo-signs-executiveorder-to-establish-lgbt-memorial-commission-for-monument-honoring-fight-for-equal-rights-and-all-victims-of-hate-intolerance19and-violence.“LGBTMonument
Debuts in Greenwich Village,” Hudson River Park, Hudson River Park Friends & Hudson River Park Trust, 18 July 2018, https://hudsonriverpark.org/lgbt-monument-debuts/.
- 12equality, and other LGBTQ issues. In the same Executive Order, governor Andrew Cuomo designated the Stonewall Inn as a New York State Historic Site. Referring to Stonewall as “the birthplace of the modern LGBT rights movement,” Cuomo acknowledged the “decades of city-sanctioned bigotry and oppression” that plagued the neighborhood prior to the Stonewall riots.18 While Cuomo recognized the role the New York government played in inciting the Stonewall riots, he also seemed to imply that the days of NYPD surveillance were over. Instead of making systematic changes that could eradicate the “city-sanctioned bigotry and oppression,” the governor’s actions seemed to favor a mere image of acceptance over enacting concrete change. At least the clear acknowledgment by the government of the community in general, as well as the desire to build a thoughtful memorial with community input, seemingly marks a shift away from the attitudes, practices and mistakes surrounding George Segal’s Gay Liberation. However, the government’s new position could only be evaluated by the messages and effects of the completedTwomonument.yearslater, the city received the Memorial Commission work (Figure 5). Designed by Anthony Goicolea, the LGBT Monument at Hudson River Park was unveiled during 2018 Pride to a crowd including Governor Andrew Cuomo, Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, State Senator Brad Hoylman, and, of course, the members of the LGBT Memorial Commission. The monument features nine modified “boulders” made of bronze. Some are bisected with clear laminated glass that acts as a prism to cast rainbows on the surrounding landscape, although shade from the surrounding trees makes this a rare occurrence. Other boulders are split, their interiors engraved with quotes such as “without community there is no liberation… but community must not mean a shedding of our differences” and “difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.” The monument’s sitespecific design is intended to promote thought and reflection while providing space for people to unite in the “communal environment” of Hudson River Park. The proportion and circular arrangement of the rocks is designed to create “a safe harbor that beckons visitors to rest upon them, acting as a unifier to communities of different people who will come to sit, visit, commune, mourn, love, and remember.”19
22 Rachel Lowen Walker, “Toward a FIERCE Nomadology: Contesting Queer Geographies on the Christopher Street Pier.” PhaenEx: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture 6 no. 1, 94.
Located in the Greenwich Village section of the park, the LGBT Monument seeks to continue the legacy of “the Gay Village.” At the unveiling, the artist, Anthony Goicolea, spoke of his personal experience with the location, recounting a memory of running along the piers by the Hudson River when he first moved to New York City in the 1990s, saying that he “had never seen LGBTQ life celebrated so openly, so the waterfront became a place of comfort and identity to [him].”21 In fact, the piers, specifically Pier 45, were places of comfort for many LGBTQ individuals before their redevelopment into Hudson River Park. Prior to the gentrification which turned the improvised and adapted queer public space into a regulated and planned park, the pier was said to “[flame] with the passion of people who don’t feel free to be themselves in their neighborhoods and who see this hallowed stretch of pavement as a place where they can represent.”22 Journalist Richard Goldstein described the variety of individuals who found a home at the pier, highlighting their “banjee-boy realness” and “post-butch dykeness.”23 In a time when so many 20 Cuomo, “Press Release.”
23 Lowen Walker, “Toward a FIERCE Nomadology,” 94.
21 “LGBT Monument Debuts in Greenwich Village.”
- 13the monument seeks to honor the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, he stated that “as we recognize the sacrifice this community has had to endure throughout the course of history, we are reminded of our commitment to protecting and advancing the rights of the LGBT community until we live in a world free from hate, once and for all.”20 His attempts to create a thoughtful memorial and his speech demonstrating his acceptance of the community certainly marked a change from the government’s attitude in the early days of the Gay Rights Movement, but this carefully-designed monument is still only covertly dedicated to the LGBTQ community. The work fosters general hope and unity, but there is no plaque labeling the site as the “LGBT Monument.” There are no signs at the site mentioning the Pulse Nightclub shooting or the LGBTQ community and no clear dedication to the groups or individuals it seeks to honor. Even the name, the LGBT Monument, is vague and nondescript. Monument for what, exactly? By condensing all the people and all the struggles into one nonspecific title and site, the monument becomes even further removed from the victims it is supposed to honor. As at the Hope Garden, the AIDS Memorial Bench, or even Gay Liberation, the lack of association between the monuments and their honorees generalizes the community and prevents the monuments from generating their full emotional impact. The creation of a commission filled with LGBT leaders and activists is certainly an admirable development, especially in contrast to the commission of Gay Liberation, but the execution of the goals of the executive order created a monument as generalizing and inarticulate as those before it.
- 14spaces sought to exclude marginalized people, these communities came together to form a space where everyone could feel included. Even the gay bars that proliferated in the Village came with restrictions, since people under twenty-one could not legally enter. As a result, queer youth specifically used the pier as a venue for socializing, parties, Balls, and as a living space for homeless LGBTQ individuals.24
The influential 1990 documentary Paris is Burning includes many scenes from the Christopher Street Pier, demonstrating the freedom of expression that came with occupying the space. In the film, the protagonists mention the “supportive environment” of the pier and surrounding Village and the fact that their lives in “the real world” were not the same as the ones they lived in these spaces. In a time when queer people had to monitor the ways they talked, looked, and acted, the protagonists of Paris is Burning felt free to dress as they please as they vogue through the Village.25 From Christopher Park to the Christopher Street Pier, queer individuals of color felt liberated, free from the societal restrictions to which they were often subjected. Visitors who are aware of the waterfront’s history are able to appreciate the location of the LGBT Monument, but there is a potential for education that could have been achieved through signs similar to those that inform about other topics along the river. If you’d like to learn about varieties of fish or Lululemon fitness classes, the Hudson River Park conservancy is prepared, but there is no mention of the cultural history of the Village and the LGBTQ community, aside from the Pride flags that line the lampposts of Pier 45. The LGBT Monument, then, like many of the LGBT monuments before it, fails to adequately honor the history and individuals who created the vibrant community it is supposed to honor. Moreover, it can be perceived as participating in the sanitizing and erasure of LGBTQ spaces which the development of Hudson River Park spearheaded. Once a site where impoverished and ostracized LGBTQ youth found community and a space for expression, the park–and its generalizing monument–is now a space where tourists and residents of the highly gentrified neighborhood promenade. In an attempt to finally represent the marginalized queer individuals of color whose space was taken over by Hudson River Park and whose history was left by the wayside by earlier monuments, aswell as to address a gender gap in public art, She Built NYC proposed a monument for Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in 2019. Chirlane McCray, head of She Built NYC, said that it was important for an LGBT monument like this to have “a name and a face” and include stories of activists like Johnson, a black transgender woman, and Rivera, a Latina transgender woman.26 The monument would be one of the 24 Lowen Walker, “Toward a FIERCE Nomadology,” 94. 25 Jennie Livingston, director, Paris is Burning, directed by Jennie Livingston (1990; Toronto: Off-White 26Productions).JuliaJacobs,
“Two Transgender Activists Are Getting a Monument in New York,” The New York Times, May 29th, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/arts/transgender-monument-stonewall.html.
- 15first in the world dedicated to transgender people, and the proposed location at Ruth Wittenberg Triangle would perpetuate Christopher Street as the location for first monuments of queer people. In contrast to the nameless, identity-less sculptures of Gay Liberation, this monument would seek to counter the illusion that the Gay Rights Movement was solely a white, privileged movement. Marsha P. Johnson’s nephew, Al Michaels, offered commentary on the proposal, saying that he “thought his aunt might scoff at the idea of a statue of herself” but “would be ecstatic that New York had reached a point at which it would build a monument to a transgender woman” and “proud that the city was ‘leading the world into the future.’”27
In response to this lack of follow through, a group of queer artists banded together to create their own memorial for Marsha P. Johnson in August of 2021 (Figure 6). Led by Jesse Pallotta, a self-described “queer sex worker,” the group erected this tribute as a kind of “guerilla memorial” without a permit, in Christopher Park. Pallotta chose to develop the project because of his love of sculpture, but also because of his connection to the subject matter and Johnson’s influence. The sculpture itself is a bronze-painted plaster bust with a waterproof lacquer that harkens back to more traditional forms of monumentalization in a style commonly seen depicting the white male leaders of centuries ago. Pallotta put copious amounts of time and consideration into his representation of Johnson, describing how he printed out as many photos of Johnson as he could in order to document Johnson’s gender expression and emotions across time. On “[spending] that much time memorizing someone’s body,” the artist says it was “kinda similar to falling in love.” When it came to installing the work, the team arrived at Christopher Park right when it opened, built the wooden pedestal, filled the base with 150 pounds of concrete, and the campaign was finished.Nearly28 every aspect of this memorial was carefully considered, down to the placement of the statue within the park. Christopher Park’s proximity to the Stonewall Inn makes it a logical location for an activist who essentially led the Stonewall Riots, but Pallotta also intended the Marsha P. Johnson statue to contrast with Gay Liberation and the statue of General Sheridan which also stand in the park. By placing 27 Jacobs, “Two Transgender Activists Are Getting a Monument in New York.”
In fact, although the two women are often recognized today for their contributions to the Gay Rights Movement, Johnson and Rivera were often sidelined from discussions since many leaders did not want to include transgender rights in their priorities. After decades of erasure, it seemed as though the She Built NYC proposal would finally give the two women the representation they deserved, but the monument was canceled after years of delays and the uncertainty of the Covid pandemic.
28 Hard Crackers Editor, “‘We Did Not Get Permission’: A Discussion With Jesse Pallotta,” Hard Crackers, September 26th, 2021, https://hardcrackers.com/we-did-not-get-permission-a-discussion-with-jesse-pallotta/.
Referencing the General Sheridan statue’s position within Stonewall National Monument, Pallotta says that “the park’s aesthetics are rooted in colonialism, and the State’s attempt to recognize the LGBTQ+ movement in this public space has further isolated the local community from its historical landmark.”30
- 16Johnson in the center of the park, the artist lets her she stand symbolically as a central figure of the modern Gay Rights Movement.
The site’s status as a Federal monument created complexity when journalists did not know which branch of government to ask for comment on the technically illegal installation. However, the work was positively received, and the attention brought by the need for commentary did not result in criticism towards the artists but instead towards the government.29 The monument’s dedication to a single LGBTQ individual, a clear departure from earlier monuments, led many to compare it to the government monuments and question why there are so few dedicated to LGBTQ individuals in a city that has been home to a plethora of history-making queer people. This reception of the work marks an important shift in the discussions surrounding public LGBTQ monuments in New York CIty. Over 40 years ago, many in the Greenwich Village community opposed a work as passive as Gay Liberation, and the local government refused to accept the statue. Today, community allies accept a powerful bust of a black trans woman with open arms, questioning why the government had not done something sooner.
Erecting monuments and statues in traditionally queer spaces has the power to amplify the feelings of acceptance and belonging within these spaces by challenging heteronormative standards and providing a liberated zone for individuals to honor their identities. More often than not, and especially in the case of the Village, recognizing these locations as “queer spaces” also invites outsiders such as tourists to enjoy the space. Unfortunately, the celebration of the movement often coincides with the removal of long-time, frequently unhoused occupants of the Park in the name of making the outsiders feel more comfortable. As Deidre Conlon highlights, even the bars and storefronts around Stonewall confirm its status as a social and consumer space that “reflects the economic strength of a certain [stratum] of the gay male community.”
Christopher Park and the surrounding streets have become a space for “commodification, consumption, and the middle class reign.”31 Just as the residents of the Village in the 1980s advocated for the removal
In his discussion of the Marsha P. Johnson statue, Jesse Pallotta highlights the risks accompanying this sort of social acceptance: the isolation of queer individuals from “their” spaces.
