The Cheeky Scholar
Listen as smart – and cheeky – scholars share their knowledge about culture, art, and history... and bust a whole lot of myths along the way.
The Cheeky Scholar
Art and Censorship
Tamar Avishai, Creator and Host of the Lonely Palette podcast, talks with Lara about the role artists play in society, and why offensive art can sometimes be a good thing.
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Hello everyone, welcome to the Cheeky Scholar. This is the podcast where smart and cheeky scholars share their knowledge about history, art and culture and bust a whole lot of myths along the way. I'm your host, dr Lara Ayad. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today and if you've listened before, welcome back. For this episode.
Lara Ayad:I had a chance to sit down with Tamar Avishai. Tamar is the creator and host of the Lonely Palette podcast. Now, if you've listened to the Lonely Palette before, you know that Tamar is the creator and host of the Lonely Palette podcast. Now, if you've listened to the Lonely Palette before, you know that Tamar goes around the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with a microphone and she interviews unsuspecting passersby, asking them what they think of the artworks that are on display, what the artworks look like and how it affects them emotionally. Tamar also goes deep into the history of the artworks that are on display, providing cultural context. She ultimately brings art history to the masses. If you haven't checked out the show, I highly recommend you go ahead and search for it in your podcast feed.
Lara Ayad:So I was really excited to sit down with Tamar and talk about art and, in particular, to talk about what the role of the artist is in society today and what the role of art museums should be. For instance, we talked about questions like should museums exhibit art that some people consider offensive, and is censorship always the answer to art that could be considered offensive or having offensive imagery, and when does censorship go too far? Coming out of the conversation, I kept thinking about what Tamar said about artists, because she argues that artists are journalists with emotions. She also says that museums should steward art as a reflection of society. Both the good and the bad parts. So stay tuned for this one. I think you're going to really like it. The bad parts so stay tuned for this one. I think you're going to really like it.
Lara Ayad:So, tamar, welcome to the Cheeky Scholar. How are you doing?
Tamar Avishai:Thank you, I'm not bad. I'm eight months pregnant, so I'm a little achy, but otherwise the flesh is weak but the spirit is willing.
Lara Ayad:That's such a good way of putting it. Well, congratulations again on your expecting. That's incredible, yeah, yeah. And I know you're growing the family too, right? So this is not your first rodeo.
Tamar Avishai:No, this is my third, third and final. Oh, my goodness, ladders being pulled up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lara Ayad:Well, yeah, yeah, well, that's very exciting. Congratulations, thank you. Yeah, so I understand. So, first of all, I just want to say to Mar, I want to give a shout out because when I was first thinking about doing this podcast, you were one of the first people I turned to to ask for advice on how to create one and everything, and you gave me such good advice, including, you know, a lot of. You told me a lot of people think that they should make a podcast based on what they want to say, but you told me make a podcast based on what you'd want to hear as a podcast listener, and that was one of the best pieces of advice that I've ever gotten.
Lara Ayad:So thank you for that.
Tamar Avishai:Oh, I'm so glad.
Lara Ayad:It's been really inspirational and it's actually given me concrete direction and where to take this project.
Tamar Avishai:So yeah, that's awesome oh.
Tamar Avishai:I'm so glad to hear that that was a hard one lesson myself and I think that's actually something that so many podcasters it's like like no judgment, you know, I mean why. Why make a podcast if you don't feel like you have something to say? Um, but if you want people to listen, you gotta know to what they want to hear. And I think that's striking that balance, because you don't want to be totally captured by your audience and you don't. You don't want to be totally captured by your audience and you don't want to make something that you know like you censor yourself or you, you know, you kind of take on a persona that isn't you in order to increase your audience. I mean that's no good either. You have to find that balance.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and I'm sure that as things go along, I'll even find a way to kind of carve my place even more, while also speaking to an audience. So, yeah, that's great advice.
Tamar Avishai:So hopefully we'll be all.
Lara Ayad:Yes, yes, hopefully crossing our fingers. So, tamar, what is really cool about this conversation is we're both have backgrounds in art history, right, and I know you are. You are the host of the Lonely Palette podcast. I love the name of that podcast and I know that you have kind of gotten back into launching some new episodes, so maybe first tell us, like what you have, you know, kind of on the docket for what's coming up and what audiences can expect for what's coming up and what audiences can expect.
Tamar Avishai:Well, I've been away for a while and so I feel like I'm kind of simultaneously kind of to the brim with what I would love to put out there and really dive into and episode ideas that I've had for years and years and I've been kind of gathering tape, you know, just kind of here and there to someday make the episode, and also feeling really rusty, like really out of practice. I've spent the last year almost and a half like year and a bit away from the Lonely Palette because I've just been really trying to build up my own freelance audio business and portfolio.
Tamar Avishai:I've been making a lot of audio for other people and it's been incredibly educational, bending and evolving and growing, based on having worked with so many other audio producers and and also kind of being the audio producer who helps shape someone else's voice, um, but now I'm I'm kind of taking that back to my roots and trying to figure out you, you know how best to make, you know how how much better I can make my show and and you know how, like, how much better of a producer I can be in that show.
Tamar Avishai:But I'm also like, like, somewhere in there, I'm also an art historian and I find myself an art historian and I find myself, you know, like, okay, so it's, it's 2025. I officially graduated from college 20 years ago. Um, that's a long time to be away from the field. Um, I mean, I got a master's after that. So I guess I guess I can only start the clock at 2008 when I finished my master's. But, like I, you know, the last time I really, you know, kind of did the university like breadth over depth thing. I think art historians had really different priorities and really different concerns. Art historians had really different priorities and really different concerns.
Tamar Avishai:And you know my, my department at uh, the university of Toronto where I did my undergrad had really different professors, you know, and, and professors who studied very specific things that now have been quite diversified. That it wasn't when I was there. So I'm starting to recognize that I don't know, there's like a little bit of old fart in there. In my education I'm tempted to say puts the art in old fart, but that's so terrible and cheesy, but there you go.
