{"id":4741,"date":"2023-11-10T15:20:51","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T23:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juliafriedman.org\/?p=4741"},"modified":"2023-11-10T19:08:11","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T03:08:11","slug":"the-problem-with-artists-and-open-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliafriedman.org\/?p=4741","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with Open Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Artists are notoriously sensitive. Socially, they are often the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, first to detect and react to injustice. I discussed three examples of 20th century artists responding to the inhumanity of armed conflicts in my recent article in The New Criterion<\/a><\/em>. I did so to provide the art-historical context for the controversy prompted by “An open letter from the art community to cultural organizations” undersigned by some 8,000 people and published in Artforum<\/em>. I argue that venting by e-signing, then e-withdrawing signatures and e-apologizing is not the way to go. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In these movements we find defiant artists who, disgusted with the pretense of a corrupt civilization, went on to disassociate from the art that represented this civilization. For moral and not formal reasons, they sought to turn the page on the art that had come before\u2014in Dada\u2019s case, traditional and even modernist painting; in the case of Art Informel, on geometric abstraction \u00e1 la Piet Mondrian. These artists voted with their brushes. Regardless of whether we like its results, this response of withdrawal and rejection is perfectly understandable.<\/p>\n

In contrast, today\u2019s artists opt for the activist mode to show their disillusionment with humanity. They vote with their keyboards, venting by e-signing, and then, e-withdrawing their signatures, before e-apologizing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[945],"tags":[1153,225,1151,233,406,1152,756,978,794],"class_list":["post-4741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-history","tag-activism","tag-art-history","tag-art-informel","tag-artforum-2","tag-dada","tag-jean-fautrier","tag-julia-friedman","tag-politics","tag-wally-hedrick"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Problem with Open Letters - Julia Friedman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/juliafriedman.org\/?p=4741\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Problem with Open Letters - Julia Friedman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In these movements we find defiant artists who, disgusted with the pretense of a corrupt civilization, went on to disassociate from the art that represented this civilization. For moral and not formal reasons, they sought to turn the page on the art that had come before\u2014in Dada\u2019s case, traditional and even modernist painting; in the case of Art Informel, on geometric abstraction \u00e1 la Piet Mondrian. These artists voted with their brushes. Regardless of whether we like its results, this response of withdrawal and rejection is perfectly understandable. In contrast, today\u2019s artists opt for the activist mode to show their disillusionment with humanity. 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