30 Hard Crackers Editor, “‘We Did Not Get Permission’: A Discussion With Jesse Pallotta.”
29 Hard Crackers Editor, “‘We Did Not Get Permission’: A Discussion With Jesse Pallotta.”
31 Deirdre Conlon, “Productive Bodies, Performative Spaces: Everyday Life in Christopher Park,” SEXUALITIES -LONDON-, no. 4: 473.
- 17of the LGBTQ community from their neighborhood, policing continues the forced removal of primarily queer people of color from these spaces at the request of wealthy, typically-white Village-goers.32
32 Lowen Walker, “Toward a FIERCE Nomadology,” 96-98.
36 Conlon, “Productive Bodies, Performative Spaces,”475.
34 In her analysis of Christopher Park, Conlon observed the same group of five to six men, ranging in age from their early 20s to late 50s, who would constantly occupy the park; at least one member of the group seemed always to be present, as if the “space was the established and constantly monitored territory of this group of users.”35 She quoted a middle-aged white man as saying that the group was “noisy, disruptive, always creating hassle, and takes space from other people.” Another white man pointed to the group of “hustlers” and said that the men “[knew] nothing about welfare or community.”36 It was as if the group was protecting the site, but a large portion of the community would rather have them removed as a way of making the park more palatable.Policing of the Village continues, as the gates of Christopher Park are locked, the unhoused individuals are forcibly removed by park rangers, and as queer youth of color are subjected to a curfew at the pier. At a time when so many people, Village residents included, love to tout their acceptance of the LGBTQ community and honor trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson, it is clear that social attitudes have not evolved as far as some might like to pretend. If we look solely at the tiny triangle of Christopher Park, it is evident that attitudes towards the LGBTQ community have evolved toward acceptance and inclusion. Standing feet apart are two monuments that both represent LGBTQ people, but they have vastly different histories and representations. While Gay Liberation’s installation was stopped by the local government, the Federal government allowed the Marsha P. Johnson guerilla-statue to stay illegally. The passive, quiet representation of white people in Gay Liberation received bomb threats,
35 Conlon, “Productive Bodies, Performative Spaces,” 474.
33 Conlon, “Productive Bodies, Performative Spaces,” 473-474.
Labeling sites like Christopher Park and Christopher Street Pier as queer spaces often ignores the societal issues that still affect the space. The commodification of queer spaces for the purpose of consumerism and the manufacturing of tourist experiences leads to visitors entering the spaces, viewing the art, taking pictures, and leaving, embracing the sites as pieces of LGBTQ history and ignoring their complicated present.33 What about the people who do not have the opportunity to leave? What about individuals like Sylvia Rivera who once had to live on the benches by the pier and the park? The government’s attempts to recognize these sites as the queer spaces they are has in turn heightened the issues of gentrification, social class, and race that continue to proliferate in these areas.
34 Lowen Walker, “Toward a FIERCE Nomadology,” 91-93.
while the stoic, traditional representation of a transgender woman of color who was not even accepted by the Gay Rights Movement in her time is now embraced by the community who once knew her. Even the fact that Marsha P. Johnson was a real person marks a shift from the nameless, identity-less figures of Gay Liberation, as well as from the involvement of queer artists in recent anonymizing or collective monuments. Similar sentiments can be seen through the city’s AIDS memorials, as the nameless, interior memorials have slowly made their way outside, becoming less ambiguous in what they seek to represent. The acceptance of the LGBTQ community can be clearly seen through the fact that people can and do now commemorate the community in appropriate ways. As monuments become more explicit, it is essential to consider what societal factors might be implicit in the spaces that surround them. While government acceptance seems to be present, there’s still a general lack of actually supporting the community.
The surveillance of the Stonewall era cannot be forgotten; the piers and parks are still heavily policed so the wealthier Village-residents and tourists can feel safer, but little is done to make sure the community feels safe and supported. As social acceptance of the LGBTQ community grows, it’s necessary to ensure that we actively and accurately support the community we seek to reflect through our monuments and memorials.
- 18 -
Governor Cuomo’s LGBT Memorial Commission produced an essentially vague, nondescript Pulse Nightclub memorial, and She Built NYC never continued with promises of a Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera monument. The labeling of spaces like Christopher Park and Christopher Street Pier as “queer spaces” has the danger of commodifying the queer experience by inviting outsiders in for a visit and isolating the actual members of the local community.
Figure 2: AIDS Memorial at Hudson River Park. Baltusnik, Elizabeth. “AIDS Memorial at Hudson River Park.” Photograph. n.p, 23 March 2022. Author’s collection. Digital.
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Figures 1.1 and 1.2: George Segal’s Gay Liberation. Baltusnik, Elizabeth. “Gay Liberation.” Photograph. n.p, 23 March 2022. Author’s collection. Digital. Baltusnik, Elizabeth. “Gay Liberation.” Photograph. n.p, 4 February 2021. Author’s collection. Film.
Figure 3: AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle Baltusnik, Elizabeth. “AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle.” Photograph. n.p, 23 March 2022. Author’s collection. Digital.
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Figure 4: LGBT Memorial at Hudson River Park Baltusnik, Elizabeth. “LGBT Memorial at Hudson River Park.” Photograph. n.p, 23 March 2022. Author’s collection. Digital.
- 21Figure 5: Marsha P. Johnson Statue at Stonewall National Monument Erlick, Eli. “Marsha P. Johnson Bust.” Photograph. Atlanta: CNN, n.d. From CNN: “A bust of Marsha P. Johnson went up near the Stonewall Inn as a tribute to the transgender activist.” p-johnson-bust-new-york-trnd/index.html.https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/28/us/marsha-
Creating an Open Stage: Media and Post-Studio Practices in the Work of Cao Fei
- 22A star in the contemporary art world, Cao Fei (b. 1978) is a Chinese multimedia artist whose versatile and prolific response to urban development and contemporary life has secured her spectacular exhibitions worldwide.
Joey Chen
Over her twenty-year career, Cao has spoken from a Chinese perspective, rooting her social activism and artistic investigations in the often-underrepresented lives of China’s working class, and the shifting societal structures that directly affect them. While retaining her specific frame of reference, Cao’s integration of various forms of media, as well as her socially engaging post-studio practices, have made her prominent in the global art scene, particularly the generation of artists who favor the expansive potential of social spaces over the confines of the studio. Through her works, Cao envisions and constructs a utopia for all. She conceptualizes an alternative community for the city, state, and the world, and more important, a social revolution which transforms the way we live, interact with others, and define ourselves.Thecombination of cultural specificity and a distinctly global reference frame notable in Cao’s work may be traced to the universally liberal and globalized cultural atmosphere of her home town. Born and raised in Guangzhou, China during the post-reform era, Cao and her generation have lived in a “confusing” time and place, as she puts it, resulting from high-speed urbanization.1 A megacity located in the heart of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, and one of the first areas in China to become affluent during the economic reform era, Guangzhou centralized the globalization and urbanization trend in the 1970s. With the increasing openness of the domestic socio-political environment, as well as the influx of overseas investment—facilitated by its two neighbors Hong Kong and Macau (both Western colonies at the time)—the PRD area underwent rapid industrial and technological development.2 The economic ties that Guangzhou and Hong Kong cultivated by virtue of their geographic proximity, are among many elements that connected them. The two regions also have in common the globally-influenced Cantonese pop culture whose effects can be found in songs, MTV, anime, and video games. These media form a common base of self-representation among pan-PRD citizens—mainly youths—a populus shaped by 1 Cao Fei, quoted in Carolee Thea, “Cao Fei: Global Player” (ArtAsiaPacific, 2006), 66. http://caofei.com/texts. 2aspx?id=14&year=2007&aitid=1.D.J.Dwyer,“ThePearlRiverDelta” (Geography 74, no. 4, 1989), 362–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40571752.
Cao’s cultural background has played a key role in formulating her ideological framework, activating an individual response to shifts in both interpersonal and societal structures that are expressed in her multifaceted artistic practices. Cao employs a variety of media, from more traditional photography and video to newer technologies such as virtual reality channels, and theatrical installations. These selfexplanatory, performative, and participatory approaches also allow Cao’s work to reach a wide global audience. Far exceeding the limits of traditional physical mediums, social space constitutes the expansive matrix of Cao’s art, a “map” of imagination and interpretation based on real-world encounters and contemporary lifestyles.
Father does not stop at the bond between parent and child, interlacing family relationships
3 Nikita Yingqian Cai, “CAO FEI: When Random Characters Meet with Their Apparatus,” in Bentu: Chinese Artists in a Time of Turbulence and Transformation: Cao Fei, Hao Liang, Hu Xiangqian, Liu Chuang, Liu Shiyuan, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, Qiu Zhijie, Tao Hui, Xu Qu, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, ed. Suzanne Pagé, Laurence Bossé, and Philip Tinari (Paris: Éditions Hazan, 2016), 47. 4 Hanru Hou, “Politics Of Intimacy – On Cao Fei’s Work,” 曹斐 Cao Fei, accessed November 22, 2021, http://www.caofei.com/ 5texts.aspx?id=17&year=2008&aitid=1.Ibid.
Cao’s career began at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in the 2000s, where she produced short films shot on digital video, capturing her personal life and reactions to her social environment. The weaving of interpersonal and societal structures, which would become central themes in Cao’s practice, can be found in her early video work Father (2005), a documentary which portrays her own father’s devotion to his practice as an acclaimed sculptor specializing in official statues of public and political figures. The film captures his process of creating a government-commissioned life-size sculpture of Deng Xiaoping, former paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China and the honored initiator of Chinese economic reform (Figure 1).4 In her film, Cao follows her father at a close distance, capturing each phase of the statue’s construction—a work which became his celebrated artistic accomplishment—from molding to installation. Her intimate, reverent, yet objective lens evinces paternal kinship: we witness the dynamic of an ever-supportive parent and “rebellious” child who refuses to follow her successful father’s path to become a traditional realist artist, and instead delves into contemporary art, working from the fringes.5 Nevertheless, this documentary represents a reconciliation between the father and daughter – and between two generations of artists – as Cao embraces her father’s vocation in her work.
- 23urbanism and consumerism.3 The economic resources of the state, the accelerated modernization process, and the embrace of global culture across the region, all served as fields of inspiration and creative content for Cao. She stands as a representative of this period in China’s history, transmitting through her work the aspiration, gratification, fear, and confusion of her generation within a rapidly developing society.
- 24and personal psychologies with the broader social, economic, and political history of the state. As Cao explained in an interview, in the filming process she “began to rediscover [her] father as well as the relationship between him and his work and the rest of society.”6 She observed not only his daily work routine, but also the systematic construction of figurative monuments utilized as propaganda models for state politics. By depicting the state’s official sculptor’s devotion, to both his work and political figures such as Deng, the film catalyzes a critical contemplation of publicly-worshipped heroes and transformative milestones in the rapid social development of modern China. In expanding the microcosmic personal narrative, and relating it to a wider social framework, Cao substantiates her matrix of art via filmic storytelling. In subsequent work, Cao delves deeper into the fabric of social space and continues to experiment with diverse mediums, notably computational technology. In the RMB City series (2007-2011), located on the virtual reality platform Second Life, the artist creates the eponymous place (inspired by the Chinese currency RMB) as an online utopia. Cao, using the virtual identity of her avatar China Tracy, is the city’s architect and its first citizen. An island located in the middle of an infinite sea, RMB City’s built environment comprises construction scaffolding, a condensed grouping of urban skyscrapers, historical sites, and contemporary entertainment facilities, inter alia (Figure 2). Avatars flying across the ocean survey the city from a bird’s eye view, which allows them to see the urban Chinese scenery replete with monumental structures. We find replicas of the spinning Ferris wheel above Tiananmen Square, Shanghai’s giant tilted building with its marked pink orbs resembling the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, and the symbolic hollow steel structure of Beijing’s Olympic Stadium. Also salient are the totems of industrialization and urbanization, such as the huge chimney spewing flames and polluting smoke, numerous ships speeding in and out of the harbor, and airplanes gliding over the terraced fields in the slits of buildings of the central business district.7 These familiar emblems in these virtual cityscapes may remind Second Life users of the world outside their screens, yet the conglomerates of buildings which are located miles apart in reality, and the visibly collapsing landmarks, reaffirm that this is a second life. This is the time and space of a new urban world looming over the present. In Cao’s art, technology is not merely a self-sufficient material support; it is an evolving medium and language co-constructed by author and viewer. To experience and interact with these cityscapes, viewers must register their Second Life accounts, select a virtual avatar, learn the game, and then navigate and build the virtual city together 6 Cao Fei and Cao Chong’en, “Me and My Father,” interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, 曹斐 Cao Fei, June 2007, http://www. 7caofei.com/texts.aspx?id=18&year=2007&aitid=1.CaoFei,“RMBCity:OnlineUrbanization,”曹斐 Cao Fei, http://www.caofei.com/works.aspx?year=2007&wtid=3.
