A Nation in which artistic excellence is celebrated, supported,
and available to all.

The National Endowment for the Arts enriches our Nation and
its diverse cultural heritage by supporting works of artistic
excellence, advancing learning in the arts, and strengthening
the arts in communities throughout the country.

To encourage and support artistic creativity and preserve
our diverse cultural heritage.

To advance learning in the arts.

To make the arts more widely available in communities
throughout the country.

To develop and maintain partnerships that advance the
mission of the National Endowment for the Arts.

MAYOR MARC MORIAL: We certainly have seen a result.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What have you seen?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ms. Marquis,. We have about five seconds. Just make a quick point. That’s all we have time for. I’m sorry.

ALICE GOLDFARB MARQUIS: Actually, the--the donors through private donors give the arts more than $10 billion a year, and the government forgives at least $2 billion in taxes because they get a tax deduction, so that is a $2 billion subsidy for the arts. And I think that’s fine.

Who, then, is to blame for the distrust in which the NEA is held? American Canvas offers two answers to this question. The more predictable one targets the incorrigible philistinism of the American public: the report laments that the $4.31 billion spent annually on live performances by nonprofit art groups "is less than half of what Americans [pay] for flowers, seeds, and potted plants." But, as if aware of the sterility of this particular line of argument--it involves attacking the very people the NEA means to court--the authors of American Canvas have come up with a different, indeed a diametrically opposed, answer to the same question.

Freedom of Expression

at the National Endowment for the Arts

An interdisciplinary education project partially funded by the American Bar Association, Commission on College and University Legal Studies through the ABA Fund for Justice and Education
 

Course Materials: Freedom of Expression

A. Our freedom of speech, protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, is one of our most basic constitutional rights. Yet the precise nature of what is protected by the First Amendment is often misunderstood.

B. The word speech in the First Amendment has been extended to a generous sense of "expression" -- verbal, non-verbal, visual, symbolic. The artistic work supported by the NEA includes a variety of types of expression enjoying this broad protection.

C. Various exceptions to free speech have been recognized in American law, including obscenity, defamation, breach of the peace, incitement to crime, "fighting words," and sedition.

D. The work of major philosophers who have considered freedom of expression (e.g., J.S. Mill and Joel Feinberg) is helpful in explaining the rationale for these exceptions.

A. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

This image is the joint resolution of Congress in 1789 proposing amendments to the Constitution, now known as the Bill of Rights. It is on permanent display in the Rotunda of the National Archives. You can display a high-resolution image of the Bill of Rights (87 K JPEG).

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution says that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of "speech." Close attention to these few important words reveals several issues demanding interpretation and clarification.

Note that the document uses the word "speech," although a long succession of court decisions has expanded this concept far beyond ordinary verbal communication. Protected expression now includes such non-verbal expression as wearing a symbol on one's clothing, dance movements, and a silent candlelight vigil.

What does Tinker v. Des Moines School District mean today, almost 30 years later? A new Web site, produced by the American Bar Association, Division of Public Education, includes discussions with the students who were the original plaintiffs in this case, along with extensive information about the case: http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawday/tinker/home.html

C. Exceptions to Freedom of Expression

Many exceptions to the First Amendment protections have been recognized by the courts, although not without controversy. 
Exceptions established by the courts to the First Amendment protections include the following:

(3) Fighting words: In the famous case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not protect "fighting words -- those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." (315 U.S. 568, 572 [1942]) This famous exception is much discussed in recent decades, but rarely the basis for a decision upholding an abridgement of free speech.

(5) Sedition: Although not without controversy, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld statutes which prohibit the advocacy of unlawful conduct against the government or the violent overthrow of the government. As with prohibitions discussed earlier, the expressions in question are assessed according to the circumstances. Academic discussion of the theories of, say, Karl Marx presumably would not be prohibited under such a test, especially in this post-Soviet era. The theoretical consideration and even endorsement of these views could not remotely be considered to be reasonable expectations of the actual overthrow of the government. But it is possible that an artist might develop a project, perhaps guerrilla theater or an exhibit, that urged the destruction of the United States (the "Great Satan") by extremist religious groups. The likelihood of success by the latter group would seem as improbable as the likelihood of success by contemporary Marxists.

