Sex, Chairs and Photographs: A Kaleidoscope of Controversy

I’ve been thinking a lot about issues that spark culture quarrels, so I was interested in the recent controversy surrounding the photo of Russian socialite and art patron Dasha Zhukova sitting on a chair fashioned by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard to look like a half-nude, bound, black woman on her back with her feet up in the air. The photo and chair immediately drew cries of racism. What I find so fascinating about these types of issues is the absolute certainty on all sides despite the lack of any definitive interpretation of the offending work.

 

The first reaction of many everyday people I know is to scoff at outrage such as appears in this case. Understandably, they are tired of controversy and wish the complainers would just give it a rest. Are we really to believe that Melgaard, the photographer and Zhukova (who apologized) are racists making a blatant racist statement? Can’t a photograph just be a photo and a weird chair a weird chair?

Or should we join with the critics in saying that it doesn’t matter what those involved intended (the death of the author in poststructuralism), their products speak for themselves and they speak the language of centuries of degradation, sexualization and commodification of black women. A photograph of a white woman perched glamorously atop a subjugated black woman exhibits, even if unintentionally, reprehensible symbolism.

The possible angles to take are kaleidoscopic: The chair is a shameless attempt to shock. Melgaard is just seeking attention. It’s just more modern-art nonsense. He’s talentless anyway. Who cares about these artists and socialites anyway? Why do we focus on race when Melgaard’s treatment of the whole female sex is suspect? And surely it is significant that the context of the chair is a similar work by Allen Jones, a British pop artist of the 1960s (article). Wouldn’t that mean that Chair is actually an insightful look at perceptions of race and gender, as Zhukova’s spokeman has claimed? Ah, but that doesn’t excuse the photo, does it?

And so on.

 

You may have your favorite angle among these, or a new one for the list, but I don’t see one that stands apart as the right one or even what source we may turn to in order to determine the right one. As far as I can tell, there is no bottom line to this issue, at least as a whole.

This is really just a restatement of what I wrote in another post about the 2013 Miley Cyrus VMAs performance. A work of art speaks, but not in crystal clear terms, so we must interpret it, and that is all we have: various interpretations. Some may be simple, some may be highfalutin, some may be better grounded or in better faith than others, but none can claim to have the last word.