Dred Scott Critique

I attended the teach in event with artist Dred Scott. I thought that this event was so remarkable. It definitely opened up my eyes to the ability of art to be revolutionary and to “propel history forward”. The artist focused on 3 of his work: the proper way to display the US flag, the wanted project, and the burning of the money on wall street.
The project that he titled “the proper way to display a US flag” was fascinating to me. He spoke about how it lead to the senate voting to ban the display of the US flag on the floor. He also read comments and feedback that he got back from people. I was amazed at how much this revealed about the American society and patriotism. A woman that wrote to him said that “if this was done in Germany, people
would call us Nazis”. This comment made me think a lot of the meaning of he United states flag. While some people were totally defensive by saying that this was an act of disrespect, some other people thought about what the United States flag meant to them. An African American who wrote to him told him that the floor was the proper way to hang a United States flag because in the United States he experienced the killing of his brother and other injustices. The discussion of the project definitely made me think of my relationship to the United States flag and much more. I thought that it was such an impactful project. The artist also spoke of other artists that have done similar work or have inspired him such as the “proper way to hang a confederate flag” and much more.
The wanted project was my favorite project that the artist spoke about.
I feel so close to the wanted project, as someone who lives in NYC and as an African-American woman who fears for her younger brother. In this project, he brought people to come describe people that they have only met briefly to a polician artist. Some of the people clearly didn’t know the race of people. A woman in the video said that the person she was describing was “ light dark”. In addition, she could not tell the person`s race , which I do admit could be confusing. I believe that this experiment shows how little information know about the people that they are describing. Later, the drawings were put on a poster with information from the police records of why people were stopped. Some of the reasons included ridiculous things like standing in front of a building. I feel like this project shows the reality of the stop and frisk policy in new York city and how it affects minorities in new York city. The project also shows the criminalization of young male in color. After the making of the poster, the artist went to grocery stores and asked to put up the flyer. He also said that at first he was met with resistance from the store owners. However, after explaining to them what the posters were, they accepted and even became spokespersons for the project and its message. I love how political this work is and how it leads to a community
discussion.
Another interesting work that the artist spoke about was the burning of money on wall street. The artist showed us again footage of the reactions of bystanders and the police to what he was doing. The most interesting thing is that the police officers seemed angry at him for what he was doing, but couldn`t quite articulate why what he was doing was wrong. I think that this shows how impactful his work is. I also remember that the artist said that he goes around with lawyers because he is often stopped by the police. For a country like the United States which is supposed to symbolize freedom and liberty to have artists being harassed by the police whenever their work carried political messages speaks to volume about the true nature of our country and its system.
The work that Dred Scott does is so revolutionary and amazing. I think that I truly gained a lot about this event. To be honest, I have always underestimated the affects of art and ability of art to cause revolutions. I think that this has also made me realize the need for art education and art history education. I often look at paintings and pieces of arts without realizing its true meaning and I tend to focus on the aesthetics aspect of art.
As we began looking at colonial paintings and the arts of independence in class, I am becoming more critical of every piece of detail in the art and its meaning. In addition, I no longer underestimate the ability for art to start uprisings or even to bring light to a societal condition. I realized that a lot of art works are revolutionary and have the potential to be used in activism. The artist also spoke about being raised on a street where the black panthers marched on and growing up seeing the photography of the black panthers marching in his home, which is a prime example of history being recorded by art and at being revolutionary. The image of the black panthers meaned different things from era to era. For example, Scott also spoke of him remaking something that the NAACP did in the past. Everytime someone was lynched, the office of the NAACP in ----- would hang a flag that read “someone was lynched today. The artist remade this and hanged a flag saying “someone was shot by the police” everytime someone was shot and killed by police. I think that this work speaks to volume about art being revolutionary and the ability of art to spark other movements. Police brutality and killings are like modern day lynching