Lara Ayad:No, no, I like it. I like it. The Lonely Palate it puts the art in old fart. But that's so terrible and cheesy, but there you go. No, no, I like it.
Tamar Avishai:I like it, the lonely palette it puts. It puts the old, the art and old fart, um, but that's. You know, when I talk to undergrad classes now, I realize I've been away a long time and the industry has changed a lot, like the field, the discipline has changed a lot and the way that art history is taught has changed a lot. And you know, maybe I kind of represent a small piece of that which is cool, but yeah, so so you know, like in the birdcage it's like. So all of that has just come out through my eyes.
Lara Ayad:Tamar, because the way I see your show, the Lonely Palate, is, even though I know you don't necessarily identify traditionally as a scholar in the more kind of traditional sense, I do- I identify as a cheeky scholar.
Lara Ayad:As a cheeky scholar. Oh my god, I love that. I love that. I'm so proud to have you as, like one of the guests on the show Absolutely a cheeky scholar. So that's the thing is like your show the Lonely Palate brings. It is bringing art history to the masses. I know that's like one thing you have really felt very passionate about and you know, having this kind of I guess you could almost like a digital humanities project of bringing this art historical analysis to a more public platform on a podcast. You don't need to be going to college, you don't need to pay for expensive college classes to learn in depth about one artwork or another as you're listening to the podcast, or be in the museum, for that matter.
Lara Ayad:Or to be in the museum, and I know when you had started the podcast, you were going around mostly the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and really focusing on one artwork there on display and starting off each episode just asking passersby and people visiting what do you think of the work, what does it look like, Describe it, what kind of impact does it have on you? And it's such a provocative and also very thoughtful way to engage with art that you are not looking at the artwork by listening to the episode, but you are listening to people's experiences of the artwork and the way they visually described. So you have to imagine what that looks like and there's something about that that. Okay, yeah, you need the formal analysis of looking at the visual qualities of an artwork, but there's also this deeply imaginative and also the kind of a cultural collective aspect to art history that comes through, I think, in the Lonely Palette.
Tamar Avishai:Thank you. No, I love thinking about it that way. You know I still, I still see the object in person, you know, 95% of the time, and you know record people's first responses to it, and you know I say this all the time but like you don't hear all the people who say no, I don't want to be recorded, because they are so worried that they're going to be on the hook to say something really profound when that's exactly. You know, I can't say it enough, Like it doesn't have to. You don't have to know anything about this artwork, please.
Tamar Avishai:Any interpretation is actually like it hurts, it doesn't help, Like just describe what you see, and uh, and still, people are very uncomfortable talking about art in that kind of um, that kind of environment, and so that always reinforces to me why a show you know I'm not going to say why my show needs to exist, but like why an approach to art history that I find so compelling needs to exist too, in order to get people to understand how very human these artworks are and that anybody telling them that that it's not for them to understand without a PhD they're the failures, you know, like they're the ones who are kind of misinterpreting the work and.
Tamar Avishai:I speak for all of us art historians. They're like if, if, that, like, if that's the story that people are getting, it's the incorrect one.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, so this is so interesting to Mar because it's when I think about science museums, for instance. You know they often tend to. If you notice, science museums tend to, in contrast to art museums. Science museums tend to attract families with kids and people going there. You don't have to be a scientist to go to a science museum. Everybody knows that You're going there to learn about things you don't know. Why do you think that art museums seem to have a very different place in our society that we're not. We're not. A lot of people are not necessarily going to art museums to learn in that same way. What do you think is going on there?
Tamar Avishai:Yeah, now that reminds me of of, uh, I was talking to an art critic who was saying that, um, the only other, the only other place besides art museums in in kind of cultural spaces where people are expected to kind of know the story going in, is the sports page of the newspaper and how it's like we don't you know, people who are into sports don't realize that somebody who is not following sports at all like it. It's, it's varsity level, like you pick up the sports page and it's like well, I don't, I don't know the context of all of this. You know it's like this is, this is not for me if you don't already follow it. And I always thought that was a really great comparison. I mean, look, science museums. I would imagine, if you would compare the missions or the mission statement of any science museum as compared to an art museum, they're going to have some really fundamentally different mandates that a science museum will always put education first, because that's what that space is for. They're not actually, you know, conducting like, like high level scientific experiments. They're breaking it down and turning everything into play, and that's the purpose of a space like that.
Tamar Avishai:The mission of most art museums is to be stewards of these objects. It's to collect, preserve, you know, like and educate. But that's always, it's like usually the last one, and it's only really recently that education even was part of the mission of art museums. Up until that point it was about stewardship and preserving these objects from generation to generation so for people to kind of come in and expect like, you know, it's not like they're gonna touch them or handle the artworks or you know it's like, oh, that's what a Monet feels like. I mean, you know that whatever you can learn from that, which actually wouldn't be nothing, I, I think that you know you could learn a lot from, kind of like feeling the texture of the paint. Can you imagine Totally?
Lara Ayad:You know you'd be amazed, tamar. I've actually. I remember one time. I'm trying to remember where I was. I might have been at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, maryland.
Lara Ayad:This was years ago, back when I was like barely even in grad school, and I saw they had some ancient egyptian artworks, including like a sculpture of a. I think it was um a portrait of a pharaoh, but a pharaoh as like a sort of sphinx figure and it was like I don't know about small to medium size and one guy just like was walking by it and he just like kind of like touched it and like scratched the base and then just like kept walking and I was like and rubbed its nose for good luck.
Tamar Avishai:Yeah, it's like.
Lara Ayad:That's why those statues always have, like, shiny noses and shiny boobs, for some reason, as people are always rubbing the wrong parts of the or the right parts of the sculpture. But it's all just to say. It's so interesting how our reaction to that too is oh no, you're ruining the artwork. You know like there is this sort of presumption of like stewarding. You know being stewards of these objects.
