For example, he tells the story of a decision by leaders in his neighborhood to paint a mural to cover up the ugliness of homeless people sleeping under a viaduct. Instead of creating a mural that made a statement about these people, people who society has marginalized and forgotten about, they chose to create an aesthetic mural. They chose to create art that could cover up and obscure the reality and provide people an escape from the ugliness of life. An artist agreed to work in the service of power to help power take the community's eyes off the despair going on in that part of their neighborhood.
Montanez reflects on the way that capitalism has really become toxic to the power of art in communities:
What artists have to realize as artists, musicians, educators is that we play a critical role in the economy. What the capitalists listen to is money. Money is the only thing that talks to them and it's the only thing that talks to our elected officials and to our electoral politicians. And so, they say we only vote every two or every four years. And we come to believe that that's the way to bring about change. But the reality is that we vote every day, several times a day -where we shop, where we eat, where we go out. In fact, a lot of these businesses would be nowhere if it wasn't for artists holding events, holding open-mics, holding just music shows. All of this is what stimulates these communities and really are displacing the masses. So, artists have to understand the role that we play. We're accomplices to our people's displacement and the suppression of our own voice. We have to realize --- The answer I see is we need to organize a mass boycott, locally and nationally, to make sure that the voice of the artist.
He put all of this in the context of the larger problem of money in society. Elected officials promise reform and renege and choose to basically help pharmaceuticals or bankers or anybody else invested in the status quo. Locally, aldermen or city council members respond to developers, their biggest contributors. They use art to advance gentrification of neighborhoods. They neutralize the power of art to create resistance and use it against people. They also disarm communities who have used power to fuel social movements or build culture and force people "into one channel of a voice"-electoral politics.
Liberals have played a key role in this. They have been complicit. They have allowed art to be neutered and turned into something that now typically promotes commercialism or escapism.
In Los Angeles, the mural was clearly censored yet the
response by artists was mixed. Artists claim that the museum that commissioned
the anti-war mural engaged in poor planning. They didn't ask to see a
representation of what would be painted prior to the artist's painting of the
mural. (To view the mural and its whitewashing, see these photos posted on Unurth.)
Mat Gleason, writer for the Coagula Art Journal, while simultaneously defending art that was recently censored at by the Smithsonian Institution, wrote:
"Some street art fans are crying about the First Amendment violations in this whitewashing but are not considering two things. Do MOCA's curators have a First Amendment right to make the best show possible? Is curating not an artistic process? If a movie director decides that scene in a film detracts from the overall picture and he cuts it, is he censoring the actors who lose screen time as a result? A ratings board or government agency demanding that movie have a scene cut is censorship. The decision to get rid of an artwork that would detract from the overall show is a curatorial decision. Not only is the whitewashing at MOCA not censorship, it is both a brave move to make a show better in the face of controversy as well as to be sensitive on behalf of the local community, something that a shock-and titillation-centric art world is not really known for."
Gleason believed the move to censor the anti-war mural
indicated "empathy for the population of the Little Tokyo community and how
they might interpret a commentary on the sacrifice of their late bothers and
fathers." Gleason, however, should understand that his willingness to encourage
artists to self-censor when they have a message to present is just another indication of
how artists have conditioned themselves to help powerful interests in America emasculate art. By not defending this art, by subverting freedom of speech in America with an overture to self-censorship, he is encouraging museum owners to
replace art that takes on society with abstract and sterile art that does not speak to people but makes
people think they are not intellectual enough to understand the meaning of the
art they are viewing.
Each artist, according to Montanez, has a decision to make:
[An artist] has to decide if they're going to pursue their voice or if they're going to be a vehicle for the highest bidder. If the objective of an artist is simply to make a living and to sell art, then they are more of a craftsman. They are not a true artist. A true artist speaks their voice, their inner voice, and projects that through their art, through their discipline.
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