10 Cao Fei, “RMB City Manifesto,” in Cao Fei: I Watch That Worlds Pass By, ed. Renate Wiehager and Christian Ganzenberg (Berlin: Daimler Art Collection, 2015), 199.
For Cao, whose former studio was demolished by the bulldozers of urbanization, making art in the contact zones of interpersonal and relational spaces and conceiving of an “urban studio,” was her response to the rapid social developments of industrialization and globalization in China during the 2000s, which she developed in her art as a public-oriented advocacy of social engagement.12 In her
8 Chris Berry, “Cao Fei’s ‘Magical Metropolises,’” in Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China: Urbanized Interface, ed. Minna Valjakka & Meiqin Wang (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 219-220.
9 “Events,” RMB City Blogs, accessed December 12, 2021, http://rmbcity.com/category/events/.
- 25with Cao.8 In turn, the virtual residents of the RMB City become actors—even artists themselves—as their activities are recorded and integrated as part of the work.
Employing the virtual reality technology, Cao not only creates a simulated city space, but also activates it as a vibrant social community that welcomes global participants and facilitates communal gatherings. Nevertheless, in order to render these virtual and temporal encounters tangible for exhibitions, collections, and preservation, the construction process of RMB City alongside the virtual events it hosted, have been translated into videos and displayed as separate artworks. In 2014, the naked idol competition was displayed at Hong Kong’s Para Site Gallery as a video piece.11 The pitfalls of inter-semiotic translations are that they halt the participatory evolution of Cao’s virtual worlds, fossilizing them in material media. However, having plunged into a practice which explores social space, Cao is not one to be bound by these limitations. Indeed, she has managed to transcend the limits of mastering a single medium, continuing to immerse herself in the experimentation and integration of diverse materials. Through her post-studio works, Cao moves her practice out of the traditional atelier into actual space, soliciting broader social contexts and new conversations, thus lending a more profound relational significance to her works.
In sub-projects of the RMB City series, such as the “New World Gala” (2009) and the “Naked Idol Contest” (2010), Cao organizes a variety of events and invites her real-life friends to participate. The former is a celebrity gala, complete with annual mayors’ inauguration speeches; the latter, loosely following the model of Television “Idol” contests, invites users to display their nude avatars and gives out awards.9 Thus the city becomes a live theater, staging autonomous performances, which are performed by virtual incarnations of existing people. In “RMB City Manifesto,” Cao writes, “let all the virtualreal conflicts vanish in RMB City.”10 The artist and her audience toggle between the virtual and the real, past and present, and meet each other in a liminal space that intertwines their dreams and their lives.
11 Chris Berry, “Cao Fei’s ‘Magical Metropolises,’” 220. The exhibition at Parasite: “Ten Million Rooms of Yearning. Sex in Hong Kong,” Para Site, August 1, 2014, https://www.para-site.art/exhibitions/ten-million-rooms-of-yearning-sex-in-hong-kong/.
Chris Berry, “Cao Fei’s ‘Magical Metropolises,’” 211-212.
12
The project incorporates multiple media, including a newspaper titled Utopia Daily, installations, performances carried out on site by factory workers, and a 20-minute film. Among the multiple media, the video, with its combination of audio and visual testimony, is mesmerizing and powerfully engages the viewer. Cao encourages us to join her in reflecting on how the microcosm of society at large—in this case, the social space of the factory —confines and reconstructs the minds of individuals within it. The film is divided into three subsections, which stand in radical contrast to each other in content and effects. The first part, “Imagination of Product,” juxtaposes an automated assembly line (producing light bulb components) with a human production line. This shift from human action /production to that of benumbed, machine-like operators, alludes to the exploitative working environment. In the second section, “Factory Fairytale”—signaled by a sentimental melody—portrays individual workers, dressed in either dance costumes, work uniforms, or casual wear, dancing or playing musical instruments in the factory in slow motion, surrounded by the assembly lines and their seemingly indifferent colleagues.
This section closes with a woman lying on her bed, looking out over the industrial district and the distant cityscape shrouded in haze, followed by a contemplative caption, “you cry and say, ‘[the] Fairytale is a
- 26off-line practices, Cao was particularly drawn to investigating the influence of an idealized construction of the individual on societal standards. She questioned the modes of life: appearances, careers, family dynamics, which were given preference over others. For instance, in the 2006 project titled Whose Utopia, (Figure 3), she based herself at a factory of the Osram corporation outside Guangzhou, a light bulb manufacturer for the transcontinental conglomerate Siemens. Cao spent six months on site observing, interviewing, and documenting the workers’ daily lives to understand their perception of globalization and industrialization as frontline recruits of these contemporary developments.13 Cao’s committed efforts at sustained interactions with these “actors” generated deep insights into her subject, which are reflected in the final work. As the artist has readily acknowledged, her conversations with these workers changed her perception—held by many people, worldwide—of the factories as “sweatshops.” She asked the workers about “their dreams for themselves in life.” The majority had aimed to move from rural areas to big cities and learn skills to liberate themselves from previous hardship. Eventually, to paraphrase Cao, she understood that many had realized those dreams in this very factory.14 Whose Utopia thus develops a perspective that exceeds the documentary; it both represents and elevates the labor force, not only questioning how industrialization shapes individuals, but also enabling the deeply meaningful connections between these individuals to thrive on screen.
13 Jérôme Sans, “Interview: Cao Fei A Virtual Paradise,” in Breaking Forecast: 8 Key Figures of China’s New Generation Artists, ed. Qiao Cui and Yun Chen (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2010), 46. 14 Jérôme Sans, “Interview: Cao Fei A Virtual Paradise,” 46.
- 27lie’.”
15
The finale, “My Future is Not a Dream,” returns to the routine factory scene. It features shots of individual factory staff standing still at their designated workstations, smiling, and staring at the camera.
It concludes with a scene of seven workers wearing T-shirts printed with Chinese characters, which, read in conjunction, means “my future is not a dream.”15
The video’s portrayal of minutiae, focusing on the factory workers’ iterative actions and delicate emotions, represents the culmination of Cao’s post-studio practice—rendering visible the oftenoverlooked subtle relations and interactions which materialize a community like the Osram factory— encapsulating her observations and understanding of this micro-society. Inserting seemingly absurd depictions of dancing workers amongst scenes of factory production, for instance, appears as an attempt on the part of the artist to withdraw the workers from the perpetual, exploitative industrial apparatuses, even if fictively, and only momentarily. As with RMB City, Cao situates the factory workers/performers in liminal spaces, in a fairytale or a utopia that she constructs that imagines a space for them to realize their dreams—their true aspirations as human beings, not just as labor force. Nonetheless, by offering such a “liberating” experience, Cao is not suggesting an escape from reality, but rather, she is telling a “lie,” constructing a temporary, alternative zone that keeps individuals “in suspension.”16 Though the workers perform within the factory space; many still wear their uniforms. Reality awakens them from their dancing dreams, returning them to an alienated, enclosed space, in which they are surrounded by machinery. Industrial production becomes the only realizable dream. Thus, derived from Cao’s interactions with the frontline working class in this social space, Whose Utopia poses questions for society about the impact of industrialization and globalization on the ordinary individual, asking whether and for whom the social ‘progress’ is liberating. In this regard, Cao is speaking not merely for the factory workers in China, but for every human being who is enmeshed in the social matrix and effected by radical social transformation.Asmuchasshe engages the universal intersubjective nature of social space in her work, and the impact of industrialization and globalization on individuals, Cao remains acutely sensitive to her own response to social transformation, or disruption. Her 2020 project, Isle of Instability, is an urgent reckoning with the global Covid pandemic, stemming from her quarantine. It documents the artist’s experience of self-isolating and adapting to life in a foreign country under lockdown, trapped with her
The description in this paragraph can be sourced to the original film, in “Cao Fei (曹曹) - Whose Utopia, 2006,” YouTube (Public Delivery, May 8, 2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB0qJC2sp_0.; translation of the last scene can be found in David Hodge, “‘Whose Utopia?’, Cao Fei, 2006,” Tate, February 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/cao-whose16utopia-t12754.ChrisBerry, “Cao Fei’s ‘Magical Metropolises,’” 222.
For its 2020 display in Shanghai, Cao elaborated the work as a multimedia installation. The exhibition featured a room inside a room, and an island inside an island, in which ‘landscaping’ exaggerated the aforementioned faux-natural elements, like the artificial palm encircling the young performer, and wide-screen imagery of beach and seascape. The bright projection screen, displaying the life of Cao’s daughter on her island, resembled a kind of technological site of isolation itself. The island, according to the artist, is symbolic of both self-exile and self-construction, a place of both paradise and imprisonment.18
Situated in the global art scene, Cao joins a communal conversation among contemporary artists from around the world, such as Isa Genzken (German, b. 1948) and Pipilotti Rist (Swiss, b. 1962), concerning the interrelationship between individuals and society, as well as the examination of post-studio artistic creations. The spirit of Genzken’s monumental rose sculptures installed amid densely packed city skyscrapers, for instance, is comparable to Cao’s shot of a worker in a peacock dress dancing in the Osram factory in Whose Utopia, both of which present a surreal coalescence of absurdity and reality.
Fused with absurd artificiality, endless repetition, and entrapping ambiguity, Cao’s installation constrains everyone entering her constructed heterotopia, tapping into their collective memory of the moment, and recasting what might have otherwise seemed instinctive (albeit eccentric) responses to the time of social isolation, disruption, and reconstruction.
Another work that has notable commonality with Whose Utopia is Rist’s video piece Ever Is Over All 17 “不安之岛[Isle of Instability]” in 曹斐：时代舞台[Cao Fei: Staging the Era], ed. UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Photographic Press, 2021), 14 18 Harriet Lloyd-Smith, “Cao Fei on Collective Confinement and the Significance of Home ,” Wallpaper* (Wallpaper*, November 13, 2020), https://www.wallpaper.com/art/cao-fei-audemars-piguet-west-bund-art-design-fair.
- 28family in a Singapore apartment for ten-months. To produce this piece, Cao turned the domestic space into an art creation hub, utilizing domestic objects as her media. A video filmed on the artist’s iPhone is at the center of the work, showing an artificial mini “island”—doubling as a stage— made of stacked green bedsheets forming an undulating shape of land, complete with potted plants resembling the palm trees characteristic of tropical locales. While a TV in the background displays seascapes; her nine-year-old daughter plays the island’s only survivor (Figure 4).17 Cao reacts to a time of instability and collapse in a casual, entertaining way, while examining the psychological and material impact of social isolation on individuals, families, and even all humankind. Her immediate and intuitive grasp of all available media in her midst, despite the material and technological limitations of the context, indicate her expansive creativity as an artist unconstrained by medium. Her art demonstrates how human beings find possibilities amid constraints and adjust to unfamiliar spaces, while simultaneously illuminating the external crises which force us to adapt.
The three artists simultaneously chose a dramatic expression to build utopias, alternative and liberating spheres away from reality, that attempt to free the subjects, flowers, factory workers, or women -from their prescribed roles, appearances, and relationships in the dominant social environment.