Tamar Avishai:You know, like again you go into a science museum, those you know, those musical stairs or those you know those little like balls that like all light up with the electricity from your hand and make your hair. You know, those aren't thousands of years old, those aren't 500 years old.
Tamar Avishai:You know, those are made for the experience of play and education. And so, you know, in that way I understand why art museums are just fundamentally different spaces. You know, like just because they're all museums doesn't mean that they are doing the same thing. And so you know, that said, it goes a little far when art historians take the connoisseurship piece of their jobs, you know, know, when they prioritize it over the education piece.
Tamar Avishai:And I think that people have just kind of accepted that, like, visitors kind of feel like, well, if I'm not the expert here, it's not for me to. You know, I, you know how many people have you talked to? It's like, well, I don't know if it's good. You know, I, I don't know art, like I like it, but I don't, you know, it's not for me to say, and, and you know, I am not a curator, I'm not a connoisseur, I am an educator. So those are the people I want to talk to and there are curators doing their jobs and conservators doing their jobs, and preparators doing their jobs, and me, you know, and all the people like me who are really interested in kind of being the conduit between the you know, the incredibly human story of the people who made this work and the complicated times that they lived in, and people who happen to be on the planet now experiencing these objects, who are also living through a really complicated time, and finding that point of connection between the two and giving people permission to relate to them.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, you know what's a good example of that that comes to mind for you, Maybe an artwork. Say that you think is wow, this is such a human creation and this is something that nowadays we, in our complicated times, could learn something from or connect to in some way.
Tamar Avishai:I mean, maybe this is front of mind for me just because of my, my delicate condition, um, but I love walking into a Louise Bourgeois gallery and seeing people be absolutely repulsed, and seeing people be absolutely repulsed and sharing a certain amount of that repulsion, but they don't know why it's like they feel like, and you know she's not looking outside of her, you know she's not like Katie Kovitz, you know I mean she's not kind of basing her work on the context of war. Andise bourgeois is interested in her own body. She's interested in bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, and and she has some really extraordinary, um, pregnant bodies. That my favorite is is one I I forgot what the actual name is, it's something goddess, but it's like meant to be kind of um, uh, kind of subversive and cheeky. Um, and the one that she does when she's younger and has a lot of anxiety around pregnancy is is like made of brass or or something very, very hard and and unappealing, you know, I mean it's, it's beautiful, it's smooth, but it's like it's very intentionally not soft.
Tamar Avishai:And then she revisited it when she was in her like 80s and it was, and she made the same sculpture but in in like pink felt, and I love that evolution of hers because it's like the same evolution that anybody you know anybody goes through themselves when they have kids. Like that it goes from this incredible place of anxiety to if I had only known that I didn't have to be so scared. You know, like that, there's a which you can't, you can't know, you know you do it. There's a which you can't, you can't know, you know, you, you do it.
Tamar Avishai:You only do it for the first time, once, thank God, and then any subsequent time it never has to be for the first time again, but it's like you can see her own evolution there and suddenly it makes her work, which again is like like it can be really revolting. I feel like that softens, it, humanizes, it, makes it incredibly accessible. If you were to see those two sculptures side by side and and apply it, you know kind of project your own life and experience onto that, if that's something you've experienced.
Lara Ayad:That's really interesting too, and just for some background for the listeners, louise Bourgeois was pretty active in the 80s, I believe that's. She's an American artist, got really active in the 80s and she still is active as an artist. She went back to this artwork it sounds like in the 80s and so, yeah, she's coming from a very different context than, say, someone like Kathy Kolowitz that you brought up before, but it is. It is kind of incredible how artwork, without using text, without using words, but actually through the use of things like texture and color and things like that, can evoke such strong reactions based, you know, depending on, like, where you are in life and what you're bringing to the table. So it's not just about the artist with a capital A, you know, bringing meaning to the, to the passive vessel, viewer, it's. It's more actually an interesting kind of quiet dialogue, if you will, between the person encountering the artwork and then the artwork itself and, in a way, the artist too, as maybe a third party.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, yeah, that's really fascinating. So so what then? You know, kind of stepping back to and looking at museums and looking at artists. I mean, those, these, these are, of course, we're talking about art, museums and where they're overlapping, but maybe we can step back to and I'm curious to ask you, tamar, what do you think the role of the artist is in today's society? And you mentioned like we live in a complicated world. I know it's a big question, but what do you think should be the role of an artist in today's society?
Tamar Avishai:I think the role of the artist in today's society is the same as the role of the artist has been for the last 200 years, ever since artists were given a kind of intellectual and philosophical and financial autonomy to to create what they want, um, and to respond to the world that they're observing. Um, you know, that's when you start to see the artists who my my grad school advisor. She always loved the idea of the. I mean she, she focused specifically on on mid 19th century Paris, but the, the Salton bank, like the um or the Flanner, or you know somebody who kind of exists on the outskirts of society and observes, exists on the outskirts of society and observes, and that the, the.
Tamar Avishai:I feel like artists are journalists with emotions. I feel like they look at the world around them and they create based on how it affects them and they tell the story of their moment. They can be completely subjective about it, they can be activists, but they have a responsibility to tell that story correctly and without censoring themselves. And so it's really important that an artist just capture something very, very authentic about the moment that they're living in, even if that's not the whole story, even if that's their story, but to be really truthful about their own experience that way and to have some talent in the application of materials to, you know, to to not just have a very profound insight but to be able to express it in a way that will make people look. You know that that that requires a very specific kind of gift, artistic gift, but I, you know, I guess that kind of begs the question like what an artist shouldn't do Make ugly art that doesn't make you want to look.
Tamar Avishai:Well, louise Bourgeois made that revolting art and it made you look right, it doesn't certainly doesn't have to be pretty, if anything really pretty art people will buy, and that's a different business model than kind of being, you know, being the kind of artist who is hailed as the kind of genius who's able to kind of like put their finger on the pulse of the moment and get you know, like have museums be interested in what they do, but like, look, museums are businesses too.
