BIB Oped 1988: SeattleTimes
The Seattle Times
May 19, 1988 Editorial pages
THE LATE MAYOR IN BRA, PANTIES
Times Editorial Insensitive To Blacks
Ken Akiva Segan
Special to The Times
As a professional artist who studied at Southern Illinois University, I read with interest of the controversy surrounding an art student’s painting of the late Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago.
The painting depicted him in a frilly white bra, panties, garter belt, and stockings – attire unbecoming a political leader who was and is a role model for many.
As a Jew, I ask myself how I would feel if the portrait were of a leader of another minority group, and what its impact would be on the community. The Times’ editorial of May 14 (“City of Big Shoulders has some small minds”) did little to air all the facts, and was insensitive to the black community.
The editorial also seeks to invalidate the role of the art student as artist or artist-to-be, and as social commentator, which is a perilous journey for a major media company to engage in.
The people to whom The Times refers as Al Capone-like or “Richard Daley Debating Society members” are elected black legislators (aldermen in Chicago are equivalent to City Council members in Seattle).
The editorial never states that the community outraged over the painting was the black community., as if this were of minor importance. It insults their needs by describing their objections as those of small minds.
In its haste to take a stand on a widely covered and highly unusual news story, The Times comes out as the real small mind, as far as our own multi-racial and multi-ethnic community needs are concerned in western Washington.
The comparison of the Chicago aldermen to our state legislators doesn’t work. Unlike Seattle, many older Midwestern and East Coast cities are racial and ethnic tinderboxes. The very act of a black entering an all-white neighborhood, and vice-versa, can be dangerous.
The murals in the Capitol in Olympia that our representatives deemed immoral never threatened to create an explosive situation.
Whether a riot would have occurred had the painting of Mayor Washington remained on display is academic. The perception existed in the black community, it was affirmed by religious leaders of different faiths, and the police took it as a serious possibility. That is a very dear price to pay for artistic freedom, and hence, our dilemma.
In defense of the art student, I think of the time when Parisians rioted over the Impressionist Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass,” depicting two fully clothed men picnicking with a fully-unclothed woman.
The editorial never states that the people outraged over the student’s painting were blacks.
The great American painter Robert Henri, an early American Impresssionist and object of derision by the “official” critics and academy painters of turn-of-the-century Philadelphia, caused an uproar by conducting figure drawing and painting classes with nude models.
Many of the Impressionist paintings that drew abuse in the late 1880s in Paris now adorn the walls of the Art Institute of Chicago, which adjoins the school where the present dispute lies.
Yes, this is a student show, and not a major museum or gallery exhibit. Had the painting been displayed in the prestigious institute next door, or just been executed by a popular artist such as Philip Pearlstein, who has made a career of painting the nude figure, would this have been sanctioned by The Times? Or would have been cause for greater alarm?
Whichever, it is today’s students who will become the leaders of the art scene tomorrow.
I think the painting should have remained on display, and nothing would have come of it. But once the bubble burst and emotions ran high, the needs of the greater community were in priority, and I reluctantly side with the aldermen. The safety of the community then was the issue.
Perhaps the painting itself became a symbol of injustice in a city where it took many generations for political equality to be achieved – and for Harold Washington himself, it was not easy. It was and is the most bitter of struggles.
Ken Akiva Segan has been a Seattle artist since 1980. His work can be found in museums, libraries and universities across the country and abroad.
A post-script by A.K. Segan, written March 24, 2019. I just typed the text of my op-ed for my website from the hardcopy printed op-ed I‘d saved of the May 19 ‘88 editorial Seattle Times page back then…
I remember being upset at the editorial page editors for how they headlined my guest column:
THE LATE MAYOR IN BRA, PANTIES was printed in large, weighty-sized upper-case bold type. The next text line was larger sized but in less heavy type: Times editorial insensitive to blacks
(1988 was before Microsoft led their successful war of destruction against vision and eye health with their destruction of common-sense graphic design in both the internet, which has morphed to all sizes of hardcopy publication graphic design. So all newspaper type back then was black, high-contrast and vision and reading friendly and accessible).
After my op-ed was printed, I phoned and complained to a couple of Times editorial page writers/editors. (I now view my having done that as youthful inexperience, never mind I was 38 at the time). I remember telling an editorial page editor that their inclusion of that upper line text, THE LATE MAYOR IN BRA, PANTIES, was not any different than what I had criticized the Times about in their editorial. (I wish I had saved their editorial, as it would be interested to read, now, what I was critically addressing in my op-ed).
(Editorial page editors must have nerves of steel. They’re always being criticized, or far worse, physically attacked, sigh… In my Sight-seeing with Dignity human rights art series I’ve depicted 2 journalists who were fatally attacked in recent years; a journalist who died covering a war; and an aspiring 19 year old photographer slain by military forces. See SWD 7: Dial Torgerson, Foreign correspondent; SWD 9: Anna Politkovskaya; SWD 12: Rodrigo Rojas; and SWD 20: Elisabeth Blanche Olofio)
….
And I wonder if the student who painted the painting at the center of the imbroglio was white or African-American? His or her race is, on the one hand, irrelevant, but those on either side of the imbroglio over the Chicago aldermen’s forced removal of the painting might have used that info in their attacks, either for or against the removal. And I wonder how this tempest impacted the student himself or herself at the time?
…..I think some art students would want to, proverbially, sell their soul to the devil, or at least pile up all the tea tossed into the Boston Harbor during the American revolution, to get national exposure of the sort that that painting achieved. And I don’t even recall seeing any photos of the painting. I didn’t have a tv back then so I don’t know if the painting was seen on tv news. Out of curiosity, I’ll do a Google search and see if there’s a photo of it. I hope the student artist has fared well.