(6) Obscenity: In Miller v. California (413 U.S. 14 [1973]) the U.S. Supreme Court established a three-pronged test for obscenity prohibitions which would not violate the First Amendment:

(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

In addition to these established exceptions to freedom of expression, there are examples of speech which would not cause real harm, in Mill's sense, but which some believe justify suppression of speech: Offense | Establishment of Religion

(7) Offense: Although rejected by American courts, some theorists argue that speech which is merely offensive to others should be another exception to the First Amendment.(5) In a court challenge to an NEA-funded exhibit, David Wojnarowicz: Tongues of Flame, David Fordyce and Yvonne Knickerbocker claimed that the exhibit caused them to "[suffer] a spiritual injury and that the exhibition caused offense to their religious sensibilities." (Fordyce v. Frohnmayer, 763 F.Supp. 654, 656 [D.D.C. 1991]) The court rejected the claim, especially as "plaintiffs do not even allege that they have either seen the exhibition or studied the catalogue . . . [and thus] have failed to show that they have endured any special burdens that justify their standing to sue as citizens." Id. But the court left open the possibility that the plaintiffs might have a claim if "they had to confront the exhibition daily, . . . the exhibition was visible in the course of their normal routine, or . . . their usual driving or walking routes took them through or past the exhibition." Id.

(8) Establishment of Religion: Some speech is restricted because it constitutes the establishment of religion, which is itself prohibited by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.") Prayer led by a principal in a public school would violate the establishment clause. Thus, a school policy prohibiting the principal from leading such prayers would not violate the right of free speech. This is controversial to some, who believe that banning prayer in the public schools limits an equally important right, freedom of religion. This tension illustrates the not-uncommon challenge of balancing competing and perhaps even irreconcilable values in the Constitution.

In challenging the Wojnarowicz exhibit, the plaintiffs (above) argued that the exhibit was critical of their Christian beliefs and thus violated the establishment clause. The plaintiffs said that they

view the public display of the exhibition as an affront to their liberty to practice religion free from governmental entanglement and politically divisive governmental intrusion into the affairs of religion. (Id. at 655)

But the court said "that merely asserting spiritual injury under the establishment clause is insufficient to support standing to sue as a citizen." (Id. at 656)

D. Philosophical Consideration of Freedom of Expression

The English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) articulated what might be called the "liberal" or (better) the "libertarian" position on freedom of expression in his 1859 book On Liberty. (8) His test for appropriate government interference with human liberties is his well-known "harm" principle, found in Chapter I:

. . . the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. (9)

A popular public art project in recent years has been the placement of poetry posters on public transportation for people to read while commuting. Imagine a project to place these posters in busses and subways with the content of the Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" that presumably would be offensive to some religious sensibilities. What arguments would support exhibition of the posters on the bus? Should a government agency provide funding for the poster? Why or why not?

If a consumer reporter said falsely that a restaurant served her food with cockroaches in it, the restaurant could maintain a lawsuit for defamation. If a food critic wrote a review that, in the opinion of the critic, the restaurant's food tasted dreadful, the restaurant could not maintain a lawsuit for defamation. Yet, if the critic is a respected food critic in the city, that opinion could cause as much (if not more) economic harm to the restaurant than the erroneous news report of the consumer reporter. Does the distinction between "falsehood" and "opinion" result in fair results for the restaurant? Is the rationale for allowing defamation lawsuits as a restriction on speech justifiable?