Tamar Avishai:I mean, there's no, nobody has like super clean hands, and especially not artists, but like there's there's no arbiter in the moment that says, oh okay, you're great, you're shit. You know, you've said it brilliantly your derivative. You know you need some time away, you need some distance to kind of look at what is going to last, because it's very hard to kind of know what any society is going to say okay, this really was the most important authentic moment to capture. So it's, you know, it's kind of it's like it duels itself. You know there's a battle there between between the ability to capture the moment as it's being lived and take and, like historians, taking a step back and being like, well, was that the most important moment to capture?
Tamar Avishai:and I think that that's what art historians and historians really struggle with. I think that that's a really complicated part of the job. Is, you know, determining whose authenticity is going to speak loudest? You know, for the moment, that it's representing.
Lara Ayad:Right, and there's even this whole issue, too, of artists that will maybe try to get their works into galleries and into museums based on what they think not just curators but also directors and donors will want to see in a museum, and that can be very complicated and, quite frankly, socially and politically charged as well, right? So there's a whole other layer to that as well, and artists have always been. I think you're bringing up the emergence of this new role for an artist 200 years ago is really interesting, because artists for thousands of years have been making art to make ends meet, put bread on the table. You were, you know.
Lara Ayad:I know that in parts of Europe prior to the early modern period, or prior to at least even the early 1800s, there wasn't really a common word for artist the way that we use it today. Right, it was usually a craftsperson or a craftsman, and they were making art for a patron who paid to make an artwork that filled a religious or practical function. Right? So this artist the way we understand it today, with, like the capital A, the genius that makes an artwork to express themselves or to speak to a, there's an economic factor still, even after thousands of years, but that, the, that the, the, the playground is kind of shifted Right, is a really good example of an artist that perhaps pushes boundaries, really authentically expresses themselves and fills that role in the way you were talking about just earlier.
Tamar Avishai:I don't have the same experience with living artists as I do with dead artists, because I am a modernist um with a capital m. So you know, kind of 18 like, so like 1950 is my cutoff, but two artists who I feel like have, I mean I kind of wonder if it's cheating to say somebody like Anselm Kiefer, who is probably one of the most famous and richest living artists today. So you know, he has, he has an experience that is not, you know, that's like saying like Beyonce, you know, I mean there there are a lot of other musicians out there who are struggling and are talented and maybe even more talented, you know. But it's like, but I feel like Kiefer, because I personally have have put so much of my own kind of scholarly energy into post-Holocaust representation, like I find that his work as a German born in 1945, constantly trying to grapple maybe not as much anymore, but it certainly was a huge part of his career, for kind of the formative part of his career he was really really trying to understand what it meant to grow up in a society filled with shame and atonement and be born into that and that and take something like the Nazi salute, you know kind of be like be born into something where just this way that you can put your hand can get you arrested and you're you're a kid and you kind of. You know like we don't, we don't tend to give a whole lot of kind of our own mental real estate to the afterlives and the after generations of the perpetrators, because you know, that's like not of this. You know of like doing the Nazi salute in front of like a tree, like in front of the ocean and and showing how impotent it was when it's just one person trying to understand its power. And he didn't do it to be like he's, he knew it was outrageous, but that wasn't the point. You know he wasn't trying to offend, he was trying to understand. You know, kind of looking back at his own hand, like where is the offense here? Because of course it's there and of course there's this incredible semiotic power. I mean, god, we, we are kind of in that moment right now, how you know whether or not, whether or not you know the, the hand, hand gestures we've seen, um, you know is is meant to do that, like he was wrestling with that in in a very, I feel, authentic way and from there he really dives into the poetry of the Holocaust survivor, paul Celan, and trying, trying, trying, layer, layer, layer, to understand what it means to articulate tragedy. And so you know that, like I don't know, I kind of fall into his work and I'm just so fascinated by how he you know how his brain works like, how he wraps his brain around these ideas or maybe doesn't even know where he's going when he starts. He just, you know, just just layers materials upon materials.
Tamar Avishai:And another artist who I think is able to really articulate the moment is Carrie Mae Weems. I find her photography to be so beautifully humane and, you know, like her kitchen table series, it, it, it's so beautiful, it's so like I remember looking at her work, especially in 2020. And in that moment where it was very, very important to delineate, to kind of draw lines and to use very specific categorizations to determine who is allowed to tell what story, and I think, in some more productive ways, we've moved past that, like I think people have kind of recognized that there's there are kind of strategic and tactical limitations to division, even even as we recognize the value of lived experience and not knowing what you don't know. In a way that that has been very important and I hope that's what, that's what stays in the culture, even as we kind of get past the, the separateness. But then I would look at her kitchen table series and I would see an artist and this is just her take where she was like, look at how much we all have in common, you know.
Tamar Avishai:Look at how my family, my Black family, sitting around our kitchen table is exactly the same as your white table sitting around your kitchen table, and we have all the same complicated dynamics and you have, like you know, mothers and daughters and and you know, like, like she is kind of the sun or you know, she and the pendant light in that series is the sun around which everyone else circles. And so you see her with, like her husband and them kind of having, you know, kind of mundane interactions and also very loaded interactions, and you see that same with her own children and you see that with her parents and it's just like she is a human being living her life. And granted, you know she's modeling, like she's. It's not really her, it's not really her life. But I am so moved by the scenes that she stages in that series and I feel like I I really, really connect to what she's trying to say about our shared humanity and that was very like I. I clung to that like a life raft in 2020.
