‘Yellow face’, gaming the system, more, or worse?

Julian Marsano
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read
image from Pixabay, CC license; artist: Willian Fujii

Note: I originally wrote this in 2015; I’m posting it here as I’ve decided to rationalize my writing to this Medium site/page. It has not been re-edited (save for formatting) since I originally wrote it.

Some time ago I commented on the subject of the beguiling (and highly successful) art forger, Mark Landis. He is the subject of the film, Art and Craft. It remains my opinion that this man did commit fraud, albeit a mostly-harmless fraud: he did not sell any of his forgeries, preferring instead to bask in the glow of appreciation from the recipient museums.

All of this can occasion some interesting conversations about the nature of authenticity and the very nature of art. The unavoidable fraud, however, casts its shadow over the whole thing: Landis said something was an x, when it was really a y. In addition to the fraud, he also harmed the professional reputations of curators and various art experts who vouched for the authenticity of the paintings. If he had only succeeded a few times, we might be able to say, ‘Too bad. The so-called experts should have known better,’ although we’d be callous. But Landis is so talented that he was able to fool dozens of institutions: in the end, it simply demonstrates that spotting forgeries is really hard work and easy to get wrong.

Another art fraud has gotten into the news just this week. Poet Michael Hudson, under the pen name Yi-Fen Chou, submitted his poem for consideration in the 2015 edition of Best American Poetry. Hudson is white, not of Chinese ancestry. Hudson, after being informed of his selection, contacted Alexie and fessed up to being, well, not of Chinese ancestry.

Hudson committed fraud, no doubt: he misrepresented himself. But we must ask ourselves, does this fraud matter? Is it anything like Landis’ fraud? Better, worse?

Landis represented a thing as having a storied provenance. Had he composed his own painting, it’s very likely that he could not have gotten it put in any museum. His fraud lies in appropriating someone else’s greatness and using it to advance his artistic practice–perhaps ‘craft’ is a better term.

Hudson made no such false representation of provenance. Instead, he falsely presented himself as a fictional someone else. Here’s the issue, according to his detractors: he didn’t say he was Joe Blough, he said he was of Asian ancestry. In academe, this is taken as ‘appropriation’ of cultural identity, according to Professor Chang, quoted in the same article. And, in a sort of affirmative action, it appears to have helped him: Alexie admits that the Asian surname made him ‘more amenable’ to including Hudson’s poem.

In the end, this is about more than just fraud, but about how Hudson exposed that politics and race inform the arts, and puts lie to the shibboleth that being a person of color automatically counts against you. In fact, it appears that my old suspicion–that being a person of color in academe conferred epistemological, among other, advantages–is not entirely unfounded. Additionally, it proves that the contrapositive is in fact the case: ‘white privilege’, the vaporous and beloved hobgoblin of the American Left, is ever more a fiction of febrile victimhood-mongers. The most that Hudson is genuinely guilty of is of gaming the system. He sensed that his whiteness counted against him, and Alexie pretty much admitted that it did. He did the logical thing and cloaked his whiteness in yellow-ness.

Though it isn’t a performance-based sport, such as shooting, the Chou-nee-Hudson stood at least largely on its own merits, and those merits should have been the same regardless of the name on the entry form. Alexie, sensibly, has stood by his decision to keep Hudson’s poem in his collection. Perhaps he will consider a single- or double- blind judging process in the future. It would be good for the art.

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