The common ground in the works of Genzken, Rist, and Cao, especially their handling of social space, places the Chinese artist into the expanded field of post-studio art, which are practices consciously detached from the constraints of conventional spaces of creation. Artists of this kind tend to draw inspiration from their interactions across a vast range of situations. It should be noted that with her unique lens of acutely conscious observation, and the cultural specificity embedded in her works, Cao also adds multifaceted diversity to the post-studio generation. In contrast to Genzken’s subjective narrative, such as her film Chicago Drive in which the artist offers a guided tour of the metropolis while narrating her interactions with the urban environment, Cao typically assumes the role of an observer. She looks from a neutral place at urban society, whether it is the lives of factory workers, the culture of hip-hop, or Cosplayers.19 In her portrayals of characteristic groups affected by the era of rapid social change, Cao prefers to objectively document the everyday lives of the Chinese, rather than engage in or foster any explicit forms of intervention through her artistic practice. She empowers the audiences to generate their individual interpretations and experience the work in an organic and vibrant way, constantly renewing it through human interaction rather than framing it in a static and inanimate state. Moreover, Cao contributes her distinctive cultural perspective in envisioning a utopian world. Both Genzken and Rist embed their creations in imaginative and romantic imagery with ecstatic and unbridled absurdity –either sculptural immense flowers blooming in concrete constructions, or a hysterical woman breaking car windows with a tender and feminine flower bouquet. In comparison, Cao constructs a utopia of realism between the real and the ideal, in which a virtual city comprises real-life infrastructure, factory workers pursue their dreams on the production line, and a tropical island is built from found household objects. In this regard, Cao renews the conceptualization of utopia by her Western post-studio artist peers, rooting her practice in a distinctive cultural frame of reference and eliciting deep reflections from her direct 19 Jérôme Sans, “Interview: Cao Fei A Virtual Paradise,” 46.
- 29(1997), which juxtaposes slow-motion, placid scenes of flower close-ups with the moving images of a woman in a blue dress—recalling Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz—walking down a city street and joyously smashing car windows with a flower bouquet. In works of startling visual impact, which combine familiar references from real life and wild imaginings of radical alternatives, Genzken, Rist, and Cao merge the quotidian and the absurd, reality and fantasy, social dominators and outcasts, subjectivity and detachment.
In some cases, Cao has even gone further, turning exhibition spaces or her own personal studio into a medium for experimenting, via an integral and dynamic theatrical performance occupying the entire space. Her most recent retrospective show “Cao Fei: Staging the Era” at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2021) illustrates this approach. In her own words, Cao made “a project as an exhibition, a public space in interior space, and a ‘Disney Park’ that belongs to the artist.”21 Her storytelling starts from the Artist Room at the entrance, displaying the various cultural influences 20 Gowri Balasegaram, “HX,” ArtAsiaPacific, accessed November 22, 2021, https://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/WebExclusives/ 21HX.Cao Fei and Philip Tinari, UCCA Exhibition | “Cao Fei: Staging the Era” Virtual Guided Tour, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, 2021, 4:10-4:30, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TseqfhihBYI.
- 30observations of Chinese society. Meanwhile, Cao’s perspective addresses broader social issues that are globally ubiquitous—based on the interrelationships, enforced and imposed, between individuals and social space—which, in turn, render her works more relevant to international viewership. Not only does Cao energize the post-studio generation with a fresh Chinese perspective, but she also expands the conventional definition and familiar practices of post-studio art by extending her creative process from social spaces to the exhibition sites themselves, constantly transforming and regenerating her material media in an almost organic way. Her artworks are rarely sealed or considered complete; they shift from a single video into a multitude of projects in other media. Her works continue to develop in the planning and execution of each exhibition. Beyond the projection screens that museums and galleries employ to show her films, Cao integrates found objects and wall decorations, and incorporates the structure of the art institution itself to present her projects, turning each installation into an unreproducible, site-specific artwork. For instance, in both recent shows, “HX” at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2019) and “Blueprints” at London’s Serpentine (2020), Cao debuted her four-year research project on the Hongxia Theatre—centered on a 1950s cinema in Beijing undergoing demolition in the interest of so-called urban regeneration –staging the workd differently at each venue. The Pompidou installation featured randomly scattered archival fragments, documents such as newspapers, photographs, and furniture from the old cinema (which simultaneously serve as projection screens for the moving images). Thus, she reconfigured, or re-staged frozen memories of the vanishing cinema.
20 By contrast, the Serpentine installation conveyed a more coherent historical narrative, with the first room recreating the old cinema’s lobby with its green walls, wooden reception desk, and red velvet curtains which originally led into the theatre. The set was almost an exact restoration of the cinema’s interior in the 1950s. Entering this exhibition, viewers were immediately brought back to the golden age of the Hongxia Theatre, thus embarking on a journey of recollecting the vanishing history, following the artist’s narrative.
- 31in her life, including art books and DVDs. On entering the main space, the audience is greeted by a compact landscape simulating an urban courtyard, composed of lightboxes, plants, and fountains, while surrounded by a steel fortification with multiple passages leading to small rooms housing the stage sets of her various projects (Figure 5). As the scenarios unfolded, the sounds and images on the projection screens intertwined, turning the exhibition space into a discotheque. Not merely following the footsteps of the artist along her professional journey, the audience was situated in the midst of a party, their active participation through movement and conversation transforming the steel and concrete scaffolding of the exhibition into a live performance and a social organism. Throughout her transition from relying on a single medium to the incorporation of unbounded interpersonal and affective connections, Cao has established a multi-dimensional and regenerative mode of expression, rooted in everyday life, which constantly produces new social meaning. Cao’s move into the social sphere carved out a place among her post-studio contemporaries, while consolidating the distinct cultural perspective of her work and its means of intervention. As a result of her ability to grasp and interweave multiple scales of narrative, shifting from minute familial connections to constructing an entire virtual universe in which to stage infinite relationships, the scope of her work (and audience) successfully reaches a global scale. Intersubjective space has created a matrix for Cao, who continually updates her responses to social transformation, alternating between private reflections and popular memory, between the real and the virtual. She maps out this framework for her audiences through a multilayered media discourse that connects disparate audiences in the utopian social space she constructs in her works, while entrusting to the stage the hands of her viewers who can reconfigure, regenerate, and reform social reality.
Figure 1: Cao Fei, Video still from Father, 2005. Caofei.com, http://www.caofei.com/works. aspx?year=2005&wtid=3.
- 32 -
Figure 2: Cao Fei, still from RMB City: A Second Life City Planning by China Tracy (aka: Cao Fei), 2007. Courtesy of the artist and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Figure 4: Cao Fei, Video still from Isle of Instability, 2020. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Image courtesy of the artist and Audemars Piguet.
- 33 -
Figure 3: Cao Fei, Video still from Whose Utopia, 2006. Video (color, sound), 20:20 min. Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space.
- 34Figure 5: Installation view of “Cao Fei: Staging the Era,” 2021. UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Photo: Stefen Chow.
- 35 -
John Beasley Greene’s images must be recontextualized within the work of his contemporaries, specifically those who called nineteenth-century Egypt home. One of Greene’s most recognizable photographs, to historians and Euro-American tourists fascinated by Egypt, is titled Giza. Sphinx, dating to 1853-54 (fig. 1). The image depicts the Great Sphinx at Giza surrounded by an endless landscape of sand and a distant pyramid. The angle at which Greene positioned the camera captured the Sphinx in a three-quarters view. The viewer is unable to look the Sphinx directly in the eye; rather, the 1 Sumathi Ramaswamy and Martin Jay, ed., Empires of Vision: A Reader, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014): 2. 2 Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin, Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002): 149.
Photographing Egypt: Opposing the Expression of a Colonialist Lens
Though sight may be considered a biological foundation to the human experience, the act of seeing is not neutral. Seeing and being seen are expressions of power involving a complex transference of authority between subject and viewer. If a look shared by pedestrians is fraught with tension, biases, and judgment, then it is no wonder that the colonialist gaze inflicted upon ‘the Other ’ in nineteenthcentury Egypt illustrated a capacity for violence intrinsic to vision.1 At the time of European colonialism in North Africa, a growing popularization and an improvement of cameras typified the imbalance of control between an artist’s frame and its subject, creating parallels between photographic and militaristic language of “shooting” and “being shot.”2 Thus, when Western Europeans became obsessed with past empires and traveled to ancient Egyptian ruins throughout the mid-1800s, their photographs expressed imperial visions. Modern civilizations saw ruins as evidence of archaic societies fit for colonization. This attitude influenced photographers of other origins, too, such as those from across the Ottoman Empire working for the Ottoman elite. Though heralded throughout museums and academic institutions, landscape photographers of nineteenth-century Egypt employed the hierarchical ideologies embedded in their societies to frame their subjects. Therefore, they must be reevaluated as expressing colonialist ideas that presented photographed subjects according to a specific empire’s generic vision of them. Doing so allows us to discover more productive ways of understanding both their work and the lasting effects of colonialism.Photographer
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Caroline Cook
5 Michael Press, “Photography’s Potential as Art and Science in Documenting Ancient Egypt,” Hyperallergic, November 19, 2019, https://hyperallergic.com/526963/john-beasley-greene-sfmoma/.
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4 Hester, “The Strange Emptiness of Egypt in 19th-Century European Photographs.”
Although another one of Greene’s photographs attests to the existence of an excavation occurring on the left side of the Sphinx at the time this photograph was taken, Giza. Sphinx hides any evidence of living people engaging with the monument, presenting it as a lifeless ruin immensely far from contemporary human activity.3Another of Greene’s photographs turned the focus away from human life while featuring a defining element of the Egyptian landscape. The image is entitled Études de dattiers (Studies of Date Palms), dating to 1854 (fig. 2). While the photograph is not of an ancient monument or architectural ruin, date palms became identifying symbols of North African landscapes in the eyes of Europeans, due to their preponderance in photographs.4 In Études de dattiers, three date palms rise above a still riverbank, standing motionless in front of a cloudless, colorless sky. Occupying the center of the scene with the date palms is a tent that houses a blurry figure. Though the image seems to concentrate on both the date palms and the tent, the title of the image makes no mention of the tent, a sign of local contemporary life. This neglect is characteristic to the titles and compositions of Greene’s photographs, which consistently emphasize objects of European nostalgia such as monuments, excavated ruins, and recognizable elements of nature over contemporary North African society.5 In Études de dattiers, Greene not only excludes the tent and human figure from the title, but he also positions them within the composition so that they are dwarfed in size by the towering date palms; they are blurred and obscured, transformed into incidental components of the landscape that are secondary to symbols of North Africa favored by the Western European gaze. Greene’s suppression of contemporary life from its own landscape as a means to emphasize what Western Europe wished to see parallels the colonialist choice to view North African societies as inferior for their differences.
Sphinx’s never-ending gaze is directed at a point beyond both the lens of the camera and of the viewer. The front body of the Sphinx is its only body part that is entirely visible, which makes the monument appear as if it is rising from a burial beneath sprawling sand dunes and under an unchanging sky. The image is stark and nostalgic, romanticizing a distant past that has no tie to the lives occurring nearby.
A French-American who died in 1856 at the age of 24, John Beasley Greene took hundreds of other photographs during his trips to ancient Egyptian monuments, in 1853 and 1855. Around the decades in which he lived and worked, Western Europeans became fascinated by ancient landscapes beyond their 3 Jessica Leigh Hester, “The Strange Emptiness of Egypt in 19th-Century European Photographs,” Atlas Obscura, November 21, 2019, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/photographing-egypt-archaeology-john-beasley-greene.