Lara Ayad:In a life raft in a tumultuous, raging ocean storm. That it's kind of interesting because, although we are, we're really past the pandemic and yet we are still in these very complicated times, and I am really struck by how we're just barely coming to terms with the idea that actually, okay, yes, identity can be important, positionality can be important, but, just like everything else in the world, it can have its limitations, and when you take a certain idea too far, what you can? I had one friend of mine who described a certain I guess you could say sociopolitical so sociocultural political stances as being like a spectrum, and a spectrum is really like a circle, right, so you've got like the infrared and you've got the ultraviolet. They're at the opposite ends of the spectrum, but it's a circle that one bleeds into the other, and if you start going too far in one direction, it's going to go into the other. And I love that analogy, because here we go with an art, historical, visual analogy.
Lara Ayad:I love that analogy, though, because I think it's um, I think it really does capture in this case, where this insistence on we are different from you, we have nothing in common with you or with these other people or those people over there, starved for a sense of like. Well, what are we fighting for? Like, who can we relate to? You talked about shared humanity, and I really do. I really do think that. I really do think that art has a particular power, like Carrie Mae Weems' work, in helping us understand. Oh, we have a lot more in common than we have different Like. The differences are important, yes, but we have a lot more in common, and recognizing the importance of that commonality could be the antidote to so many of the problems that we are facing today no-transcript.
Tamar Avishai:The worst ones are the ones that try to ape Dr Seuss but can't like. He is a genius, he is a. You know the musicality of his rhymes and the and his cadences like they're just perfect and it's such a pleasure to read. You know, not like one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, which is like 50 pages too long. But you know, the ones that are great are genius. And we just got a whole new batch, so we got Yertle, the Turtle and Sneetches and these are unbelievably progressive stories. It's really powerful. I mean, the Butter Battle book is a good one, like it's kind of like thought to be his political one because it's so clearly about the Cold War, but Sneetches is about and like, stop me if, if, like this is obvious, um, but but Sneetches is about.
Tamar Avishai:You know these two. You know these like animals like, uh, you know like they're, they're Dr Seuss creations, but one. You know they all look the same, except half of them have stars on their bellies and they turn that into this like caste system where if you don't have the star, you're left out. And you know that the children with the stars won't play with the children without the stars. And so it's like just understood that the sneetches without stars without they don't have a star on our bellies um, are second-class citizens in their society. And this like huckster comes to town with a machine that puts stars on people's on sneetch bellies and they all pay to get the stars on. And then the ones who have the stars are like, well, we can't have this. So he's like, oh, it's okay, I have another machine that takes stars off and then the one without the stars still kind of like work their way higher up and they just spend like days and days going in and out of machines until finally nobody knows who was who, and it brings their society together. And then you have, like Yertle the turtle. Where Yertle is? This like mean turtle king who stacks like a thousand turtles so that he can see really high, and the one at the bottom who's been kind of like I don't want to like make a fuss, but like this really hurts, like finally he's just like over it and he burps and the whole thing just falls down and it's like this incredibly like Marxist wonderful story.
Tamar Avishai:And I was thinking I promise this all has a point, not just that art can be, you know, even art for kids can be, you know, incredibly powerful.
Tamar Avishai:But I was thinking about how I found in my old box of books to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, which, during that really crazy time in 2020, when you know know kind of identity melted people's brains um, that book was, uh, taken off the shelves because it was.
Tamar Avishai:It came out in the 30s and there are some drawings of like some caricatured you know, like a caricature of a Chinese guy like waving chopsticks or something I mean, like that's kind of considered, like that was enough that the estate of Dr Seuss was pressured to stop publishing that book, and I was really glad to find my own copy of it because you can't really get it anymore.
Tamar Avishai:And I thought to myself what world are we living in, where you have the same writer who writes the Lorax and Sneetches and Yertle, the Turtle and the Butter Battle Book and who is able to take these incredibly complex ideas about the importance of shared humanity and of of, you know, diversifying your worldview and making room for everybody, because there is space for everybody and not treating anybody as though they're more valid or higher up than anyone else, and he's fucking canceled because of a of a drawing that he did in the 30s. When you know, like I I'm not defending it but like, come on, that is such a deliberate blind eye to the larger contributions of this man to the world and his art and that kind of thinking really opened my eyes to what felt like the real kind of flattened incoherence of this activist movement and that I couldn't, that it didn't feel serious hmm, it didn't feel serious in in what sense like is there something maybe about it, tamara, that you kind of interpreted or experiences maybe a little inauthentic, or like where?
Tamar Avishai:I think it was looking for easy wins and okay, nothing that is being tackled in the identity politics game right now is easy, and to take pleasure in the kind of mob cancellation of a willful of like, willful misinterpretation. You know, like we, we talked a lot, we all thought a lot about, um, impact versus intention, and I think I would have gone into 2020 thinking that only intention mattered, and in that way, my thinking was really complicated. You know like I realized actually impact matters a lot too, um, but to only focus on impact and not intention is just as, as you know, facile in the other direction.
Tamar Avishai:Um and so that to me felt like you're not really taking this seriously. Like this is, you know, like in a in succession, when he's just like you're not serious people, like if you're just looking for what can fit on a picket sign. You're not really taking these incredibly complicated, nuanced problems all that seriously.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, and you know it's interesting because you mentioned, you know, those, those caricatures of Chinese people. I mean, I don't agree with them. They stink Right, but at the same time, like what might be? You know, dr Seuss also contributed so many other great things in literature and did such a phenomenal job with just changing the landscape of children's books and children's writing, and he really is an artist, was an artist.
Lara Ayad:What might be a more productive way of approaching you know, whether or not you choose to publish a book, like, let's say, you continue publishing the books with these caricatures, could it, would it be possible to say, should we just like, kind of like, put it out there, not say anything about it? Should we give some context for some things? Because he was writing some of these in the 1930s and it was a different time? What do you think of that? Like how, in other words, I guess my question is if somebody made art that is kind of offensive, it is offensive and was intended to stereotype or character a whole group of people, how could we look at it today in a way where we're not sterilizing our world of art by taking it out completely? But is there perhaps another way we could approach it?
