#davidpulphus

[pittrarebooks]

Each spring semester the University Library System, in collaboration with Pitt’s Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), award ten students with the Archival Scholars Research Award (ASRA). This semester, seven of those students are working in Special Collections. Each month, we ask the scholars to submit blog posts demonstrating the discoveries they are making. Enjoy!

The Annual Congressional Art Competition, sponsored by the Congressional Institute, broadcasts a call to high school artists nationwide to share the best their congressional districts have to offer. The rules are simple: the works must be two dimensional, be no larger than 28 x 28 inches, weigh less than fifteen pounds, and be original in concept, design, and execution while not violating any copyright laws. When eighteen year old David Pulphus’ painting won first place in Missouri’s First District, it was flown to a gallery at the U.S. Capitol Complex, where an ongoing spat has seen it hung, removed, then rehung a number of times.

The painting is packed with motifs – a black man in sweatpants, a graduation cap, and bold red sneakers hovers, crucified, his arms bearing the scales of justice, occupied with the black and white whorls of yin and yang. The city skyline recedes into prison bars, through which two brown eyes gaze plaintively at the viewer. Placards emblazoned with the phrases “RACISM KILLS” and “HISTORY” call out to the viewer, while a black and white bird fly headlong at each other. The scene ultimately unfolds and opens up towards the viewer, where a black panther stands, face-to-face with the barrel of a gun wielded by a pig in a police uniform.

The depiction of cops as pigs has been traded verbally as well as visually – Cypress Hill’s track, Pigs evokes a cop “…standin’ eatin’ donuts while some motherfucker’s out robbin’ your home.” But perhaps one of the earliest and most widespread depictions of cops as pigs must be attributed to one man: former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas.

July 26, 1969

November 15, 1969

March 7, 1970

Known today for his iconic representation of the struggles of black Americans throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and the subject of several exhibitions within the last decade, Emory Douglas’ style is nothing short of staggeringly incisive. Responsible for much of the artistic production and layout of the Black Panther Paper, a biweekly newspaper circulated worldwide from its headquarters in Oakland, Emory Douglas was the designated artist for many of the back covers of the paper—creating bold illustrations to fill up the entire page, usually accompanied with blocks of bright, fluorescent colors. The illustrations brutally confront the plight black Americans felt living in the 60s and 70s, depicting such subjects as disenfranchised children, decrepit living conditions, and shocking acts of police brutality. Pigs with sharp teeth, adorned with clouds of flies and clad in human clothing frequent these illustrations, usually identified as cops, politicians, fascists and capitalists. In several cases, then-president Richard Nixon is among them, gorging himself on dollar bills, engaging in sexual acts with other members of his inner circle (similarly depicted as pigs), and carrying out orders against the black community, the Panthers, and the Vietnamese—the war was in full swing, and the Black Panther Party threw their ideological support behind Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong. 

February 12, 1972

November 15, 1969

With the media’s constant inundation with acts of protest against police brutality, and calls for police surveillance and accountability, it comes as no surprise that Emory Douglas’ art bears a remarkable significance to David Pulphus’ equally controversial painting. While Douglas’ art and ideology are regarded by many today as emblematic of a time of great distress, one from which we have long since departed, the fact remains that the knee-jerk reaction to Pulphus’ pig-police unabashedly proclaims otherwise. The issues and criticisms he raises—at age eighteen, in a high school in Missouri—resonate word for word with those Douglas raised almost four decades ago. Furthermore, judging by the fact that his painting has gone back and forth from on the Congressional wall to out of sight almost four times as of this date, there can be no mistake about declaring how divisive issues of race, police violence, and freedom of expression (artistic or otherwise) are to us even now.