- 38borders, which quickly turned into fervent desire with visiting these “exotic” locales. Enchantment with antiquity was not entirely new to the nineteenth-century, though the ways in which achievements of past civilizations were glorified in previous centuries differed with changing societal characteristics. During the Italian Renaissance, people studied antiquity to both imitate and expand upon its prized techniques in art, architecture, and literature.6 Eighteenth-century interest in the past expressed a nostalgia for ‘authenticity’ in the face of industrial modernization.7 Motivated by fears of their own empires falling, nineteenth-century Europeans poured over artifacts from the ancient world to discover origins that legitimized their modern nation states and to mirror the paradoxically eternalized power of crumbling civilizations whose ruins made them appear indestructible by time.8 Nineteenth-century North Africa, home to ancient Egyptian ruins of monumental pyramids, temples, sphinxes, and other structures strewn over expansive sites, was a particularly popular site for this obsession, with the term “Egyptomania” as a fitting descriptor. These European tourists, particularly French archaeologists, scholars, and photographers, claimed to be transfixed by the structural remnants of ancient Egypt, with several recording their explorations which were then widely published at home. For example, in 1809-29, Napoleon Bonaparte directed the documentation of sites along the Nile River in a multi-volume, elaborately-illustrated publication titled Déscription de l’Égypte; in 1822, Jean-François Champollion published a highly regarded translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs by analyzing the newly-discovered Rosetta Stone; and in 1856, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo—the first museum dedicated to displaying Egyptian antiquities—was established by a French scholar named Auguste Mariette.9 These Western Europeans and others published their findings as objective records of ancient Egyptian culture, portraying them as trustworthy historical documents that accurately captured the civilization that fascinated them.
Egyptomania, however, merely highlighted myths and mystery that stressed ancient elements of Egyptian civilization, obscuring the reality of a society that was not only still alive and just as politically and socially active as the cities of Western Europe, but also notably different from this presentation of its ancient history.10 The Egypt of Greene’s photographs was neither the ancient civilization that transfixed 6 Otto J. Brendel, “Borrowings from Ancient Art in Titian.” The Art Bulletin 37, no. 2 (1955): 114. https://doi. 7org/10.2307/3050703.AndreaHuyssen,“Nostalgia for Ruins.” Grey Room, no. 23 (2006): 9. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442718. 8 Brian Dillon, “Ruin lust: our love affair with decaying buildings.” The Guardian, February 17th, 2012, https://www. 9theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/feb/17/ruins-love-affair-decayed-buildings.RonaldH.Fritze, Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy (London: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2016): 10181.Maurus Reinkowski, “Uncommunicative Communication: Competing Egyptian, Ottoman and British Imperial Ventures in 19th-Century Egypt,” Die Welt Des Islams 54, no. 3/4
Helmut Erich Robert Gernsheim et al. “Development of Stereoscopic Photography.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 3 Dec. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography/Development-of-stereoscopic-photography.
13 Malcolm Daniel, “Photographers in Egypt,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2004, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/treg/hd_treg.htm.
Just as European scholars presented their empire-influenced observations of their voyages, European photographers like Greene captured images of Egyptian landscapes that fed into the idea that Egypt was simultaneously important enough to establish an empire but too weak to sustain it on its own. This idea became culturally accepted in both European and Egyptian society, resulting in beliefs that supported and perpetuated colonialist biases in both regions. This biased gaze was made possible by recent innovations that made cameras tmore portable and efficient, thus more popular in the travel industry.14 The resulting documentation of these travels embodied the values of myth and mystery in Egyptomania, producing photographs that presented ancient pyramids and Sphinxes with a distinctly European nostalgia for ancient scenes devoid of contemporary Ottoman people and daily life.15 The (2014): 401. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24268895.
“The Egypt of Gustave Flaubert: December 2, 2009 to April 4, 2010,” Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, informational webpage for the exhibition of the same name, https://www.rmo. nl/tentoonstellingen/tentoonstellingen-archief/het-egypte-van-gustaveflaubert/.
11
Fritze, Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy, 17.
15
The Western European craze for Egyptian history motivated travels known as “le voyage au Levant,” such as Greene’s along the Nile River.12 This type of journey emphasized romantic visions of Eastern cultures rather than historical accuracies, perpetuating the colonialist concept of the “Orient” as a faraway land completely distinct from “the Occident.”13 Western European tourists ‘othered’ Egypt, along with the rest of Arabic-speaking and Ottoman North Africa, by capitalizing on colonialist binaries that separated ‘the East’ from ‘the West,’ as primitive versus civilized, foreign versus familiar. This ‘othering’ of Egypt additionally manifested Europeans’ fantasies for exotic locales that were more otherworldly and romantic than European society. The collective image of these cultures thereby became rooted in stereotypes rather than in accounts of actual people whose lives were as unique and complex as Europeans understood their own to be.
14
- 39nineteenth-century European tourists nor the independent nation-state of North Africa that we know today. Rather, it was part of the cosmopolitan Ottoman Empire and a central object of French—and towards the latter half of the century, British—imperialism (fig. 3). While the tourism that Egyptomania inspired had benefited certain circles of Egyptians economically from the nineteenth-century onward, the vast majority of individuals living in the region were Muslims who viewed the famous ruins as pagan relics from the distant past, not associated with their present culture.11
12 Translation: journey to the Levant (Asia Minor)
18 Maurus Reinkowski, “Uncommunicative Communication: Competing Egyptian, Ottoman and British Imperial Ventures in 19th-Century Egypt,” Die Welt Des Islams 54, no. 3/4 (2014): 401-05.
- 40destruction of a contemporary subject’s ability to share the same time or space as that of the viewer, typified the colonialist agenda to view contemporary Arab and Ottoman North Africa as an archaic land beholden to Western Europe’s modernizing exploits.
The complex array of cultural influences and colonial systems that shaped Egyptian society from within and outside its borders illustrates that colonialism was an ever-present and complicated issue in Egypt at the time that Greene and his contemporaries photographed its landscapes.18 In addition to Europeans wrestling for increased control in the region, members of the Ottoman Empire themselves participated in colonialist systems that pitted ethnic groups against one another. During the middle of the nineteenth century, the majority of the Egyptian population in present-day Egypt – Arabic-speaking Egyptians – was denigrated as lower-class citizens and only permitted to hold the lowest ranks in the 16 Ehud Toledano, “Social and Economic Change in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century.’” The Cambridge History of Egypt, ed. M. W. Daly, vol. 2, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): p. 254.
Though often praised for their aesthetic beauty and technique, Greene’s photographs succinctly present this colonialist attitude by framing his subjects according to his empire’s vision of them. Greene’s techniques for photographing symbols of Egyptian antiquity, particularly his omission of contemporary Egyptians from their own landscapes and denial of contemporaneity between subject and viewer, were not the only ways in which his photographs expressed colonialist attitudes. The very nation that he depicted was in fact much more complex and entrenched in colonialist systems than his images reveal. Egyptian society was defined by complex dichotomies rather than simple binaries: to be a member of Egyptian society was to hold multiple identities at once. From the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, the Egyptian region experienced a dramatic population change. The overall number of inhabitants increased from around 4.5 million people at the beginning of the century to about 10 million by the end, and Cairo and Alexandria developed into two highly concentrated, cosmopolitan cities even while the growing rural communities accounted for the majority of the population.16 As political and social structures became increasingly influenced by both Egyptian and Ottoman frameworks, the percentage of foreign residents living and owning land and manufacturing companies grew tremendously, primarily due to French, British, and American imperial interests.17 Concurrent with European empires’ occupation and exploitation of Egypt was the Ottoman Empire’s continued governance of this heterogenous and multiethnic region on national and local levels.
17 Toledano, “Social and Economic Change,” p. 255.
Another photograph by Lékégian that is emblematic of his livelier portrayal of Egyptian society is titled Marchands de Khan Khalil, Cairo, which dates to the 1880-90s and similarly associates a culture within Egyptian society with human activity (fig. 5). The image depicts two men selling goods in a souk or bazaaron on the glittering streets of Cairo, and they are presented as contemporary merchants inhabiting the same time and space as the viewer. Lékégian angles his scene at a diagonal viewpoint, as did Greene in his image Giza. Sphinx, but this instead allows the viewer to make eye contact with the merchant on the left, retaining the merchant’s dignity and humanity. Rather than emphasizing stillness, choosing an ancient monument to represent Egyptian history, or denying the contemporaneity of the subject and the viewer, Lékégian features textures and movement alongside a figure who is able 19 Reinkowski, “Uncommunicative Communication,” 406. 20 Reinkowski, “Uncommunicative Communication,”407. 21 “Lekegian, Gabriel,” Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation, accessed December 21, 2021, http://lusadaran. org/?artists=gabriel-lekegian.
- 41Egyptian army.19 The elite members of society who claimed origins in the central Ottoman empire adopted the identity of Egyptian national elites, and positioned themselves as a kind of Egyptian that was superior to the Arabic-speaking “Egyptian natives.”20
Gabriel Lékégian, an Armenian-Egyptian photographer contemporary with Greene, typifies the complexity of Egyptian identity and colonialist influences on photography in and of the region. Born in the predominantly Turkish part of the Ottoman Empire around the 1850s, Lékégian moved to Cairo where he became a prominent photographer of Egyptian landscapes and people throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.21 One of his photographs entitled Marché des Dattes, dating to 1880-89, illustrates his representation of nineteenth-century Egypt that is more indicative of the lives of Egyptian people but still uses a problematic colonialist lens as in Greene’s photographs (fig. 4). The image features the date palms recognized as symbols of Egyptian history by European photographers, but alongside them is a multitude of Egyptian citizens selling their wares. In contrast to Greene’s photograph Études de dattiers, Lékégian recognizes the date market—the element of human activity in the scene—in both his title and in the image itself. Besides including contemporary, everyday Egyptian life, Lékégian also captures the date palms in movement and as active components of the scene. The photograph is devoid of the stillness and vastness of Greene’s work; instead it is filled with the bustling activity of a culturally rich, cosmopolitan city. Lékégian better captures the complexity of nineteenth-century Egyptian life because his photograph joins symbols of its cultural heritage with the actual people who embodied it. Egypt is represented as a society that shares the time and space of the nineteenth-century viewer gazing upon it, enabling a necessary sense of contemporaneity.
Colonialist narratives tend to describe societies as divided into binaries: those who were colonizers and those who were colonized.24 The relationship between empire and subjects, however, 22 “Lekegian, Gabriel,” Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation.
23 “Lekegian, Gabriel,” http://lusadaran.org/?artists=gabriel-lekegian.
Many portraits of Lékégian’s express his internalized Orientalism and colonialist outlook. His photograph entitled Turkish woman at her house from 1880-85 (fig. 6) depicts a woman according to stereotypes associated with Asia Minor that European Egyptomania spread to European and Egyptian photographers. The Turkish woman is presented in an exotic, harem-like studio setting, denoted by the surrounding furniture and elaborate clothing.23 Her lounging position and gaze that extends to a point beyond the grasp of the viewer imbue her with the relaxed nature of a regal figure. This image is characteristic of both the manner in which elite members of Ottoman society wished to see themselves depicted and the identifying elements of Egyptian culture that attracted Euro-American tourists and scholars. That this preference for an exoticized, romanticized version of Egypt was common to elite members of the Ottoman Empire, voyaging non-Ottoman tourists, and a minority-Egyptian photographer typifies the complexity of colonialist influences in Egypt.
24 Fatma Müge Göçek, “Postcoloniality, The Ottoman Past, And The Middle East Present,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44, no. 3 (2012): 552. doi:10.1017/S0020743812000529.
- 42to communicate directly with his audience. This image is another illustration of how Lékégian better represented the cosmopolitan nature of everyday Egyptian society; his lens was not the same as that of Greene and his European contemporaries.
As mentioned previously, however, Egyptians themselves participated in colonialist systems embedded within the various empires. Lékégian himself trained in watercolor painting with an expatriate Italian artist, named Salvatore Valeri in Constantinople in the 1880s before establishing a photography studio in Cairo towards the end of the nineteenth century that catered to European tourists and elite Ottoman residents of Cairo.22 Though Marché des Dattes and Merchants de Khan Khalil, Cairo illustrate the culturally-rich everyday Egyptian life that is absent in Greene’s photographs, Lékégian’s early artistic training as well as the studio he ran in Cairo were still designed for and sold to perpetrators of an imperialist system that desired an exoticized view of Egyptian society. Additionally, as an ArmenianEgyptian, he did not identify as Muslim or Arab, which made him a member of the Egyptian minority population. His identity, along with his European-influenced artistic training and Euro-American clients, contributed to the internalized Orientalism that underscored many of his works even when they appeared to be holistic portrayals of everyday Egyptian life. His background and techniques are rooted in a similar context of influences that define Greene’s colonialist lens.