Tamar Avishai:Look, you know, my son wanted to watch Peter Pan the other day and so we popped it on and there was that black screen at the beginning that gave that disclaimer about. You know, what you're about to watch is like deeply racist. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. I mean, my husband and I kind of joke about those, like honestly, because and I don't want to sound like I'm not taking this seriously Like I recognize that that language has to be incredibly workshopped and it reads as though it is. You know there are people who are going to see stuff that they weren't expecting. That is not particularly savory and, you know, has, like, has been deemed offensive or is now being seen for how offensive it really was. In our contemporary society. It just happened all at once that it's hard to kind of look at that. You know we were watching like Muppet Show episodes that also, too, are. You know there's a kind of like. You know we grew up in the like tomboy free-to-be-you-and-me world.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, like 80s, 90s kind of yeah.
Tamar Avishai:Yeah, like we all kind of feel like, you know, like content of one's character is what matters anyway, is what matters anyway. However, you know, again, that doesn't take into account that that people move through the world in very different ways from each other and and you wouldn't know that, you don't know what you don't know about the way that other people are experiencing the world, or you know, I mean, I I kind of hesitate to like bring up like microaggressions, but like it's true, it's real, you know, and, and I kind of hesitate to like bring up like microaggressions, but like it's true, it's real, you know, and things that you don't realize until you talk to people, and it's like Jesus, I never saw that. And they're like yeah, no, you wouldn't have. And it's like like that's, that's true, you know, like okay, yeah.
Tamar Avishai:But you know at the same time the Muppet Show it, but you know at the same time the Muppet Show. It's like you know to have a big black screen in front of it that says it was wrong then and it's wrong now. I mean, it was the Muppet Show, it was genius. So you know like we take it with a grain of salt. But anyway, he wants to watch Peter Pan. Peter Pan is a really like. Nobody comes out of Peter Pan covered in glory.
Tamar Avishai:um you know, it's true some super racist stereotypes in there and and in a way you can kind of appreciate the, the childlike perspective of kind of categorizing people into groups and almost seeing the worst of them, like what's scariest about every different group. You know if you really want to like dig into the you know the psychology of Peter Pan, like that's you know you could do that. But if you're a kid and you're watching it and you see, you know the way that Native Americans are depicted.
Lara Ayad:Right, yes, now I remember that.
Tamar Avishai:Yeah, what makes the red man red? I mean, you know, and no adult is kind of like it's not really how we talk about people anymore. You know, like it was wrong then and it's wrong now.
Lara Ayad:You know, like that's.
Tamar Avishai:That is a valid conversation, and so what I think is so important is that conversation. And you can't have that conversation if things are just removed from Disney Plus quietly, or, you know, if a Dr Seuss book is taken off the shelf and I again I feel like that black screen and that workshop language can be a little clumsy and corporate, but it is far preferable to taking the art away. That is the worst thing you can do and I will say that till my throat is sore. You know, you, you can't fight bad ideas with censorship. You fight bad speech with good speech, with better speech. Um, and I think that that's like if, if someone is going to espouse really contemptible opinions, let them be heard for them, so that then the world can look at them and say that was a really ignorant opinion.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, so now we know what we're getting.
Tamar Avishai:Yeah, like, like you are reinforcing to me why I believe, you know why I have my moral conviction and my moral center, and you are so far to the extreme of it that I don't particularly want to engage with you. Like, like, let people show their asses that way. Mm hmm, you know I mean we're kind of drifting away from art, but I think that artists have an obligation also to to like play around with those extremes also yeah. And like challenge people to expand their thinking.
Lara Ayad:Is there?
Tamar Avishai:Yeah, no, no, no, go ahead, go ahead, oh no I just I like I'm not exactly sure what point I'm making, but I feel like an artist who is only making what they think is going to land with their audience or confirm their audience's priors or get them booked at a show you know where the gallery stands to make a lot of money or you know kind of be really accepted.
Tamar Avishai:Not only is making something that is not going to last or kind of stand the test of time to last or kind of stand the test of time, but they aren't encouraging people to expand their own thinking at all about what the work can be and what you know representing something that someone never would have thought of or intentionally destabilizes them, you know, makes them think about something differently or subverts an idea. But it's a risk. Like as the artist, you have to be willing to be disliked because you're making someone uncomfortable, and I think that that kind of goes back to that like flaneur, you know person who's like never trying to integrate into society. They're just trying to observe and be authentic to their moment.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, yeah, do you think that there's, I guess? My next question then, tamar, is if an artist wants to make a work that is very provocative and that is not just like, for instance, you and I apologize, I'm now forgetting his name Throughout the artist who's doing like the Nazi salutes is a way to make a point, anselm Kiefer.
Lara Ayad:Anselm Kiefer, yes, thank you. So, anselm Kiefer, you mentioned that he wasn't trying to be offensive. That wasn't the goal of the work, even though that might have been like a kind of side product of his work. Let's say, an artist wants to make something that is not just for the made for the sake of offense, but is made to like make a point, and in the process you could be upsetting quite a few people, or even just a very small, but very vocal, smaller group of people, because that does happen. What, how should, how should a museum approach something like that? You know, like, curator wants to put their artwork on. And then there's this whole issue of like do we censor? Do we not censor? What? What? What do you think people should do in a situation like that?
Tamar Avishai:yeah, well, first of all, keifer did offend a ton of people like he barely came back from that professionally, um, and so that was like a really interesting lesson for him. But also, I wouldn't be surprised if he was like a little edgy and like didn't you know? Kind of like he knew he was doing something that was technically illegal, um, in Germany and yet you know still kind of went for it in that way that artists can be those kinds of guys, um, or maybe.
Lara Ayad:But I have a, by the way. I have a hierarchy of artists and like where they are on the kind of d-bag scale. Yeah exactly.
Tamar Avishai:I would not want to hang out with Anselm Kiefer.
