Marcel van den Haak
Over the past few years, there have been many examples of progressive art criticism that caused heated debates, eventually resulting in ‘cancellation’ or – a moderate solution – contextualisation. This essay shows the similarities between two cases that differ in three significant aspects: country, art discipline and type of moral issue.
Chronologically, the first case is the novel American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, released in January 2020. It tells the story of a Mexican woman and her young son who are taking on a highly dangerous migration route by train to the United States, on the run from a local drug lord. The author intended to educate American readers and let them empathise with Mexican immigrants, who are often perceived as a ‘faceless brown mass’, as she states in her epilogue. However, the novel was criticised heavily by Mexican-American and other Latinx writers for using one-dimensional stereotypes, telling a migration story in the genre of gruesome thrillers and portraying the US as the promised land. Moreover, the novel was perceived as an act of cultural appropriation, as it was written by a white woman, who – despite years of research – was accused of including many factual errors on life in Mexico. Cummins, who self-identified as Latina due to her Puerto Rican grandmother, admitted her limitations in her epilogue by stating she wished ‘someone browner than me’ had written the book. However, these disclaimers further contributed to the uproar. A month prior to publication, Latina writer Myriam Gurba opened the debate with a scathing online review. This was followed by other Latinx writers on social media, in blogs and in op-eds in established newspapers.
Had it been a modestly published novel, the backlash would not have been as harsh. However, the manuscript had been acquired by Flatiron Books (an imprint of Macmillan) for an alleged ‘seven-digit sum’ after a bidding war between nine publishers. Flatiron promoted it as the novel on migration and as a literary masterpiece; a blurb on the cover compared Cummins to renowned author John Steinbeck by calling it ‘[t]he Grapes of Wrath of our time’. But despite their inside knowledge or even lived experience, Latinx writers do not receive equal opportunities to publish work on similar topics, let alone to be massively promoted. Gurba (2019) therefore accused Cummins of operating ‘opportunistically, selfishly, and parasitically’. However, she and other critics mainly targeted the publishing industry rather than the author. Writer Reyna Grande (2020), for instance, wrote in The New York Times:
‘It took me three tries to cross that geographical [US-Mexico] border. It took me 27 attempts to get past the gatekeepers of the publishing industry who time and time again make Latino writers feel that our stories don’t matter. ‘
When Oprah Winfrey selected American Dirt for her influential Book Club, a group of 82 Latinx writers signed a petition, asking her to withdraw the book. They warned for the novel’s potentially harmful effects for the ‘depiction of marginalized, oppressed people’ in politically conservative times. Many of them organised themselves in the collective DignidadLiteraria. Cummins’ book tour was cancelled due to unspecified threats. There were also more constructive responses: publisher Macmillan promised to more actively recruit Latinx writers and editors in order to prevent future mishaps, while Oprah Winfrey hosted a discussion on the issue that had a broader scope than initially intended. Cummins herself apologised for several mistakes. The turmoil did not prevent American Dirt from becoming a best seller, though.
The second case regards the art installation Destroy My Face by Dutch artist Erik Kessels, which opened in September 2020 in Breda, the Netherlands. As part of the photography biennial BredaPhoto, he covered a local indoor skate rank with sixty large algorithm-generated pictures of women’s faces that had been ‘deformed’ by excessive plastic surgery. In order to criticise such ‘Insta-perfect’ beauty ideals and promote self-acceptance instead, Kessels invited skaters to ride over these pictures, which would gradually erase them and hence ‘destroy the destruction’. Though intended as a socially critical artwork, it received immediate criticism on social media. Skating over women’s faces and finally erasing them was considered an act of misogyny and objectification, particularly within the predominantly masculine skate world, in which female skaters do not always feel safe.
The (initially anonymous) artists’ collective We Are Not a Playground, wrote an open letter to BredaPhoto and the skate rank, accompanied by a petition that quickly gained a global following of both artists and skaters.8 They argued that Kessels ‘completely disregards any of the social, cultural and/or patriarchal implications of why more female-presenting people decide to have plastic surgery’. Similar to the first case, though, the petition was directed towards the organisation rather than the artist.
The collective, run by young artists, later turned into a more sustainable group that calls for changes in the art world in general, particularly regarding diversity and inclusion:
‘We would like to acknowledge the work and effort that goes into creating projects like these and know all too well how long it takes for a work to be greenlit, researched, conceptualised, produced and ultimately become suitable for visitors. It, therefore, feels incredibly jarring that this conversation was not held internally. We think that this speaks volumes not only about Kessels’ practice but about the field he exists and functions in.’