27 “Signs and Wonders: The Photographs of John Beasley Greene,” SFMoMA, accessed December 21, 2021, https://www. sfmoma.org/exhibition/signs-and-wonders-the-photographs-of- john-beasley-greene/.
- 43is rarely this simple. As can be seen in the case of nineteenth-century Egypt, non-Western European members of Ottoman society were not the passive victims crushed by imperial power as colonialist narratives prefer to describe them; they, too, participated in and perpetuated their own nuanced colonialist systems that involved active relationships between “colonized” Ottomans and leaders of the Ottoman and Western European empires there.25
It is imperative that the photographs of Greene and his European contemporaries be understood as expressions of a colonialist approach. Although the scholars are working to publicize this understanding, many powerful institutions continue to exhibit this and similar work without significant mention of their problematic nature. Greene’s photographs, despite their colonial implications, are often exhibited and written about as remarkable documents objectively recording the ‘true beauty’ of Egyptian history. In addition Publishing collectible volumes of his photographs, major institutions have held exhibitions and published essays celebrating his works. From August 31, 2019 to January 5, 2020, SFMoMA held an exhibition that traveled to subsequent American museums titled Signs and Wonders: The Photographs of John Beasley Greene. The website’s brief description of the exhibition states that Greene “made a number of visual choices that seem strikingly modern to us today: in both the spareness of his landscapes and the tightly cropped details and high-contrast textures of his documentation of archaeological sites in Egypt.”27
Rather than define his photographs as expressing a colonialist lens, SFMoMA advertises the exhibit by characterizing the photographs as modern, implying that they should only be considered for their beauty
Like the traditionally-heralded French photographers, Egyptian artists experimented with the camera and created intriguing landscape photographs of their nation. Though their photographs tend to represent contemporary Ottoman life without the colonialist denials of contemporaneity and erasures of cosmopolitan culture, nineteenth-century Egyptian artists still catered to the European tourists and to the Ottomanized elite who exercised authority over them.26 While Lékégian should be lauded for his inclusion of contemporary Egyptian life in his photographs, which communicated this cosmopolitan society to his contemporary nineteenth-century, especially since he was an Armenian Egyptian capturing the Ottoman culture he lived and worked in, his participation in colonialist systems must also be recognized. Thus, in order to better illustrate the complete picture of colonialism in nineteenth-century Egyptian landscape photography, the images and contexts of Egyptian photographers must be highlighted alongside those of their European counterparts that are traditionally discussed.
25 Göçek, “Postcoloniality, The Ottoman Past, And The Middle East Present,” 554. 26 Prita Meier, African Photography, Class lecture at New York University, NY, December 15, 2021.
If the recent SFMoMA exhibition and New York Times article were not enough, an essay published in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, an online resource meant to be used by all individuals as an easy-to-understand, objective history of global art and culture, additionally denies Greene’s association with colonialism in an equally disturbing way. First, the essay describes nineteenth-century Western Europeans such as Greene as “photographers [who] were principally interested in facts.” This statement ignores their cultural biases and justifies the photographers’ erasure of everyday life through the argument that the ancient monuments featured in their images, rather than the everyday life that was excluded from them, were more ‘objective’ representations of North African society. Moreover, the essay describes le voyage au Levant as “the pilgrimage of the soul” and the resulting photographs as defining “a magical moment when the ancient civilization, still half-buried like the Sphinx, began to release its age-old secrets.”29 This institution, which gains even more foot traffic than SFMoMA or the New York Times article, identifies Greene and his contemporaries as magicians uncovering a civilization that is important only for its antiquity, which again not only masks Greene’s colonialist undertones with aesthetic praise, but romanticizes and commends them for doing just that.
A 2019 New York Times article similarly describes Greene’s images as evoking “a time when travel was still an adventure, ancient civilizations were largely mysterious and the grammar of photography was just being invented.”28 That this article, which was published the same year as the SFMOMA exhibition, nostalgically describes le voyage au Levant as adventurous travel and nineteenthcentury Egypt as an ancient, mysterious civilization illustrates the author’s colonialist treatment of Ottoman society, valued for its myth and mystery. Greene’s overtly problematic techniques in representing this diverse, complex civilization were celebrated as recently as 2019, which indicates that Greene is still held in high regard for seeing the world – in a manner that favors Western European biases and the erasure of non-Western cultures and life.
- 44rather than analyzed critically for their historical and political context. Viewers are invited to look but not to think or question how the photographs came to be understood as heralded modernist images. While the website does mention that his photographs “invite us to consider the complex relationship between photography, colonialism, and modernism,” this acknowledgement of his photographs’ association with colonialism is kept intentionally vague, indicating that readers should want to visit the exhibit because of Greene’s advanced technical skills and originality rather than focus on the problematic context and overtones of his work.
28 Arthur Lubow, “Much About John Beasley Greene Is in Doubt. Not His Talent,” The New York Times, December 17, 2019, 29https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/arts/photography-john-beasley-greene.html.Daniel,“PhotographersinEgypt”
Instead of denouncing Lékégian as a photographer whose work expressed a colonialist lens just like Greene’s, it should be remembered that despite their conceptual inadequacies, Lékégian’s photographs still represent Egyptian society in a fuller manner than Greene’s. Lekegian’s many realistic photographs of everyday Egyptian peasant life along with his more colonialist ones demonstrate the complications of colonial Egypt that existed beyond the oversimplified colonizer/colonized binary. By exhibiting these photographs with proper contextualization, curators will let viewers understand a more complete picture of colonialist influences in North Africa. Moreover, rather than continuing to only exhibit the work of the non-Egyptian photographers who have been lauded as the fathers of modern travel photography for centuries, viewers will instead be able to engage with the work of Egyptian photographers who traveled amongst and depicted their own communities and heritage.
- 45John Beasley Greene’s photographs clearly express a colonialist lens by framing the Egyptian landscape to support his Empire’s anachronistic vision of it, but powerful institutions continue to exhibit the work of Greene and his like-minded contemporaries without this necessary contextualization. While it is apparent that museums, gallery spaces, and textbooks must display the work of nineteenth-century photographers with more context regarding their association with colonialist systems, continuing to exhibit the works of these artists alone, even with added context, is conceptually limitedTherefore, photographs of contradictory gazes and understandings of the same subjects, such as those by photographers living and working in Egypt, such as Gabriel Lékégian, should be highlighted alongside these problematic photographs. As evidenced byLékégian’s work, these photographs are still fraught with their own issues and engagement with European imperial influences, but they offer a more complete picture than either body of work on its own. What is more, to assume that there are nineteenth-century photographers untouched by colonialism who captured an ‘authentic’ Egypt just furthers the colonialist binary that there are pre-colonial and post-colonial visions of Egyptian society.
To avoid a tendency by European and North American scholars to engage in White Saviorism in order to ‘correct’ past misdeeds, these groups need to prioritize North African voices, analysis, and contributions in future scholarship.30 Nineteenth-century Egyptians also consumed the very photographs scholars condemn as incorrectly and damagingly representing their society and culture, and contemporary Egyptians today view these photographs as expressions of their ancient history, adopting Eurocentric visions of art history. To put this issue into binaries of moralization is to distract from expanding discourse and instead continue to use the sight of colonial empires.
30 Matthew Hughey, The White Savior Film: Content, Critics, and Consumption (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014): 1-2.
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In discovering new ways to exhibit Egyptian landscape photography, collaboration must exist between Egyptians and non-Egyptians. Significant attention must be paid to uplifting the names and works of Egyptian landscape photographers alongside already-familiar European names. The history of nineteenth-century Egypt must be told through landscape photography that neither erases the everyday life of Egyptians nor hides the realities of complex colonialist engagement that affect them from both outside and within their own region. Scholars and institutions must cease to publish and display texts portraying Empire-influenced photographs without mentioning their colonial overtones, and nineteenthcentury voyages to Egypt must no longer be viewed with nostalgia or as discoveries of an ancient, untouched culture and civilization. While it is perhaps impossible to reverse the harm done by European colonialist photographers of the Egyptian landscape since both Egyptians and non-Egyptians perpetuated these colonialist sentiments, these works must be recontextualized with a more nuanced understanding of Egyptian art history.
Figure 2: John Beasley Greene, Études de dattiers (Studies of Date Palms), c. 1854, salted paper print, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
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Figure 1: John Beasley Greene, Giza. Sphinx, c.1853-54, salted paper print, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- 48Figure 3 Figure 4: Gabriel Lekegian, Marché des Dattes, c. 1880-89, albumen photograph, Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation.
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Figure 5: Gabriel Lekegian, Marchands de Khan Khalil, Cairo, c. 1880-90s, albumen photograph, Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation.
Figure 6: Gabriel Lekegian, Turkish woman at her house, c. 1880-85, albumen photograph, Lusadaran: Armenian Photography Foundation.
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/hist_fac/40/.
The colony director at the time, Wouter van Twiller, established upon the land a massive farm
(January 2015):
Anuska
1 The dutch had previously established themselves on Nut Island, what is now Governer’s Island
The Continuous Struggle for Washington Square Park Maqbool
2 Paul Otto, “The Dutch, Munsees, and the Purchase of Manhattan Island,” New York State Bar Association Journal 87, no. 1 pp. 10-17,
- 50Today, Washington Square Park feels like a space that is accessible to all who wish to use it, whether they are rich or poor, New Yorkers or not. The diversity of Washington Square’s inhabitants has been an integral part of its character and charm for decades, but a closer look at the park’s history reveals a theme of continuous struggle over the right to the park between those with power and the unempowered or poor. This struggle is evident in the community’s passionate activism and involvement in the park’s fate throughout the twentieth century. The park’s history of activism includes events such as the strong resistance against Robert Moses’ multiple proposed park redesigns in the mid-to late- 1900s, the fight to remove the traffic lanes cutting through the park in the 1950s, the community’s pushback against NYU’s expansion throughout the mid to late 1900s, the Beatnik Riot of 1961, and the community-led redesign of the 1960s. To contextualize the park’s redesign during the 1960s and the struggle over the right to the park, it is important to understand the history of the land that is now Washington Square Park and its changes in ownership and function since the early 17th century. History of Washington Square Park Washington Square Park was once a marshy meadow, with a stream called Minetta Brook flowing diagonally through it. The land surrounding the brook was inhabited by the Lenape people, but would become a land riddled with ownership conflict once the Dutch West India Company moved its settlement to the southern tip of Manhattan island.1 In 1626, the Dutch believed that they had bought Manhattan Island from the Lenape for $24 (about $1.7 million in 2022 dollars), and intended to establish New Amsterdam as the capital of the Dutch colony. The Lenape, who had a vastly different concept of landownership from the Dutch, believed that the agreement was to share the land.2
4 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 54. 5 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 56. 6 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 58.
- 51which completely covered the site of Washington Square. The farm, manned by slaves forcibly brought to the Americas, was under constant threat from the Lenape people, who took every opportunity to try to reclaim their right to the land. Due to his inability to address these threats, and being embroiled in corruption, Twiller was removed and sent back to the Netherlands. A Dutch merchant, Willem Kieft, replaced him as Director of New Netherland in 1638. As the new administrator, Kieft made the decision to free a small group of slaves and assign them plots on the outskirts of the Duth settlement, where their farms acted as a buffer against the Lenape further North; this included the land of Washington Square.3 The year 1664 saw the Dutch surrendering New Amsterdam to the English. With this surrender, slavery was once again institutionalized as the city became a port for African slave trade. It became illegal for Black people – even newly freed slaves – to own land, and by 1716, all the property granted to freed slaves, including that of Washington Square, had been passed to Dutch or English landowners.4 The fortunes and rights of black people in New York fundamentally changed here, and the struggle to own land and occupy space in the city continued well into the future, even once slavery was abolished in New York.