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Home page: Freedom of Expression at the NEA

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California State University, Long Beach

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Copyright 1996, 1997 Julie C. Van Camp

Permission is hereby given to print, download, and reproduce these materials for educational, personal, or scholarly purposes, but only if the copyright notice and this permission notice are reprinted in full with each copy. This material may not be sold or otherwise used for commercial purposes. [No copyright claimed in government documents or other public domain materials.]

Nothing in this material should be considered legal advice. If you have a legal problem, you should consult with experienced legal counsel. The views here are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Bar Association, California State University, or the National Endowment for the Arts.

1991 Blood, stainless steel, perspex 208 x 63 x 63 cm

This piece helps characterize the essence of "Sensation," showing that art isn't necessarily
categorized as such simply due to raw talent and even a humble effort can have rather
profound, soul-searing effects. The first impression of Self is that the work isn't very well
defined and the color choice and medium are difficult to determine. This is because the
medium is the artist's own blood, siphoned a pint at a time over the course of several
months until enough was collected to be poured into a latex mold of the artist's head and
then frozen solid. The stainless steel is not just a fancy stand but also a refrigeration unit
that keeps the work from melting. What points it may lose in seeming lack of artistic
endeavor it certainly redoubles in thought provocation, at the very least adding a new
dimension to the self-portrait.

1996-1997 Silicone and acrylic 20 x 102 x 38 cm

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, by Damien Hurst

What if its beauty and humor made it easier to ignore the problem of racial division in our society?

	Home | Site Map				text version
	Stereotypes appear before us daily, in the kitchen, on a toy store shelf, and even embroidered on our clothing. These images are innocuous to some, offensive to others.
	This is from a box of Cream of Wheat Enriched Farina.		The Sweet Treats Barbie doll is one version of the popular line of Barbie dolls sold by Mattel.		This logo for the Cleveland Indians, a baseball team, is embroidered on a denim shirt.

Are you ready? Now's your final chance to have your say. continue

	Home | Site Map
		Of the 14420 visitors who've voted, 70% said yes, they thought this image should be on the homepage of this Web site; 29% said no, they thought that it should not. Return to the homepage		Camptown Ladies, detail. Kara Walker, 1998. Cut paper and adhesive on wall. Overall size 9 x 67 feet. Courtesy Brent Sikkema, NYC.

Source: http://www.gregkucera.com/walker.htm

Vitus H. Weh

SHADOW WORLD AND EXORCISM

Kara Walker’s Large-Scale Picture in the Vienna State Opera

here are good and evil spirits in opera. We love the good ones -including phantoms of the opera - and the safety curtain protects us from the evil. This extremely heavy fire safety curtain is there to divide the stage and auditorium like a wall when there is no performance -also during the intervals. A visit to the opera therefore does not only offer the enjoyment of music, acting and various stage scenery, and it is unavoidable that the design of the safety curtain will also be seen.

The safety curtain in the Vienna State Opera in the 1998/99 season proved that its apostrophic power to prevent disaster can not only be directed against fire demons -there is an endless history of burnt down theatres and opera houses -it can also be aimed at those demons which appear in the opera repertoire itself.

Since 1955 the audience side of the Vienna safety curtain showed an outmoded "Orpheus and Erudite" scene by the former Nazi artist Rudolf Eisenmenger: Nobody was ever happy about it.

Temporary Art

When the subject of a new design for the safety curtain was brought up for discussion by State Opera Director Holender in spring 1997, there was no desire to destroy the old picture out of respect for its symbolic historical influence.  On museum in progress with its wide experience in the field of temporary art presentations (projections and posters in urban space, inserts in newspapers, large-scale pictures on the facade of the Kunsthalle etc.) was brought in as a partner together; a model was !!1 developed which enables the picture on the safety curtain to be changed every season without destroying the original curtain. The 176 square meter picture is so light that it can simply be hung onto the safety curtain by means of magnets. The motif is sprayed on using the computer-controlled system (computer aided large-scale imaging).