-Raka Sarkar, Archival Scholars Research Awardee ‘17

[terenceblanchard]

Jazz is made with the players, Imagine tenor saxophonist #RaviColtrane, drummer #CarlAllen, pianist #KennyBarron, alto sax #KhariAllenLee,and bassist #DavidPulphus plus me in the studio and you have great Jazz. Add the film magic of great actors #RobertDeNiro, #DannyDeVito, #Leslie Mann directed by #TaylorHackford and you have Art. Listen to the soundtrack, let me know what you think. #bluenoterecords http://ow.ly/bcZY308ELvW

[lobbydigital]

Only the second time I'm reposting some random art on here. This #painting by an 18 year old contest winning Missouri student named #DavidPulphus has been forcibly removed from the US Capital building by VANDAL Rep. Duncan Hunter (R Cali), who is apparently too fragile to allow rational discourse to invade his place of work. So he had to physically remove it from his eyeballs. Well, anyway, now this painting lives online over here next to the hashtags #repduncanhunter and #duncanhunter. Thanks for making my man David go viral, #SlamDunc! Meanwhile the iconographically fascist decor at the center of the #housefloor remains unquestioned by either party. #congress #oppositeofprogress #policebrutality #racismkills #blacklivesmatter #blm #donttouchtheart (at US Capital Washington DC)

[blue-note-lp]

bluenoterecords: RT T_Blanchard: Imagine RaviColtrane, KennyBarron88, Khari Allen Lee, davidpulphus, Carl Allen. … https://t.co/QYYKXe8bFD

bluenoterecords: RT T_Blanchard: Imagine RaviColtrane, KennyBarron88, Khari Allen Lee, davidpulphus, Carl Allen. … https://t.co/QYYKXe8bFD

— Blue Note Collector (@BlueNoteVinyl) February 3, 2017

from Twitter https://twitter.com/BlueNoteVinyl February 03, 2017 at 02:23PM via IFTTT

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: US Congressman Sues Architect of the Capitol for Removing Student’s Painting

Congressman William Lacy Clay files federal lawsuit following removal of painting. https://t.co/nkAFKBWX7P http://pic.twitter.com/8h6wsFCGab

— KMOV (@KMOV) February 21, 2017

Representative William Lacy Clay (D–Missouri) filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the Architect of the US Capitol, Stephen Ayers, over the removal of a painting of a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, from a hallway between the Capitol Building and Longworth House Office Building. Clay alleges that the work’s removal constitutes a violation of the 1st Amendment rights of the artist, former St. Louis high school senior David Pulphus.

“David’s painting was wrongly disqualified and removed from the public exhibit at the direction of the Architect of the Capitol, who shamefully chose to retroactively censor and suppress Mr. Pulphus’s artwork in response to the enormous political pressure he experienced from the Speaker of the House and certain right-wing media outlets,” Clay said yesterday outside a courthouse in Washington, DC. “This case is truly about something much bigger than a student’s painting: it is about defending our fundamental 1st Amendment freedoms, which are currently under assault in this country.” The office of the Architect of the Capitol is in charge of maintaining and preserving the buildings, gardens, monuments, and artworks on Capitol Hill; Ayers was appointed to the position by Barack Obama in 2010.

The work — which depicts a protest scene in the community where 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in 2015 — hung without incident in the Capitol Hill facility for seven months, alongside other winners of the annual Congressional Art Competition. Last month, however, several Republican lawmakers sought its removal because of the artist’s portrayal of two police officers as wild boars — mischaracterized as pigs by many media outlets and critics. “This painting … was a slap in the face to the countless men and women who put their lives on the line everyday on behalf of our safety and freedom,” Congressman Dave Reichert (R-Washington) told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

GOP congressman removes Capitol art by Artist David Pulphus #DavidPulphus #DavePulphus in act of #Censorship! https://t.co/zjTYQWx91C http://pic.twitter.com/VmnBQoxNXZ

— MCTV (@MCTV419) January 7, 2017

The untitled painting was removed and rehung at least three times over the course of a week. In mid-January, Ayers intervened, after being petitioned by Reichert, and ordered its permanent removal on grounds that it violated the terms of the Congressional Art Competition. The work has since been hanging in Clay’s office.

“I am seeking an appropriate remedy through this federal litigation, and I’m proud to defend both the fundamental rights of my constituent and the 1st Amendment,” Clay said. “I am confident that justice will prevail.”