In 1741, Sir Peter Warren, an admiral in the British Navy, bought a large part of what is now Greenwich Village and built a summer home a few blocks northwest of present-day Washington Square. By the late 1700s, however, his daughters had sold most of his estate. Wealthy New Yorkers, attracted to the clean “rural atmosphere” of the area, started to buy up Warren’s former land and build their own summer homes.5 Despite the proliferation of vacation homes, New York City in the 18th century was not exactly a tourist destination. Unhygienic living conditions and a lack of sanitation infrastructure meant that yellow fever raged in New York in the late 1790s. So dire was this epidemic, that locating a new potter’s field, a burial ground for paupers and unknown or unclaimed people, became urgent. This led the city government to create a potter’s field in Greenwich Village at the site of Washington Square. Parallel to contemporary conflicts in the Square, such as the sustained pushback from ‘old-timers’ of the Square against folk-singers in the mid-20th century, the wealthy homeowners of the area were outraged. They protested the decision, arguing that the potter’s field “[lay] in the neighborhood of a number of Citizens who [had] at great expense erected dwellings on the adjacent lots for the health and accommodation of their families during the summer season,” and that the potter’s field would endanger their health.6 Though they resisted, the potter’s field remained. On one hand, there were those who had no money to bury their 3 Emily Kies Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
Washington Square: A Dividing Line
The problem of a lack of burial grounds continued through the 1820s as yellow fever raged on and the potter’s field started to fill up. The population of Greenwich Village also began to surge during this time, since many people flooded to the area to escape outbreaks of the pandemic in lower parts of Manhattan.7 In May 1825, the potter’s field was officially closed after reaching capacity. The land was acquired by officials who quickly added a new entry to the site’s list of uses: the location of a military parade with green grounds. The pleasant, open grounds were created to attract wealthy citizens to the area and to raise surrounding property values. The potter’s field would perhaps have been built over for this very reason had the ground not been too unstable to handle the construction of heavy buildings.8
By the early 1900s, Greenwich Village had become home to many diverse groups that bore little relation to one another. Ever since Greenwich Village started to populate, Washington Square Park had functioned as a dividing line between the wealthy, genteel lower Fifth Avenue neighborhood to its north and the poorer merchant and immigrant neighborhoods to its south – a divide that became more established after the first world war. A prime symbol of this divide, according to Emily Folpe, author of It Happened on Washington Square, was the flagpole erected in the park by a member of the Washington Square Association to honor the neighborhood’s soldiers who had died in the war. The flagpole was 7 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 64.
Improvements to the park continued throughout the years, and a massive fountain 100 feet in diameter was installed in 1852. The park’s first architectural master plan was designed in 1870 by M.A. Kellog and Ignaz Anton Pilat and followed the principles of Frederick Law Olmsted, who is regarded as the founder of American landscape architecture. This plan created Washington Square’s famous diagonal walkways, which, along with the fountain, iron fencing, and gas lanterns, gave the park a romantic Victorian aspect.
The park we know today was first designated as a place for the public in 1827. Wealthy families began to move in and build the Greek Revival townhouses that are still on the north side of the park. By the 1840s, the Washington Parade Ground was the heart of New York City’s wealthiest community.
8 “From Potter’s Field to Parade Ground,” Washington Square Park, January 12, 2021, https://washingtonsqpark.org/ news/2021/01/12/from-potters-field-to-parade-ground/.
- 52dead, and on the other, there were the wealthy- fighting for the property values of their second homes. Already the class divide and wealth gap in the area was tangible.
The late 1800s brought with it the introduction of a roadway through the park in 1870, the creation of a temporary arch in 1889, and the erection of the permanent Washington Arch in 1895.
- 53erected on axis with Fifth Avenue, allowing those to the North to see it through the Arch. A member from the Washington Square Association was quoted as saying that the flagpole would be ‘‘a symbol to the great group of incoming, unknown people south of Washington Square,” and that it would “make strangers into true American citizens.”9 As Folpe points out, those in the Association had overlooked that many ‘strangers’ from the south of Washington Square had gone to war and died for their adopted country alongside those from north of the park. Despite these immense sacrifices, the flagpole did not bear their names and no memorials in their honor were to be found in the park that was supposedly of their neighborhood.William
The Bohemian Era
10 William Dean Howells, quoted in Laura Helene Schoenabaum’s thesis “Manhattan’s Washington Square Park: Its History, Evolution, and Prospects for Change.” (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1988): 43.
Dean Howells, a prominent novelist of the time, compared the ‘American’ part of Greenwich Village with the immigrant/bohemian sector; he contrasted “the old fashioned American respectability which ke[pt] the north side of the square in vast mansions of red brick,” against the “international shabiness which ha[d] invaded the southern border and broken it up into lodging houses, shops, beer gardens and studios.”10 His comparison “evinces a reverence for the unity and homogeneity (both spatial and cultural) of the mansions on the northern, ‘American’ side, and an anxiety about the crossing of borders and breaking up of space” in the southern end.11
At the same time as class and ethnic tensions between the north and south of the square were becoming more pronounced, many young artists, writers, and social philosophers began to move to Washington Square. This signified a clear shift from what was once “the exclusive domain of the moneyed elite.”12 While few artists were longtime residents of the square, many moved there in the early 1900s for the diverse character of its surroundings. Some of America’s most prominent painters and writers from this era lived in the dilapidated boarding houses south of the Square. ‘Genius Row,’ the section between West Broadway and Thompson Street along Washington Square South, housed notable people such as Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Willa Cather, and opera singer Adelina Patti. In particular, the rowhouse at 61 Washington Square South, dubbed the ‘House of Genius,’ dominated Genius Row. The landlady would only rent to literary and artistic intelligentsia such as bohemian writers, musicians, 9 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 268.
11 Maria Karafilis, “The Jewish Ghetto and the Americanization of Space in Mary Antin and Her Contemporaries,” American Literary Realism 42, no. 2 (2010): 129-50.
12 Schoenbaum, “Manhattan’s Washington Square Park,” 42.
After 1912, New York University (NYU) became a principal actor in the struggle over the park alongside the ‘well-heeled’ bourgeoisie and local working class community. Having moved most of the university to a Bronx campus, NYU established an additional auxiliary campus, Washington Square College, at Washington Square. After 1920 NYU began to expand along Washington Square. Over the years, village residents did their best to protest and push back on the expansion, but, between 1946 and 1966, NYU virtually encircled the Square (See fig.1).
- 54and artists, and would support them even if they were unable to pay rent. According to the New York Preservation Archive Project, the third and fourth floors of the House of Genius were “emblazoned with artistic murals and poetry etched by the former guests.”13 The ‘Bohemian Era’ of the Square influenced its transformation from a space of “patrician atmosphere, to one of liberalism and creativity.”14 The Square’s aura of intellectualism and artistic renown that this transformation created remains the overwhelming image of the Greenwich Village area today.
NYU, Moses, and Real Estate Development
In June of 1948, NYU purchased land to the South of Washington Square Park for its Law Center, leading to the eviction of nearly 300 people who lived on the block. Community groups banded together with the residents and formed a committee to resist evictions in what they believed to be a “crucial battle to protect the Square from NYU’s grasp.”15 The committee collected thousands of signatures to petition their administrators to get legal protection of the land, they hired a lawyer, they got prominent citizens such as former first-lady Eleanor Roosevelt on their side, they wrote to newspapers and they went on radio shows. Despite the community’s struggle, demolitions started soon after in August 1949. Ironically, as work progressed on the Law Center, the long-buried Minetta Brook began to resurface and seep into the excavation.16
The next major project by NYU was to acquire and demolish a section along Washington Square South, where the modern-style Loeb Student Center was opened in 1959 “over the ghosts of Genius Row.”17In1946, Holden, McLaughlin and Associates had carried out a postwar Greenwich Village neighborhood improvement study in conjunction with the Washington Square Association. The study resulted in the federally-aided Slum Clearance Plan of 1953 that aimed to “widen streets and beautify the 13 “The Block Known as ‘Genius Row’ in the Village.” Ephemeral New York, February 28, 2011. https://ephemeralnewyork. 1514wordpress.com/2011/02/28/the-block-known-as-genius-row-in-the-village/.Schoenbaum,“Manhattan’sWashingtonSquarePark,”43.Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 293. 16 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 293. 17 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 301.
- 55area in keeping with Village architecture.”18 Park Commissioner Robert Moses, who was chairman of the Slum Clearance Committee in the 1950s, acquired land for the Washington Square Village project under Title I, and by the mid 1960s, the land had been transformed into NYU-owned high rises that housed faculty and students. The NYU Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, completed in 1972, was also built after an “extended rancorous debate” under a favorable interpretation of Title I Slum Clearance Act.19 The bulky, fortress-like library cast the sunny south side of the park in a perpetual shadow and fundamentally and permanently altered the character of the square.
Aside from NYU’s expansion, the residents of the Square had to contend with the multiple design disagreements on proposals to link Fifth Avenue and West Broadway with a fast-moving road through Washington Square Park. This design was included in many of the mid-1900s proposed (but not implemented due to opposition from the community) redesigns of Washington Square, first showing up in the initial redesign by Kellog and Pilat. Moses continued to re-propose the fast road moving through the park, but due to continuous resistance by the community, traffic was permanently blocked from passing through the park in April 1959. This was a grand victory for the community and was instrumental in preserving the character of theThepark.Various
Populations of Washington Square
By the early 20th century, because of the diversity of people who lived around and used Washington Square Park, it had evolved into a cultural hub and a place for artists, writers, musicians, and activists to congregate. The park has an extensive musical history and has long been considered a place of free speech and activism. Protestors gathered against NYU’s use of prison labor during the construction of one of its buildings in what was known as the Stonecutter’s Riot in 1833, and Labor unions marched through the park in 1911 after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire .
After the Second World War, the Beat generation of the 50s and folk singers of the late 1950s and early 60s made the park their home. Folk singers began to perform in Washington Square very frequently on Sundays; Washington Square Park became a “renowned haven for performers and protestors.”20 At this time, the park’s sociology consisted of many different groups of people who had each staked their claim to a section of the park. The park was full of families, Beatniks, teenagers, motorcyclists – a New 18 Schoenbaum, “Manhattan’s Washington Square Park,” 56. 19 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 302. 20 “Washington Square Park,” Washington Square Park Highlights : NYC Parks, https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/washingtonsquare-park/history.
21
Increased performances in Washington Square Park and the staunch belief of some residents of Greenwich Village that the park needed to be quiet and tranquil led to a new requirement: by 1947 a person had to hold a permit to be able to perform music in the park.25 On March 28th, 1961, NYC Parks Commissioner Newbold Morris decided to “limit permits issued for musical performances in Washington Square to ‘legitimate’ artistic groups.” When a group of folk singers applied for their permit to perform,
- 56Times article from 1964 claimed that “down in Washington Square, no matter who or what you are, you’re likely to find your little niche.”
Tensions in the Park
25 Adam Thalenfeld, “Washington Square Park - A History of Activism,” NYC URBANISM, March 1st, 2020, www.nycurbanism. com/blog/2020/3/1/washington-square-park-a-history-of-activism.
21
Street Music and the Beatnik Riot
“Washington Square Park on Sunday: Village’s 8-acre melting pot,” The New York Times. June 8, 1964. 22 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 310. 23 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 312. 24 Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 312.
Though the park was already heavily used and always crowded by performers, tourists, and locals, the growing presence of beatniks and folksingers in Washington Square in the 1950s made residents ‘uneasy.’22 After traffic was banned in the park in 1959, the fountain became a popular spot for crowds to gather, and folk singers to perform. Noise became a major complaint for many of the nearby residents. Drugs had also become popular in Washington Square Park around this time; the walk between the Holley statue and the southwest corner of the park was nicknamed ‘Junkie Row” because of the abundance of drug deals and usage. Drug dealers aggressively expanded their turf in the park throughout the 60s and 70s as stores selling drug paraphernalia opened in the streets surrounding Washington Square.23Washington Square Park was also dangerous at this time. Crime rates were high and there was always a physical threat if a person walked through the park at the wrong time. Oscar Newman, a NYU city planning professor, said that “the screams of people being mugged in the park often reached the windows of his bedroom at 29 Washington Square.”24 Because of the increase in drugs and crime in the park, tensions between different population groups of the park ran high. Some residents of the area believed that Beatniks, hippies, and folk singers were attracting ‘derelicts’ and ‘undesirables’ to the park; they blamed them for the park’s descent into crime and advocated for their removal from the park.
