Boobies Begone In B.C.

From Canoe.ca:

VICTORIA — On the same day B.C.’s first aboriginal lieutenant-governor is to be sworn in, murals of bare-breasted native women at the B.C. legislature were hidden from view.

[...]

Chief Ed John, of the First Nations Summit, called the cloaking a “significant gesture.”

A bit of back story. The murals in question are a series of four paintings done by British Columbia artist George Southwell back in 1932. By rendering several of the female figures in them topless, he was going for the "idealized native" look that one finds in the work of Paul Gauguin. Almost since the day these paintings were unveiled, however, they have attracted protests from the B.C. First Nations, and in April of this year the B.C. government voted to have them removed and stored at a cost of $280,000.

However, to frame the issue as a matter of covering up nakedness, as the Canoe story does, and as local journalists have done repeatedly since the decision was announced, deliberately cheapens native concerns. A February release from the B.C. First Nation's summit makes clear that it is not the nudity in the murals which renders them offensive:

“First Nations have always maintained the murals in the rotunda of the legislative buildings
are demeaning and degrading and do nothing more than uphold negative

stereotypes of First Nations as a conquered and subservient people.

If you look closely at the picture above, it is quite clear that the natives in it are performing menial and possibly slave labor for their white masters. That's what got people cheesed off.

PS. Why am I writing about this, other than that I am an unreconstructed boob man? My own conflicted history with the murals at the B.C. Legislature can be found here.

B.C. Boobies, Redux

As I wrote about here, after years of complaints from First Nation leaders, four murals in the B.C. legislature, including one portraying several Indian women in states of partial undress, are coming down because, it is argued, natives are portrayed in them "as a conquered and subservient people".

Recently, a number of West Coast writers have lamented the imminent disappearance of these murals. For example, Terry O'Neill writes that:

Notwithstanding the debate over the murals’ artistic and historical significance, or over the artist's intentions when he created the works, for me the issue comes down to one thing, respect: respect for our ancestors who built this province, launched our treasured form of government, and commissioned and approved those murals in the first place.

This does not necessarily mean any disrespect to the aboriginal people who now find the murals offensive; rather, as Premier Campbell has often suggested of late, it is assuming they are our equals. As such, they should be judicious enough to respect the heritage of non-aboriginals, just as they are quite rightly asking us to respect their heritage. It should work both ways.

Unfortunately, as a non-aboriginal ex-B.C. native I find it difficult to put aside the question of artistic merit. Because in fact the B.C. Legislature murals share a feature of much government sponsored art: they are boring (despite the nudity!). It has often been written that being chosen a nation's poet laureate is good for the poet's wallet but bad for their poetry, and perhaps something similar applies to visual artists as well. In any case, I am personally unable to see how my White heritage is going to be threatened by removing a couple of bad paintings (especially as they will live on as reproductions), and I will not feel "disrespected" if they disappear.

Another bad idea, it seems to me, is propounded by a Mary Woo Sims, who suggests that:

One of the five options was to leave the murals as they are and add some explanatory material. I believe this option merited more discussion and expansion. Why not talk about the fact that the murals perpetuated colonial attitudes and negative stereotypes of Aboriginal people, and the implications of such a depiction being in a legislative building? How about a more interactive educational discussion in front of the murals?

For one thing, adding explanatory material to a painting that people find offensive will not necessarily do anything to render that painting any less offensive to those people, so it does not solve the problem at issue. For another, it strikes me that this response really does smack of Political Correctness: the murals are allowed to stay on the condition that they serve as the topic for some kind of lecture. They are made examples of, in other words. Which seems a fate worse than destruction, frankly.

No. The decision that has already been made is the best one possible under the circumstances. Take 'em down and put 'em in storage, replace 'em with pictures of a water-fall or ducks or something.

h/t the Shotgun Blog.

Boobies Boobies Boobies In The B.C. Legislature

Almost every year when I was in high school, my class would hop a bus and be motored downtown to do a tour of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. The big highlight (because who really cared if the stain-glass windows there were shipped inside molasses-filled containers to guard against breakage?) was always the murals that decorated the rotunda. My favorite was this one, which depicts the construction of Fort Victoria by hot, half nekkid Indian chicks. The girls are hauling lumber, while Whitey (top left) looks on with a smugly satisfied air.

Well, after years of complaints by First Nation leaders, the murals are coming down, and suddenly people are squawking about censorship and the importance of art in culture and yada yada yada. As someone who supports the B.C. government's actions in this matter, I think it is important to clear up several misunderstandings.

1) The Issue for B.C.'s aboriginal community is not Nekkidness, as a few people have tried to argue. Rather, the issue is that the natives in the mural (male and female alike) are portrayed "as a conquered and subservient people". It isn't that Whitey is cavorting with luscious nekkid women, its that they're luscious nekkid slave women. Big difference.

2) The murals will not be destroyed, as this gentleman seems to be arguing, but "removed and preserved", at a cost of $280,000. There are also rumors that reproductions will be sold in stroke-book format at the legislature gift-shop.

3) They are not great art. They are not even really decent porn. If anything, they look a bit like cut-rate versions of Gauguin, who also specialized in Nekkid natives. So if they were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow it would not be an irreplaceable loss to mankind. What I think is most interesting about them is that they illustrate why corporate art (the paintings you are likely to see on the wall of a modern office building) has gone almost entirely abstract: if there is no representation, then there can be no offensive representations (although they'll always be the occasional nutter that thinks the gray blob on the wall looks like a vagina).