The post US Congressman Sues Architect of the Capitol for Removing Student’s Painting appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Fights to Withhold Paintings from Capitol Hill Show Their Political Power

George Caleb Bingham’s “The Verdict of the People” (1854–55) at Donald Trump’s inaugural luncheon (screenshot via YouTube)

WASHINGTON, DC — Over the last few weeks, two paintings with roots in St. Louis, Missouri, have come under attack for their display in federal government buildings here. Eighteen-year-old David Pulphus’s award-winning student painting depicting a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, remains a pawn in a tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans, removed and reinstalled at least three times on Capitol Hill. In St. Louis and beyond, concerned citizens implored the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) to refrain from loaning a painting to Donald Trump’s inaugural luncheon. One piece hung on the wall connecting House Office Buildings to the US Capitol Building; the other served as the backdrop for a celebration of Trump’s ascendance to power. The display and removal of these two works have sent powerful messages to the people of the United States about who has power, and art’s role as a mechanism of that power.

Annually, the artwork from selected high-school artists nationwide is hung on the walls of a long tunnel connecting the House Office Buildings to the US Capitol, yet Pulphus’s painting has become the object of a very pointed attack, leading ultimately to its removal by order of the Architect of the Capitol. The attacks come at a time of transition of power from the hands of the Democratic majority to Republican leadership, and this piece serves as more than a symbol of that transition of power. Rather, the content of the artwork itself — and, arguably, the identity of the artist, a young, black man — is an assertion of a narrative that the new lawmakers appear to want quieted. The painting itself is a conduit, a material assertion of the perspective of community members that has confronted members of Congress, staffers, and lobbyists daily.

George Caleb Bingham, “The Verdict of the People” (1854–55), oil on canvas, 46 x 55 in, Saint Louis Museum of Art (via Wikimedia Commons)

A few miles from Pulphus’s high school, at the SLAM, another painting became the subject of a power play when the institution agreed to lend George Caleb Bingham’s “Verdict of the People” (1855) to be featured at Trump’s inaugural luncheon in the National Statuary Hall of the US Capitol. Artist Ilene Berman and art historian Dr. Ivy Cooper created a petition to stop the institution from lending the painting, voicing concerns about its implications for the community, the responsibilities of the institution to its audience, and the “normalization of this president,” as Berman told Hyperallergic.

“We feel that this particular painting, as a representation of our community, is problematic in the context of the Trump election,” Dr. Cooper told Hyperallergic. The pomp and circumstance of positioning a painting depicting the “Verdict of the People” as the backdrop for the inauguration of a candidate who lost the popular vote by millions is bitterly ironic, as the petition’s creators point out. SLAM’s refusal to withhold the work gives a sense of the power of the art institution in the new Trump era. As Berman put it, “institutions are supposed to be about genuine engagement with their mission and not about placating the powerful.” In its ultimate decision to lend the painting, is the institution subservient, or empowered?

For Representative William Lacy Clay, the Democrat from Missouri whose office awarded Pulphus’s painting first place in his district, removing the work from display on Capitol Hill disempowers the artist and the community his work represents. He told NPR, “the African-American community has had a painful, tortured history with law enforcement in this country. So let’s not ignore the fact, that that’s not contemporary. That’s historic.” That Pulphus’s work gets to tell this story within a federal building is an exercise of that community’s power. And its removal is tantamount to the removal of that power, a public parade of dominance by members of the Republican party and a refusal to address the identity politics that come along with the work.

GOP congressman removes Capitol art by Artist David Pulphus #DavidPulphus #DavePulphus in act of #Censorship! https://t.co/zjTYQWx91C http://pic.twitter.com/VmnBQoxNXZ

— MCTV (@MCTV419) January 7, 2017

While the display of a painting on Capitol Hill can assert the power of an individual, institution, or community, there is a searing power in the absence of an artwork. “Absence is a poetic display of a refusal to be a part,” Berman said. This philosophy fueled the #J20 Art Strike, an act of “non-compliance” on Inauguration Day. Imagine if the backdrop to the Inaugural Luncheon, which has been an American painting at each of these events since 1985, had been a vacant white wall. What does it mean for an artwork by an 18-year-old black man depicting Ferguson to be removed from a government building? The absence of art, just as often, is a critical display of the remover’s power.

