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Chris Rickert: Art swap isn't bird-brained but it's lacking
(Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/chris_rickert/article_75da9a55-a9...)
Does Gov. Scott Walker hate multiracial groups of children playing happily together on the streets of Milwaukee?
Allow me to add my two cents to the brouhaha over why Walker removed Wisconsin artist David Lenz’s realistic portrait of three children — one black, one white, one Latino — from the Governor’s Mansion then replaced it with a painting of a bird.
By his own admission, Lenz had to navigate some fairly tricky political considerations in coming up with the piece, which is titled “Wishes in the Wind” and which he was commissioned to do specifically for the mansion.
He wanted to show children who represent issues and organizations he has an interest in. But he knew that making a strong political statement would not be well received no matter who was going to be living in the mansion (which hadn’t been decided when he started the work).
Thus, the real-life children he chose to paint were picked because they were associated with universally sympathetic groups — the Boys and Girls Club, the Milwaukee Rescue Mission and victims of drunken driving — and yet they serve as a reminder that children are affected by what politicians do.
The children never met each other before the painting was done, Lenz said, but he took some 2,000 photos of them and Milwaukee’s River View neighborhood — where the children are shown playing — before getting to work.
“I chose three children that would really try to skate down the middle politically,” he said. “The idea was not to be controversial.”
Despite this, Walker ditched the painting in favor of a century-old portrait of a bald eagle named Old Abe — put up as part of a larger display to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
Walker’s spokesman has denied the governor had any antipathy towards Lenz’s painting, and even Lenz admits he can’t be sure why Walker removed it. But liberals have seized on the decision as more proof of Walker’s disdain for the poor, the minorities, the struggling — which, they say, was already plenty evident in his move to cut millions from Medicaid and education funding from the state budget.
From reading online comments (never a good idea, in my opinion), Lenz said Walker’s detractors also profess to really like the painting, while Walker’s supporters say the work’s no good.
Aligning one’s taste in art with one’s politics is dumb enough. But it also seems unfair to draw too many conclusions about a governor’s priorities based on his response to a happy, noncontroversial scene that never happened — no matter how realistic its individual parts.
(Incidentally, I can’t be the only one who initially thought the portrait was a photo, nor who felt cheated when I realized it wasn’t. The prospect of three children from different ethnicities playing together on some bright winter day on the streets of a major Midwestern city is a nice one — especially when major Midwestern cities are arguably better known for their segregation, decay and crime.)
I went down to the Governor’s Mansion on Thursday to see the bird that replaced the kids. Old Abe was a mascot for Civil War soldiers from Wisconsin, and his portrait fits in with other Civil War artifacts spread over three rooms. Walker is something of a Civil War buff, I was told by a couple of tour guides.
Visitors to the mansion I spoke with didn’t have a problem with Old Abe. It might be different “if he didn’t have all that other Civil War stuff,” said Midge Griswold, who was visiting from Mesa, Ariz. But they liked Lenz’s work, too.
Lenz was probably right to be wary of controversy. The history, tailored grounds and ornate interior of the governor’s residence is a world away from the day-to-day challenges faced by the state’s residents and the messy political battles that affect them.
But governors are isolated enough — by their ideologies, their security details, their financial backers — and, if I had my way, I don’t think my first choice would be either the bird or Lenz’s fictional scene, although the Lenz work is a better start.
Instead, what about a photo of three homeless men idly chatting over a picnic table? A high school student nodding off in the classroom of a failing school? A lesbian couple signing the state’s domestic partner registry?
To me, a little realism seems like the best choice. Because in the end, the question is not whether the governor hates a multiracial group of children in a portrait striving to be noncontroversial, but if he loves Wisconsinites enough to be reminded of their real-life struggles every day where he lives.
Contact Chris Rickert at 608-252-6198 or crickert@madison.com, as well as on Facebook and Twitter (@ChrisRickertWSJ). His column appears Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/chris_rickert/article_75da9a55-a9...
