Colonial Art...

My friend Jerry sent this letter to the Sun (and me) yesterday. Enjoy.

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Steven Hume’s complaint (Vancouver Sun, 22 Feb 2007, pg. A.17) about “political correctness” in regard to what he terms “censoring art from our past” trivializes the issues by labeling the First Nations complaint with the catch-all term “political correctness”. By innuendo he insinuates that the First Nations’ concerns about the Southwell Mural entitled “Courage” in the legislature building are similar to Fascist and dictatorial regimes that destroyed paintings, burned and censored literature, banned and exiled authors, intellectuals and dissidents, and in the recent past destroyed statues, or pillaged libraries and archives. He refers to the “degenerate art” exhibitions as displays of artists who “offended” the German sensibility. He refers to the Taliban’s destruction of religious icons. His comparisons are cheap and historically false. The paintings from the “degenerate art” exhibits were confiscated, housed and held for ransom - that is stolen. Books were burned. Artists and authors were persecuted, imprisoned or murdered, and many were herded into reservations otherwise known as concentration camps. Political opponents likewise. The logic that the First Nations’ concern has any relationship to these events is guilt by association. It would be far more fitting of him to explain to readers why a people whose land has been confiscated, whose children were incarcerated in residential schools, whose households were turned into subsistence economies, and whose culture and languages were rendered obsolete might be “offended” by the art work in an official building representing them as subservient in a land where they are citizens. While stupidities have been committed in the name of ‘political correctness’ this concern about the painting goes much deeper. A more correct analogy would be if Jewish survivors of the holocaust were asked to accept as an official representation of their legacies and their lives the very stereotypes that were pervasive in the society that decimated their culture and their families because of phobias against Jews and non-Aryans. Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, the sick and crippled were the “natives” of the time. Yes teach the next generation and this one too about the causes, and find ways to do that. Keep the painting as illustration of a historical perspective. Consult many about how to do that. Don’t trust all art historians. Don’t trust all journalists. Don’t trivialize the issue by meaningless comparisons. By the way, Paul Klee is not a cubist.

Jerry Zaslove
Professor Emeritus
Simon Fraser University