Lara Ayad:I think there's like painters occupy a certain level and then the sculptors are somewhere else. And I'm not going to go beyond that because I'll get in huge trouble for saying that, but anyway, yeah, and the video installation artists.
Tamar Avishai:My god, um, how do museums deal with it now? Well, is now 10 years ago, is now five years ago, is now today, my goodness. Um, you know, 10 years ago there was the still. You know, you still had kind of the last gasps of exhibitions that were really, you know, propping up art that that could be outrageous, that could be really subversive. I have a catalog that my my stepmother, who wrote a lot. I, I mean, she's a comparative jewish literature professor, but she also wrote a lot about holocaust memory too.
Tamar Avishai:Um, it was an entire exhibition on nazi imagery in art, very kefir-esque actually, in order to kind of corporatized, a very specific way of looking at the Holocaust became, you know what Norman Finkelstein calls the Holocaust industry. So you know stuff that was just like, oh, you know, you, you go through this catalog and it's just it's so offensive. You go through this catalog and it's just it's so offensive, like, like canisters of Zyklon B, but but they've got like designer labels on them like Hermes and Chanel, and you know like, yeah, exactly, I'm looking at her face right now Like it's, it's very unsettling, very upsetting, very disturbing, like a Lego set of Auschwitz, like stuff like that, you know, 15 years ago that was a totally valid show. You know, like, like no one would have canceled that, even as upsetting as it is, because it was like whoa, this is some art man. You know, like this is talking to a very specific issue in Holocaust memory and like, sure, go for it. Like they invited a lot of these artists to create for it Five years ago, that show would never, would never, ever, ever, ever, have been mounted today.
Tamar Avishai:Um, I think that there's a bit of a, you know, a sea change, a vibe shift, like away from the impulse to censor from five years ago, that I kind of wonder if people, you know, if the pendulum might be swinging a little bit back. I still don't think it would be mounted today, but I don't think it would have been as as clearly verboten as it would have been, like, five years ago, um, but museums are constantly trying to figure out how to stay relevant, how to get people in the door, how to please both the donors who give them money and the social media followers who give them, uh, like, clout, um, who are very often very opposite sides of the spectrum. I would not want to run a museum today. I feel like I'd be terrified all the time. Um, there are some museums I think that have, like I was before we talked tonight.
Tamar Avishai:I was kind of reading up on the Philip Guston show that was delayed, I think it originated at the National Gallery and then was going to tour around the country and here was a a you know white Jewish artist who had a lot of depictions of Klansmen in his work and for an interestingly kind of again, everything comes back to Kiefer, no wonder he's so famous and rich. Um, but he also kind of wanted to show like the impotence of something that was so iconic and semiotically charged. You know, he would show Klansmen in very mundane circumstances and as a way of of really kind of like like defanging it, you know, kind of taking the piss out of them like, you know, taking something that would have been otherwise very hard to look at and exposing it for again its own kind of like unseriousness, like it's farce, and that was going to be very much part of the show because that's very much part of his work. And instead the show was like knee-jerk cancelled because they just had, you know, these images had clans, you know clansmen imagery in it, never mind what he was trying to say about it. Um, and that was like you know, that took all the keyboard warriors, like that took a lot of artists and you know art adjacent people who signed this open letter who was like come the fuck on, come on, you know, like this just isn't like you're you're so willfully misinterpreting his work and so it ended up kind of getting revived and I was able to see it at the MFA in Boston when it was there. And I was able to see it at the MFA in Boston when it was there.
Tamar Avishai:And you know, there was a lot of kind of like scaffolding around the show. There was like signs for, you know, kind of like trauma. You know, like if you need a break, here's a space where you can go. You know like if you need a break, here's a space where you can go. And, and you know, here are some images of like actual clans rallies, which I don't think were really necessary, but they were like behind, like not risk kind of putting, like imposing harm onto your fellow visitors by them seeing it too. And there was kind of a like what do they call it? Like the Streisand effect, like where, when you, you know, like when you go so far out of your way to like have to like cancel something that it's all people want to see. Um, I felt like there was a way that.
Lara Ayad:I didn't know there was a name for that, the Streisand. Oh yeah, god bless the internet.
Tamar Avishai:Um, but it, it. I remember walking through that show and being like let people have their own experience, even if it's negative, like even if there is something traumatizing to it which I don't you know. I think traumatizing is. You know, that word doesn't mean what I think people think it means, but like it's just so overused.
Lara Ayad:It's so overused and it's actually pretty offensive for people who have actually gone through physical violence or sexual violence and things that are actually traumatic. I mean, I'm going to just go out on a limb and say that. I know I'm probably going to offend some people by saying that, but it's just I honestly think it's very offensive how overused it's been.
Tamar Avishai:I agree, I agree and and I you know this was I saw this show in 2021 or 2022. 2021 or 2022, um, and it was in the same gallery that in 2017 there had been a show. You know, before, like in the before times, um, there had been a show of henrik ross's photographs from the loch ghetto and I led tours in that gallery. I did a podcast episode in that gallery. That show was tremendous, it was incredible. But there were some very graphic photos in that show of dead children, like close-ups of dead children. In order to make the point of what he had access to and what he photographed, it was this combination of you know, he was like one of the handful of people maybe the only one um, he was assigned to take kind of passport photos or like ID photos not passports but like ID photos in the ghetto, and so he was issued a camera and he did this kind of multi, you know he took, you see, the ID photos that he took. You see the propaganda photos that he was forced to take of Jews in the ghetto, kind of like happily, kind of like whistling while they worked, basically so that that could then be shown to the world, like look how well we're treating. You know, it's like look how happy people are to be part of our kind of manufacturing process, and then he would also take really clandestine photos of of like the hell that that actually was.
Tamar Avishai:The show was incredible. There were no black screens. That says it was wrong then and it's wrong now. I mean they trusted visitors to move through it and I remember I got to the really painful photos and I was like I was very affected by them and I knew that there was like a part of the gallery that like I couldn't look at.