Finery Cut Nastiness

          An international jury (Robert Fleck, Kasper Konig, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Nancy Spector) chose the young
Afro-American artist Kara Walker to begin the initial four-year series. At first glance, her design already seemed perfect for the grand opera house. In black and white and partially on a gold back- Ii ground that was taken over from the hidden Eisenmenger picture, the tableau fits in elegantly with the splendor of the auditorium and the tailcoats of the Vienna Philharmonic. One quickly recognizes three trees, mountaintops and some figures. What at first looks like a charming fairy-tale illustration, however actually packs quite a punch. The silhouettes have less to do with 1 idylls and tranquil craftsmanship than with a grotesque malignance. Pairs of eyes loom in the trees, which are overgrown with marsh moss, and nastiness is revealed behind each element in the picture. The scenery, which dances on the curtain, was not only aesthetically interplay of shadows. Unlike Eisenmenger's picture, it was not about an elegiac kingdom of the dead from which Orpheus wanted to bring back his beloved Erudite with the power of music, but a shadowy world, which was inhabited by some very real evil spirits of European culture. Kara Walker captured her grotesques or] the safety curtain as though they were gargoyles on a gothic cathedral.

Iconography of the Other

Kara Walker discovered these demons especially in the tendency of opera towards the exotic. The stranger the location the better; seems to apply to this branch of entertainment. Verdi's "Aida" carries us away to the monumental world of Ancient Egypt, Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" gracefully depicts the melancholy of the Japanese, Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" celebrates the world of the Afro- Americans and from Mozart we know the joie de vivre of the Spaniards and Italians.

In all this, there is no question that fun clichés are piled upon one another However, when Kara Walker puts a swollen-lipped Negro caricature blowing a turban-headed figure from a saxophone into the picture, one realizes how easily the fun could also turn sour One does not even need to know that a similar caricature adorned a poster for the Nazi German exhibition "Degenerate Music" in 1938. The whole curtain is full of such shadow plays. For example, in the Moor, who is holding out a coffee bean to Eurydice from a tree, Kara Walker uncovers barely disguised racist sexism. The Moor is the sensual eunuch. Orientalism in Western Art often places this type of black character in close proximity to a classically beautiful white woman to accentuate her sexuality To a certain extent he/she be- comes an agent of tile psyche. He/she is holding out an oversized coffee bean that somewhat resembles the female sex. Eurydice has abandoned her classical savior Orpheus for the perceived pleasures of the Black Other.  A small figure on a mountaintop indicates how we ourselves can be forced into the furnace of clichés. According to Kara Walker in this silhouette of a girl the Austrian character mutates into a cross between Heidi and the singing Maria from the 1960's musical "The Sound of Music". The sledgehammer was ready for us all.

INTERVIEW WITH KARA WALKER By Hans-Ulrich Obrist

o begin with the beginning, how did you start to work with silhouettes?

Every image is one truth, which is surrounded by many other truths, which are worth being explored.

Well, a lot of the time every image is one lie or bad joke -on the surface -rather than an immediate truth. I guess the "truth" of an image or situation within a whole piece, occurs when the viewer is enticed to fill in the blank spaces. She is faced with the discomfort of realizing just how many bizarre and sometimes violent fantasies already occupy her mind.

What's the importance of time in your work?

How do you find the subjects of your work, where are the sources?  