The entanglement of art and the power of political parties is nothing new. In July 1937, four years after Adolf Hitler came into power, his regime organized the infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich. The show gathered modern, abstract, and non-representational art, hung purposefully askew, and presented so that it would be interpreted as a “malicious plot against the German people.” Forty years later, the work of the communist mural collective Brigada Ramona Parra was continually painted over by the regime of Augusto Pinochet.

But why art? Why are these paintings the charged objects of the transition of power? History has demonstrated that artworks hold power — they are consolidated vessels of perspective, they give voice to the voiceless, they can be a cry in a room of silent compliance. The disputes over Pulphus’s painting and the loan of Bingham’s demonstrate that powerful artworks can also be leveraged to disempower. As scholar Krzysztof Ziarek wrote in his 2002 essay “Art, Power, and Politics: Heidegger on Machenschaft and Poiêsis,” “we have to keep questioning art in relation to power, to ask how art is productive of power in the subjective and objective sense of this genitive, that is, produced both through and as power.”

Art has always carried political power, and if the past week is any indication, the flexing of power will be a popular strategy over the next four years. As such, artists and art institutions must become increasingly perspicacious about how their works might play into political power games. These paintings hold their own power of authorship, content, and even as physical objects occupying politically charged spaces. Many paintings articulate opinions, and those physical manifestations of an individual’s or a community’s perspectives can be used as mechanisms of power — to reinforce it, or to deny it.

The post Fights to Withhold Paintings from Capitol Hill Show Their Political Power appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: A Painting Censored by GOP Lawmakers Deserves to Be Seen

Admiring the #CAC2016 1st place winner by senior David Pulphus of @RitterPrepHS http://pic.twitter.com/xCrRG8MDAI

— Jasmina Hadzic (@YouthInCongress) May 12, 2016

Each year since 1982, the Congressional Institute has sponsored a high school art competition whereby students submit artwork to their congressional representative’s office, which in turn selects a winner. The 435 winning artworks are then exhibited in Washington, DC, hung salon style in a hallway between the Capitol Building and Longworth House Office Building for a year. The office of Representative William Lacy Clay, a Democrat from St. Louis, Missouri, selected a painting by Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School senior David Pulphus in early May 2016. Early this month, the untitled painting was hung in the Capitol. A few days later, the Independent Journal Review, a right-wing website with a mixed record on factual reporting, published an article titled, “Painting of Cops as Pigs Hung Proudly in US Capitol.” A cycle of outrage began. Fox News picked up the story. In a ginned up moment, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican from San Diego, California unscrewed the painting from the wall, delivered it to Representative Clay’s office, and went to Fox News to brag about it. Today, Representative Clay and members of the Congressional Black Caucus rehung the painting. Shortly thereafter Representative Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado, removed it again, only to have Representative Clay rehang it again. Congressional Republicans are discussing how to remove it permanently.

Representative Clay did no service to the painting when he announced its selection in May 2016. “The painting portrays a colorful landscape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri and the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society,” his statement said. At the time, the St. Louis American reported, “The painting is an interpretation of the months of unrest that took place in the region in response to the fatal shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown Jr. by then-Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014.” Pulphus submitted a powerful work of art and Representative Clay’s pretending the painting was innocuous is a disservice to its capacity.

Many, however, have been trying to dismiss the voice of Pulphus’ painting. In her role as a “news analyst”, Jeanne Zaino said on Fox News, “The problem here is that this does nothing to further that conversation and help us get to a better place vis-a-vis police community relations particularly in the African American community.” Are we so sure about that? As is often the case when art becomes controversial, the discussion becomes less about the art in question and more about politics, hysterics, and gamesmanship. Before we take to Twitter, let’s take a moment to look closely at Pulphus’s painting.