Within a week, the skatepark removed the artwork due to the backlash by its own followers and sponsors. BredaPhoto did not applaud this cancellation but did later organise an open debate on the issue and on inclusion in the art world, featuring both Kessels and critics. Kessels himself was asked to withdraw from a photography jury in the UK, even though ‘cancelling’ the artist himself had never been the petitioners’ intention. Also, he received many hateful e-mails.
BredaPhoto
Hence, in both cases, artists aimed to create a socially critical work of art, intended to spark a debate on a social issue or to invoke empathy with a marginalised group. However, they both received objections regarding the content of the works, potential unintended social effects for which the artist did not take responsibility, and the lack of diversity and inclusion in the institutions involved. A further striking similarity is that the most vocal critics are artists and writers themselves, showing serious institutional critiques from within the artistic and literary field beyond unfounded protests by social media crowds.
Although both American Dirt and Destroy My Face were rarely defended with aesthetic arguments, unlike in many other cases in recent years, the autonomy of art does come forward strongly. The Dutch case shows the most straightforward form, by means of angrily written newspaper pieces. For instance, columnist Elma Drayer writes: “Once upon a time, the art world was a free place where artists could do their divine thing. And that’s how it’s supposed to be” (my translation). Others refer to the freedom of speech in general, while Kessels himself argues that, “as an artist you have your boundaries, of course, but you should feel an enormous freedom to do things” (my translation).
On Kessels’s work, not one aesthetic judgement is made in the public debate, whereas Cummins’s novel is mainly praised with a – in terms – popular aesthetic, particularly its page-turning quality. Several reviewers do criticise the novel with aesthetic criteria (writing style, narrative clichés, lack of complexity), often complementary to their moral critique.
In the American case, this narrative comes to the fore in rejections of the cultural appropriation argument: writers should be able to write about whoever they wish, regardless of their own identity. Despite her openness to criticism, Oprah Winfrey opened the Cummins episode of her Book Club with: “I fundamentally, fundamentally believe in the right of anyone to use their imagination and their skills to tell stories and to empathise with other stories.” Cummins herself and others ridicule accusations of cultural appropriation in a slippery slope type of rhetoric:
Jeanine Cummins wrote: ‘Would that mean therefore that I am only allowed to write stories about Irish Puerto Rican girls who were born in Spain and grew up in Maryland? Others wrote:
‘Shakespeare should not have written Othello, Joyce Ulysses, Flaubert Madame Bovary or George Eliot Silas Marner. Everyone is condemned to write autobiographies.’
‘[W]e will end up with nothing but novels about novelists, and there are quite enough of those already.’
Related to the autonomy of art is the idea that art is supposed to provoke or to incite debate, which is particularly salient in the case of Destroy My Face. At several instances, BredaPhoto director Fleur van Muiswinkel emphasised the difference between serious criticism and calls for removal:
‘That one of our works elicited a reaction, we really liked. That’s what we stand for. That’s why we display work in which photographers and artists take a stance and provide the audience with a mirror. We precisely want images to encourage reflection. But please then start a conversation [rather than a call for removal’ ( my translation)
A second line of defence regards the discrepancy between the artist’s intentions and the audience’s interpretations. On the one hand, some argue that there cannot be a fixed or correct interpretation, as it is up to the public to decide what a work means, in line with Barthes’s ideas on the ‘death of the author’. Erik Kessels maintains that his work was supposed to raise questions, but: ‘Which ones? Everyone can decide for themselves. I don’t judge, I only bring an issue to attention’ (my translation).
On the other hand, those who freely interpret the work are criticised for their incorrect interpretations. Erik Kessels contradicts himself, backed by festival director Van Muiswinkel and others, by complaining in several media outlets that his critics did not dive into the work to understand what it is ‘really’ about and to detect the intended irony.
Such discrepancies also occur in the Cummins case, yet in a different way. The author intended to let (non-Latinx) American readers empathise with Mexican migrants but was criticised by members of that very community. Many readers and reviewers who like the book, however, emphasise that the intentions worked for them. When Oprah Winfrey asked her audience whose views on migrants had been positively altered, many raised their hands.
Finally, and most vocally, the critics are accused of ‘cancel culture’. In the public eye, substantiated criticism by writers and artists is often conflated with calls for boycotts by masses external to the artistic field, who show a lack of cultural capital by quickly liking or sharing social media posts without properly informing themselves. Hence, art’s defenders accuse critics of a ‘vicious backlash’, ‘sadism’ or ‘fascism’ while associating them with a ‘mob mentality’. Note that some of these accusations compare critics with ultra-conservative groups (fascism, Taliban) that were usually associated with moral art critique. Some artists fear a future of self-censorship, which would run counter to the artistic ideal of autonomy.
Marcel van den Haak lectures at the University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