The sources for my work include the Slave Narrative (a popular political tactic around the time of the American Civil War). The true stories of the horrors of slave life were novelized, and then authenticated for the benefit of white readers. Oftentimes unsavory details (like rape, or concupiscence) were smoothed out so as not to offend good Christians. Pornographic stories which borrow from the slave narrative and embellish the illicitness of interracial desire. I find the subjects for my work just about everywhere though, especially, in Politically Correct America. We are all working so hard to change people's attitudes about race but it’s like handling a wet eel. Something slimy always wiggles free. Maybe ten years ago there was a popular saying that appeared on T-shirts: "It's a Black thing, You wouldn't understand". It inspired a whole way of thinking for me. Because, obviously, the "you" in the saying is Not Black. . So what does this mean to the person who is black and still doesn't quite understand? This conjured up a bunch of typical associations with blackness: the Black as incomprehensible, chaotic, a mystery, something altogether Other. As a result everything -however it involves blackness, or African-American-ness (this term has a historical resonance for me, "Negroes throughout the history of the Americas") -is source material. Everything from Josephine Baker's proto-transgressive act, to observations on the street, to transcribing and embellishing my own "race-mixing" experiences, to speculating on why a Black model was used to signal the reemergence of White as the new fall color. I make references to lots of historical documents as well, Minstrel songs and the illustrations from their sheet music, illustrations documenting Slave life, and broadsides advertising the sale of women and children....

Could you tell me about your drawings? How are they related to your bigger wall works? Are sketches preparing these works?

Could you comment on this and maybe also tell me about how the transition from paintings to working directly on the wall did occur in your work?

The first time I took the silhouettes out of the frame of painting was actually for my first show in New York, at the Drawing Center. Before then I had neither the space nor the technical knowledge to make these original paper cuts stay on the wall temporarily. Paintings, as objects imply a kind of closed system, and with narrative works like mine the edge of the canvas implies the end of the story: here's the 'slave' here's the 'master', one's a victim the others the villain, The End.

Does the scale of your work refer to the physical presence of the viewer?

So I always wanted to make work that would surround the viewer, to place the viewer in an uncomfortable relationship to a type of imagery that undermines all our fine-tuned, well-adjusted cultural beliefs. Works on the wall could easily spill out ...as a narrative it could continue as long as I want it to. Like History.

What role do you attribute to the viewer? Which part of the work does he do?

The polite denial of unsavory acts, as embodied by the silhouette, entices the viewer to figure out what's going on. These black shapes, for all their detail, still operate like an inkblot test -viewers sometimes revealing awkward and telling interpretations of the images. You once said that at the beginning of your work with silhouettes you imagined them to be put together in a cyclorama. Could you tell me about this and about if you are still interested in finding this kind of space? "'Slavery! Slavery!' Presenting a GRAND and LIFELIKE Panoramic Journey into Picturesque Southern Slavery or 'Life at 01' Virginny's Hole' (Sketches from Plantation Life). See the Peculiar Institution as never before! All Cut from Black Paper by the Able Hand of Kara Elizabeth Walker, an Emancipated Negress and Leader in her Cause." This was the title of my cyclorama, created at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. I made it last year, and working in a circular space was dizzying. I only had about a week to work on it, so it wasn't as richly detailed as a real cyclorama, but it was epochal! There are escape scenes and a Town Square and the mysterious Southern swamp at night as well as 'happy' slave life. I love the 19th century populism of this kind of 'art'. I love that pre-cinematic rush to make history paintings COME ALIVE for the average person. There are the remains of a cyclorama up here in New Bedford, Massachusetts, part of the Whaling Museum there. The original banner, which advertised it was full of scenes etc., but the painting itself is comically bland, it has a sweet folksy quality of having been made by someone who couldn’t adequately interpret the drama of his experience. I kind of identify with that.

What were your impressions about Vienna and how far did they enter the work?

I have had about 400 different ideas for the Iron Curtain and I have questioned them over and over, I still am, actually. I have spent some time in Germany but only one rainy holiday in Austria. I thought I'd just do what any black person on holiday would look for signs of myself, and tally up my stereo- types of the Mensch. The first most obvious question is: "What's up with all those black servants offering up their coffee?" Is there a German saying parallel to the American "I like my coffee like I like my women"?