York
- 57the Parks Department rejected their request with no explanation.26 Parks Commissioner Newbold Morris stated that “unnecessary noises, musical or otherwise, must not be allowed to conflict with other persons’ right to a little peace and quiet.” On April 9, 1961, a protest rally that came to be known as the Beatnik Riot was organized by Izzy Young, head of the Folklore Center on MacDougal Street. Although many Villagers saw Morris’ banning of folk music as an infringement of civil rights, there were local residents who supported the ban; they believed that the removal of these musicians would allow the park to become safer, cleaner and more ‘orderly.’27 When the ban was lifted a month later, these were the residents who tried to get it re-imposed. A 1961 New York Times article reported that: “[f]oes of folk singing in Washington Square warned City Hall yesterday that they would call out Greenwich Village residents for a mass rally unless the ban on Sunday minstrelsy was reimposed.”28 These residents went out of their way to make clear that folk singers were unwelcome in their neighborhood. A petition opposing the Sunday song fests in Washington Square was signed by about 2200 Village residents, “mostly old-timers,” and presented to the Deputy Mayor.29
The 1970 Community Park Redesign
The belief of some residents that ‘derelicts’ and ‘hippies’ were “making Washington Square a nightmare area” reflected a shift in perception of street music, due to the formalization of what Paolo Prato terms ‘art music.’30 As music was brought into enclosed spaces, off the streets, music was perceived and evaluated differently. When brought into enclosed spaces, off the streets, music was perceived and evaluated differently. “Street music [became] an object of increasing scorn”, evident in the case of folksingers in Washington Square Park in the 1960s and in the writing about music at that time.31 It is interesting to note that “for a long time [music in the streets] had been the only music which could reach the poorer layers of society.”32 Today, many people who were around at that time reminisce about hearing Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and other folk icons at the outset of their careers strumming near the fountain.
After Moses’ plans were defeated by community activists and traffic was discontinued through 26 Jim Shelley, “NYC Bans Folk Music,” The Woodstock Whisperer/Jim Shelley, April 9, 2016, https://woodstockwhisperer. 27info/2016/04/09/nyc-bans-folk-music/.Folpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 312. 28 “Villagers’ Score Park Folk Singing; Ask Mayor to Restore Ban in Washington Square,” New York Times. May 19, 1961. 29 “Villagers’ Score Park Folk Singing” 30 Homer Bigart, “Derelicts and Hippies Are Making Washington Square a Nightmare Area,” The New York Times, August 9, 1968, https://www.nytimes.com/1968/08/09/archives/derelicts-and-hippies-are-making-washington-square-a-nightmare-area. 31html.Paolo Prato, “Music in the Streets: the Example of Washington Square Park in New York City,” Popular Music 4 (1984): pp. 151-163, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143000006206, 151. 32 Paolo Prato, “Music in the Streets: the Example of Washington Square Park in New York City,” Popular Music 4 (1984): pp. 151-163, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143000006206, 151.
- 58the park, it was understood that the park needed a major renovation. In June 1963, the Parks Department drafted a $10,000 redesign plan that was signed by Clarke and Rapuano Inc., the same office that had designed the failed scheme 25 years earlier. In May of 1964, Morris proposed the Clarke and Rapuano plan, which was predicted to cost $750,000 - $1,000,000. This Beaux-Arts plan proposed a complete redesign of the park. The fountain would be aligned with the arch and 5th Avenue, the diagonal pathways would be removed and replaced with circular paths around lawns raised by 15 inches, and colonnaded comfort stations would be constructed on axis with the arch. The plan aimed to formalize the park and was subsequently faced with overwhelming opposition from community members, architectural critics, and the press.33Dueto the intense criticism, Edward Dudley, the Manhattan Borough President, asked Community Board 2 to present a plan representing the community’s wishes for Washington Square, so a group of nine village architects were brought together to prepare a plan. These nine architects chose Robert Nichols, a local landscape architect, to lead the group.34 The redesign of the park in the late 1960s was a rare case of community members getting a major say in the planning of a public park. The whole process took about seven years to accomplish due to many disagreements, but ground was finally broken in 1970.Some of the main changes made in the 1970s renovation included the lowering of the fountain and the creation of a two-tiered central sunken plaza around it that accommodated the space where the roads once were. Over time, this plaza became an internationally famous performance space. A play space referred to as ‘The Mounds’ was created to the southwest of the park; ‘The Mounds’ consisted of three six-foot tall hills, meant to provide children with a space for spontaneous play and discovery. Chess and gaming tables were built at the south and northwest entry ways and low concrete walls were added to these areas as well (See fig. 4). In more recent years, Nichols’ design has been criticized for not creating a sustainable or historically accurate park, but the redesign was heralded as a major win for the community at the time. It was a victory over real estate developers, wealthy stakeholders, and NYU, all of whom had seemed to get their way with the Village and the fate of the park for far too long.
A closer examination of the 1970s renovation reveals once again communities that were sidelined and excluded from the redesign process. A New York Times article, published on July 23rd, 1966, quoted Paul Douglas, Chairman of Planning Board 2, saying: “[w]ith the restored park[,] we hope to promote the 33 Schoenbaum, “Manhattan’s Washington Square Park,” 67-69. 34 Schoenbaum, “Manhattan’s Washington Square Park,” 67-69.
- 59kind of activities that attract a little more healthy people.”35 Through the redesign, they hoped to exclude young people like the beatniks and folk singers that many of the ‘old timers’ and wealthy residents had come to associate with drugs and crime. Newspaper articles from the time quote some young people as saying that they did not want the redesign to go forward. These were disagreements between people who lived near the park and also those who lived farther away, but still used the park and performed there.
Who should be allowed to have a greater say? Do people who live farther away from the park, but still use it frequently have the same right to the redesign of the park as those who live on the Square?
35 Edward C. Burks, “‘Villagers’ and Officials Agree on Plan for Washington Sq. Park,” The New York Times, June 23, 1966, 36https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/06/23/93849760.html?pageNumber=17.GilbertMillsteinquotedinFolpe, It Happened on Washington Square, 302. 37 Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961.
Even though the different populations of Washington Square may have clashed at times, all of them have played significant roles in developing the physical character of Washington Square Park throughout its history. The battles to save the park from drastic redesigns by Moses were led by individuals of “unimpeachable bourgeois respectability,”36 while the fight for the freedom of musical expression in the park was led by the folk singers and beatniks that the ‘old-timers’ of the park disliked.
Although the right to Washington Square is one that is constantly in flux, the park generates a ‘passionate attachment’ from people of all different incomes, occupations, cultures and backgrounds.37 This passionate attachment of different populations to Washington Square park is what fuels ongoing struggles and makes the park all that it is today.
Conclusion
Figure 2: A map depicting the sections of the park dividend by cliques in 1964, published in the New York Times.
“Washington Square Park on Sunday: Village’s 8-acre melting pot,” New York Times, June 8th, 1964.
Figure 1: Map of NYU’s Expansion on the Square between 1946 and 1966. Laura Helene Schoenbaum (Cornell University, 1988), 59.
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- 61Figure 3: Stills of posters taken from Dan Drasin’s 1961 film, Sunday, which captured scenes from the Beatnik Riot on April 9, 1961. Figure 4: 1970 Community Design Plan. Burks, “‘Villagers’ and Officials Agree on Plan for Washington Sq. Park.
- 62Figure 5: Pictures from a New York Times article of people for and against the redesign. “Washington Square Park Renewal Praised and Condemned by ‘Village’ Residents,” The New York Times, July 23, 1969, https://www.nytimes.com/1969/07/23/archives/washington-square-park-renewal-praised-and-condemned-by-village.html?searchResultPosition=2.
- 63Staff
Niall Lowrie ‘22 is an Art History major with a minor in studio art, specializing in the art and material culture of the Renaissance and early modern periods. In addition to editing Ink & Image, Niall is the secretary of NYU’s Fine Art Society, and works as a tech assistant in the Department of Art History. He is also writing an honors thesis titled “Nature as his Guide: The Botanical Studies of Leonardo da Vinci”. He hopes to one day pursue a Masters in Art History. Niall would like to thank his friends and family for their love and encouragement, but he would especially like to thank Professor Smith, Professor Geronimus, and Professor Krinsky. Your advice, support, and recommendations have been appreciated more than you know.
Ainsley Dean ’24 is an Urban Design and Architecture, Sociology, and Italian triple major interested in how inequality and social relations are influenced by the built environment. In addition to her work with Ink & Image, Ainsley is a research assistant in NYU’s Sociology department. She hopes to eventually attend grad school to further research urban sociological issues. She would like to thank her friends and family for their support, as well as Professors Knight and Cowan for their mentorship and encouragement.
Hannah Javens ‘22 is an Individualized major with a concentration in ‘Haunting Culture,’ with a minor in French. She is interested in investigating how and why certain experiences become lasting aspects of culture, particularly when elements of trauma or ‘abnormality’ are involved. She is the Managing Prose Editor for the Gallatin Review and plans on attending graduate school for sociology. She would like to thank Professor Moya Luckett for the support on her senior honors thesis, as well as her advisor Professor Andrew Romig for his continued guidance throughout undergrad.
Emilie Meyer ‘22 is pursuing an individualized major at Gallatin. Her studies combine contemporary and medieval art history with linguistics and psychoanalysis. Emilie is presently working at non-profit gallery Carriage Trade where she assists with the research, curation, and installation of exhibitions. She would like to thank her professors for indulging her enthusiasm and passion for her studies.
Caroline Cook ‘23 is an Art History major and Hebrew & Judaic Studies minor fascinated by the representation and creation of communities through art. Along with her contributions to Ink & Image, Caroline serves on the Executive Boards of NYU’s Fine Arts Society, Gallatin Dancers/Choreographers Alliance, and Hillel and works as a Data and Engagement Intern at the NYU Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life. After her current semester studying away at NYU Paris, she hopes to continue traveling the world exploring the integrations between art and culture. Caroline is the author of “Photographing Egypt: Opposing the Expression of a Colonialist Lens.” She is especially grateful to her family and friends and would like to thank Professors Meier and Geronimus for their guidance and unwavering support.
About Us
Elizabeth Baltusnik ‘24 is an Urban Design & Architecture Studies and Spanish double major interested in historic preservation and public art. In addition to her work with Ink & Image, Elizabeth is also an editor for Esferas, the undergraduate journal of the department of Spanish and Portuguese, and on the Graphics team for Vis Major, the Fashion Business Association’s student-run magazine. Elizabeth is the author of “From Gay Liberation to Guerilla Art: LGBTQ Monumentalization in New York City” and would like to thank Professor Jon Ritter for his guidance in writing her contribution to the journal.
Anushka Maqbool ‘22 is an aspiring urban planner majoring in Urban Design and Architectural Studies. Anushka’s lived experiences in her hometown of Karachi, as well as New York City and London, have developed her fascination with understanding how cities work, and how people interact with spaces. She’s particularly interested in the concept of “the right to the city”.
About Us
Joey Chen ‘22 is an Art History major with minors in Web Programming and Applications and Business of Entertainment, Media, and Technology (BEMT). Her continuous exploration across the various segments of the art world, from non-profit to for-profit, and from her hometown China to the United States, has nurtured her academic and professional advocacy for a more diverse and interconnected global art market. She would like to thank Professor Julia Robinson for her enlightening insights into contemporary art. She also greatly appreciates the guidance and support of Professor Nancy Deihl and Professor Dennis Geronimus for her honors thesis.
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Authors
Ink and Image Department of Art History New York University Edition 14, Spring 2022