GOP congressman removes Capitol art by Artist David Pulphus #DavidPulphus #DavePulphus in act of #Censorship! https://t.co/zjTYQWx91C http://pic.twitter.com/VmnBQoxNXZ

— MCTV (@MCTV419) January 7, 2017

Describing it as a “Painting of Cops as Pigs” is a bit like describing Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” as “Naked Guy Tries to Touch Old Dude.” “Untitled #1” is an acrylic on canvas work that shows a protest taking places on the streets of St. Louis. The painting is rendered in a densely packed style reminiscent of many social justice murals. In the background of the painting, a man stares at the viewer through prison bars. The iconic Gateway Arch stands to the man’s right. At the center of the composition, a crowd of people holding signs marches through the street. Brick buildings surround the people, who are predominantly black and brown. One man holds up a sign that says “History.” A man behind him holds one that reads “Justice Now.”

Like a lot of good art, Pulphus’s painting raises many questions. Is the inclusion of a Beauty Shop a shout out to African American neighborhoods? Is the white protester with a peace sign on the sidewalk a critique of white passiveness in the face of racism? Is that meant as a direct counterbalance to the black man holding a “Racism Kills” sign on the sidewalk across the street? Is the artist asking us to think about our messages in the context of a larger debate?

The energy of the scene is tense. A white man in a blue car is frustrated by the events unfolding around him. He is trapped by the crowd. Next to his car, seemingly suspended in the air, a man hangs on a cross. In each hand, he holds a platform on chains so that his body becomes the center pillar in a scale of justice. He wears a mortarboard on his head. What does it mean for that black body to be crucified as the center pillar of scales of justice?

On the other side of the painting are two figures in police uniforms. Their heads are portrayed as wild boars with tusks. Their bodies are thick; their skin is brown and their human hands point guns at an anthropomorphized black cat that could be a cougar or a panther. Is the portrayal of the protester as a cat a reference to the Black Panthers’ long fight against social inequality? The cat man is raising a fist in the air, defying the gun-wielding boars. Above it all, two birds, one black and one white, fight in midair.

Artists paint the world around them. What can we infer about the world of this artist? He comes from a world where a passionate fight for justice is taking place. The questionably factual Independent Journal Review said an unnamed “senior Republican congressional aide” referred to the painting as “hate masquerading as art.” If that person actually exists, I wonder if they even saw the dozens of other people in the painting. To return to Michaelangelo, this is the comment of someone who only sees Adam’s small penis and not the grand gesture of God giving life to humanity.

Back on Fox News, Zaino said that the painting “alienates and treats people with a lack of respect they deserve.” Actually, this looks like a painting of people who feel alienated and don’t feel they are getting the respect the deserve. To not see that is to miss the whole point of the painting. Why is it so important for some people to focus only on the two wild boars? In a culture of disinformation, power must redirect attention from the truth. Attacking how the message is delivered is a brilliant way to prevent the message from being heard.

The president of the Fraternal Order of Police District of Columbia Lodge #1, Andy Maybo, told the right-wing, questionably factual publication the Daily Caller, “This piece of art, which depicts officers as pigs, is both offensive and disgusting. During a time in our society when tensions are so high that someone can be offended by a single word, this painting does nothing but attack law enforcement to its core.” Does it though? The artist does not portray all law enforcement as wild boars. Two squad cars are parked behind the protesters, presumably keeping them safe from oncoming traffic. Another police officer holds a black man by the arm as if he is taking him away from the scene. A better question may be: What could it be about the two officers who have pulled their guns on the unarmed protesters that dehumanizes them? Usually when I am being dehumanized, I ask myself: Am I doing something unjust that is causing this person to treat me this way? And if I am, then I stop doing that thing.

There is something “offensive and disgusting” about Pulphus’s painting. That this is the world of a high school senior is a fact that should offend and disgust us. That a person is growing up in a world where those meant to protect and serve can come to be seen as wild and lethal animals should be the concern here. When a child makes a disturbing picture, the proper response should not be to rip it off the refrigerator and pretend it doesn’t exist. The humane response is to listen to that child and find out what’s going on with him or her. Pulphus is not a child. He has arrived as an artist. The maturity of this painting is profound. And we should take his work seriously and listen closely to what it has to say.

The post A Painting Censored by GOP Lawmakers Deserves to Be Seen appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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