National Portrait Gallery celebrates ... hip-hopper 'art'
By: Melanie Scarborough
Examiner Columnist
October 6, 2008
If you aren’t angry enough that Congress just stuck you with a bill for bailing out the stupid and the greedy, wander over to the National Portrait Gallery to see another outrageous use of your money.
The exhibit “Recognize!” that has been running since February and – mercifully - will close at the end of this month, supposedly “demonstrates the influence of hip hop on portrait artists working today.”
The “portrait art” most prominently featured is an exhibit of vandalism: a graffiti mural lining the hallway. Clearly aware that most people don’t view urban blight as art, the museum relies on this contortion: graffiti as a form of self-portrait.
The examples hanging in the museum were commissioned from Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, two area men who have been defacing other people’s property since they were teenagers 15 years ago. Hupp estimates that, in his prime, he spray-painted 400 freight trains a year.
In their “Arists’ Statement” (presumably referring to “artists”), Conlon and Hupp display the narcissistic disregard for others that characterizes vandals. “Some see [graffiti] as an insatiable appetite for destruction, but through this abstracted topography we find our creative vision and achieve our self-expression,” they crow. “We compete with rivals, friends, and ourselves in an endless battle to outshine and overcome with the best style, best placement, and most audacity. Every culture glorifies its royalty.”
If the curators of the portrait gallery, which recently underwent a six-year renovation, arrived at work tomorrow morning to find the building covered in graffiti, would they still be enamored of these royal "arists"?
Graffiti cost Americans an estimated $20 billion each year in removal and replacement. As this newspaper reported in April, the number of requests to the District government for graffiti removal skyrocketed by 80 percent in the past three years.
The problem is significant enough that many local governments, including Washington, D.C., pay for anti-graffiti programs. The District’s campaign is aimed at children. Who knew portrait gallery curators also needed to learn that Mr. Spray-painter is not our friend?
The person who wrote the exhibit’s brochure must have appreciated the absurdity of the assignment; the hand-out warns visitors they will see “works that stretch the idea of what a portrait is.” The idea isn’t stretched; it’s twisted. Gilbert Stuart and Rembrandt were portrait artists. Rapper KRS-ONE is not.
You may recall that this exemplar of the hip-hop culture caused a furor in 2004 by saying that “we cheered on 9/11.” In a written statement defending his remark, KRS-ONE (a/k/a Kris Parker) explained, “I was asked why hip-hop has not engaged the current situation more (meaning 9/11). My response was ‘because it does not affect us, or at least we don’t perceive that it affects us; 9/11 happened to them...the rich, the powerful -- those that are oppressing us as a culture…. We cheered when 9/11 happened in New York, and say that proudly here.’ ” KRS-ONE said hip-hoppers were abused by police and subject to racial profiling, “so when the planes hit the buildings, we were like, ‘Mmmm, justice.’ ”
That lout deserves to be honored in the National Portrait Gallery?
It gets worse. Coinciding with the exhibit, the museum featured in its Reel Portraits series a documentary on the late rapper, Tupac Shakur. Founder of the group, Thug Life, Shakur was a prolific producer of sludge who degraded our culture with rap compositions depicting violence, drugs, and brutality. In his spare time, Shakur committed crimes.
In 1992, he was arrested for being involved in a shoot-out that killed a 6-year-old boy. In 1993, Shakur spent 10 days in prison for beating another rapper with a baseball bat. Later that year, he was charged with sexually abusing a woman and ultimately sentenced to prison. While awaiting incarceration in 1994, Shakur was convicted of attacking a former employer during a recording session.
Such a thug doesn’t even deserve to be remembered, much less celebrated at taxpayers’ expense.
At the entrance to the National Portrait Gallery hall now housing the hip-hop exhibit, there is a marker explaining the museum’s purpose: to be a place where the “nation’s stories are told through the remarkable individuals who have played a role in shaping who we were, who we are, and who we are becoming as a people.” God help us if, like this exhibit, we are a people who glorify vandals, traitors, and thugs.
Melanie Scarborough is an award-winning commentary writer whose work has appeared in more than two dozen newspapers, magazines, and books.
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