Artists under assault. They dared to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
I’ve been a fan of photographer Nan Goldin for years.
Goldin’s most famous art work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
Golden is more widely known perhaps for her campaign against the Sackler family and the pharmaceutical industry that produced the opioid epidemic.
Her fight against the Sacklers was told brilliantly in the 2022 Academy Award nominated documentary, All the Beauty and The Bloodshed.
But that was last year.
Goldin and other artists are now under assault for signing a petition calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
“I have never lived through a more chilling period,” said Goldin.
I have.
I’m old enough to have lived through the Red Scare of the fifties.
Artists were victims then and now.
Instead of a Red under every bed, critics of Israel are labeled anti-Jewish and blacklisted by museums, galleries and millionaire collectors.
The media contributes to this by describing the current war as between Israel and Hamas when it is the entire Palestinian population in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, not just Hamas, that is under attack by Israel.
Any criticism of Israel or Netanyahu is conflated with anti-Semitism.
Goldin, who is one of the most celebrated living photographers, signed the open letter that called for Palestinian liberation and a cease-fire.
“People are being blacklisted. People are losing their jobs,” for signing said Goldin.
In recent days one of the art world’s top magazine editors was fired after the publishers of Artforum said that the staff’s decision to post an open letter about “the Israel-Hamas war failed to meet the organization’s standards.”
Meaning it offended pro-Israeli wealthy donors and collectors and museum board members.
The editor in chief of Artforum, David Velasco, said he had been terminated after six years as Artforum’s leader. He had worked at the publication, considered among the world’s most prestigious art magazines, since 2005.
“I have no regrets,” Velasco said in an email. “I’m disappointed that a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure.”
Free speech has always been an early casualty of war.