Tamar Avishai:I like I couldn't, you know, and I had to be in there a lot and it was like, you know, I just drew this line where it was like don don't go, don't go near there, you know, for kind of your own mental health. But I did that. That was my own coping mechanism, that was my own resilience to still go in. That was me recognizing my own boundaries, that I couldn't look at those photos again, go in. That was me recognizing my own boundaries, that I couldn't look at those photos again. And I, you know, the museum trusted me to know my own limits and I think that putting them behind a black shutter, you know, putting a sign that says, like you can call this trauma-informed counselor if you really can't handle it not only is incredibly disruptive to the exhibition, but it's it's patronizing you know, like I was about to say, it sounds like they're treating visitors like they're small children.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, and children sometimes even will go through some pretty difficult stuff and we try our best to protect them from those things. But it's kind of a part of life and then they grow and we trust that process to a certain extent. I mean, there's debates about how parenting has also changed over the past couple of decades.
Tamar Avishai:That's my other job.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, that's your other job, but I am very struck by that, by the way you describe this exhibition about the KKK. I'm just like don't we trust that mostly grown adults walking into these exhibitions are going to be able to manage if they have a negative emotion? It seems to me from what you're saying, tamara is like I kind of think about. Like are we so uncomfortable with having these very strong reactions and emotions just going about our world? Like we're going to encounter things that really upset us, that make us so sad and that make us cry and make us angry and make us really happy? Like I don't think. I don't think we should be sheltered from those things.
Lara Ayad:Like living here in Los Angeles, for instance, we just went through these awful wildfires and there are people who are I was okay and there are people who are I was okay.
Lara Ayad:There are people who are still dealing with the effects of this and it's like I don't as hard as this has been to see other people suffer like this. I can just say for myself I don't want to be protected from how terrible the news has been or images of people's homes burned down or entire neighborhoods just completely wiped out. This has changed the course of LA history Absolutely and, uh, to try to act like, to try to maybe put a black shutter on that, as you were saying would, it would almost I don't know how to put this it would sterilize and silence a whole aspect of Angelino's lives. That is, frankly, very unfair to the people experiencing it. And I'll just say that right there. Maybe people would disagree with me, but I do think what you're saying is really important, particularly when it comes to this whole issue of art and censorship and particularly when it comes to this whole issue of art and censorship.
Tamar Avishai:Yeah, well, and resilience is a muscle. It doesn't, you know, you don't just come out of the womb with this muscle fully formed, but we do have an incredible ability to grow it and to exercise it it. And I think that looking for opportunities for people to be spared from knowing their own resilience, their own boundaries is just a real disservice.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, tamar, what do you hope for in terms of where artists can play a role in society and what kind of role museums should be playing in society? Is there anything that you really hope for?
Tamar Avishai:um, bravery, um, I hope that artists can kind of get back to offending people again, um, product of offending people, and that art is not going to last. But there's a way to encourage a subversion of the way you think the world should look. That says, but what if it looked completely opposite? And you can say, ah, I hate that, but I, but I never would have thought about it that way. Um, and people can make their own decisions.
Tamar Avishai:You know, maybe this is what I meant by talking about journalists with emotions, like I see the role of a journalist to kind of present the facts and ask the audience, ask the reader, to come to their own conclusions. I don't think that's ever going to happen. You know, like human nature depends on groupthink. You know, and you know where you sit in your own tribe. That's a very, very hard thing to break out of. It takes active participation and you know, like I don't think democracy and liberal values are the way that our brains are naturally wired. I think it's something that you have to work for every day.
Tamar Avishai:When people talk about the importance of diversity, I think that diverse perspectives are a huge part of that and I can't understand, like it doesn't make sense to me that that's gotten lost in this, this like buzzword diversity climate, um. So I just want museums, you know, going back to to how we started. If, if it's a museum's job to be the steward of the art that comes out of a cultural moment, it has to be all of it, all the good art. And if an artist is going to be brave enough to recognize that there are some really complicated problems going on right now and some really complicated conversations, and and be encouraged to just kind of like subvert somebody's thinking, it's the responsibility of the museum if it's good to show it to people, and I I just think that there's. I can't imagine any other way forward than that.
Lara Ayad:Yeah, yeah, Tamar.
Lara Ayad:this was such a fantastic conversation with so much depth and so much honesty, and you're willing to go and we're both, both canceled, oh my god, yeah, um, no, but I really do think it's so important to be able to go to these places in a way that is respectful and you're listening and and that's the thing that's. So. That's why this is so different than, say, watching like a talking head segments, because, like we're, you know, people are actually listening to each other and I hope that that's what listeners can get from listening to your episode and listening to this podcast. So, thank you very much for being on the Cheeky Scholar. It's just such a pleasure having you on the show.
Tamar Avishai:Thank you so much for having me and for encouraging a conversation of this magnitude of honesty. It's definitely not a conversation I could have had five years ago, so I'm grateful for even with everything that's that's gone on in the last five years and in the last five months. In the last five minutes, I don't know, I haven't my my phone's been on do not disturb for this whole hour, so who knows how, like what else is who knows if there's been another regime change?
Tamar Avishai:you know yeah exactly, um, but I I appreciate that you know I can talk to somebody like you and and the truth is, most people, when they have a one-on-one opportunity to talk to each other, there's a lot more sanity individually in these conversations than there are in big group. Um, you know opinions that you're supposed to have and on social media, and it's like it's very reassuring to know that, like maybe we can take what's been oversimplified in this time and like return the complexity to it.
Lara Ayad:Wonder what professors yak about. After a couple of beers, point that monkey digit at your phone and hit the subscribe button. You'll get the newest episodes delivered right to your favorite podcast app. Thanks for joining us on the Cheeky Scholar and until next time, keep it real and keep it cheeky.