Historically, who can ignore the influence of the Nazis when it comes to classifying, hybridizing and doing away with all that is terrifyingly Other! Mentally, you're regarded with some studied care (even when I know my German husband and family to be good people). There is an image in this piece borrowed from "Entartete Musik" of a "black Jew". The image is especially interesting to me given the rift that has emerged lately between American Black and Jewish communities who have long shared an interest in human rights as well as a shared history. Now we've got Black sects claiming to be the "True Jews" and discounting the other Jews as imposters. .. This hybridization of Blacks, Jews and Turks is especially interesting to me, because it means never having to say you’re sorry. It's like... I don't think I can say that without being burned alive...skip it. But I included the entartete musik jazz spieler to contrast the divine music of Orpheus whose Euridice marches off to investigate this seductive coffee. I reduced my very American impression of Austria to one simple hybrid: HEIDI and death. (She is very small, very sentimental, and very much in possession of a scythe)

Kara Walker

Notes From Negress Imprisoned in Austria

I was brought here on a cultural Lark, to recreate for you scenes of my predecessors' good nature. She was, as you recall, Unspoiled by intellectual effluvia. She was pure, Black, Noble, Black, Blacker and Blacker Still. She was -Contrast –to your Snowcapped Alps. She was lascivious in her naked- ness. She was Impartial to your Liberalism. She was worth waiting in line for She was dressed in coarse linen and banana skirts with breasts bared.

She reminded you that the Owner of a Black Body is a Walking Signifier of Hot, Wet, Salty, Back Alley, Hip Thrusting, Penis-Plunging, Blood Soaked and Starving African Goodness. She was this, and pungent as hot roasted Coffee beans too. But I, sirs, am not her -not exactly.

And so I find myself in Vienna's Modern Asylum for Uncooperative Americans of African Descent.

And all can do to plead my case is draw-rather-half-heartedly upon my own experiences as a kept woman; present them to you in some cold and heartless form and pray that you will be so starved for my attentions (as my reputation preceded me) that even my lackluster effort will satisfy.

I realize now, from vantage of my cell, that you, my Keeper, are not yet ready for the thrashing you so deserve from me. That is the reason my predecessor kept her cool, placated you with her sideshow dances, and "traditional" idiosyncrasies.

"My keeper is weak, and I am strong." Thus imprisonment. Makes perfect sense in a country whose intellectual founders invented the "repressed".

I am and shall continue to be the monster in your closet. Prodding at your tightly wound arsenal, your history.

Let Me Out.

And. You. Shall. Seek. To. Put. Me. Back. In.

And together we will: in and out and in and out together HAHA!

Nancy Spector

KARA WALKER'S 'THEATER OF CRUELTY'

In her de-sublimated theater of the antebellum South, Walker turns the minstrel show inside out and hurls it back at its condescending audience. Her paper cutout figures act out their viewer’s deepest fears in a fantastical spectacle of Sadean offenses: pederasty, bestiality, sodomy, scatology, castration, murder, cannibalism. The shadow world she depicts is hell itself, where the minstrel's "Negro of Plantation Society" is free to wreak havoc on himself and those around him. It is difficult to ascertain where in Walker's work the hallucinatory enactment of untold tortures ends and the fantasy of retaliation begins: "Negresses" seduce and then dismember their white masters; three bare breasted "mammies" suckle each other in a circular pose reminiscent of the Three Graces; a limbless black man roasts on a spit over an open fire like a cut of meat; an old peg-Iegged land-owner sodomizes a little black girl while piercing an infant with his sword; and a young slave woman raises her skirts to drop new borns like a litter. It would be wrong to approach Walker's theater as high tragedy, however. Rather, it should be understood as epic parody. This is the transgressive carnivalesque of Mikhail Bakhtin, a celebration of the grotesque in which the repulsive is empowered. The laughter that her work provokes should not be stifled, for it is aimed as much at ourselves -modern-day "enlightened" viewers that we are -as it is at the historical perversities represented. Like Walker's technique of silhouetting -a minor art form once used for portraiture but now considered a "craft" -her work is deceptively one-dimensional. Given time -an operative component of theater itself -Walker's art

resonates with multiple levels of meaning. Ribald humor and unspeakable misery coexist in dialectical tension. Perhaps these contrary forces are the necessary ingredients for an exorcism.

Susanne Neuburger

"SHE WAS A CLEVER PAIR OF SCISSORS AND ..."'

Not only distortion but also enlargement indicate the negative content of a figure and play upon a moral judgment, which was often close to a theory in the popular art form of the silhouette, which is not particularly open to theorizing. A theoretical peak was the work of Johann Caspar Lavater, who around 1800 held enlightened circles in his spell and provoked a discussion which led George Christopher Lichtenberg to comment: "What an immeasurable leap from the surface of the body to the his inside of the soul!" 15 It was Lavater's intention to precisely fix the negative picture of the profile in order to, as was supposed, show less the divine side of people but their negative, fallen side. This was the origin of his physiognomical studies as an encyclopedia of the soul with the modest means ere of the "outline of half the face" (Lavater). These pictures are also impressive because of their proto-photographic dispositive, which becomes especially productive in the 'leap' from surface to the depths and which, in the context of the Peircean sign, emphasizes the trail which allows the silhouette--like photography--to be less icon than index. For theoretical support, the silhouette must be connected to the shadows: no smoke without fire, no body without shadow, which is index and mimesis, as the history of the origin of painting confirms: the outline of a body projected onto a wall and was painted over and the mimetic effect created via the (symbolic) form of the profile." To understand Kara Walker's pictures as shadows means following in her tracks and shifting away from the representational in pictures towards their historical conditions and the process of their creation.

Because of this, however, they are connected to the artist who puts her own story at the beginning of others. Peirce said: "The index unites characteristics of the shadow and of photography to the extent that it refers to an object not because of a certain similarity or analogy (...), but because it is dynamically connected to the individual object on the one hand and with the senses or the mind of the person which it serves as a sign on the other: "18 For her exhibition at the Centre d'Art Contempo- rain in Geneva 19, Kara Walker named the mind of her person: "Why I like White Boys by Kara E. Walker, a Negress".                                                                                                                                                                                      

HEIDI and death: what is hovering on the mountain will not have the happy end that is so determinedly aimed at in Johanna Spyri's classic "Heidi". Aggression and mourning are the motors for new action and the scythe is ready She must cry because so many demands for integration are made of a child who can only be out of her depth in such a role. This aggressive Heidi reveals the suppressed aspects of her supposedly integral role. But what happens then? Has the difference to an individual being become smaller or does she remain a stereotype in a different key? What is or would be true about Heidi or Heidi and her shadow? Apparently, the shadow is furthest removed from the truth and is profoundly negative. However, it is similar to another truth, which has been found in fairy-tales by many generations of writers, as "a completely contrary world to the world of truth -and is therefore so similar to it." Heidi, Hans in Luck and the Meinl Moor -a culture in children's stories and children's shoes which reminds us of a fairy-tale not only because of the scenery but also because of the fact that in a fairy-tale the most varied aspects of a character are divided between various figures which together make up a complete personality This is not dissimilar to the way Kara Walker approaches German-speaking culture in the six figures. Together they produce a spine-chilling picture, lean towards the demonic and wait for a fatal ending which puts the world in order again as in a fairy-tale -but not in a spirit of reconciliation.

Operagoers are also confronted with the death of their heroes even though they are prepared for it. "Aida" for example has a horribly fatal ending which Alexander Kluge put into the following counter-story in his short television program "125 Years AIDA "; ': A slave named Aida, who Count Hermann zu Puckler-Muskau bought on a journey in North-Africa in the nineteenth century, was brought as his lover to Germany where she died of a cold. "Two skeletons that are labeled as Aida and Radames follow this sequence. This contrary discourse fits in well with the Eisenmenger pyramids, Heidi, Hans in Luck and all the others -130 years of AIDA and not much to celebrate. Kara Walker