Each spring semester the University Library System, in collaboration with Pittâs Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), award ten students with the Archival Scholars Research Award (ASRA). This semester, seven of those students are working in Special Collections. Each month, we ask the scholars to submit blog posts demonstrating the discoveries they are making. Enjoy!
The Annual Congressional Art Competition, sponsored by the Congressional Institute, broadcasts a call to high school artists nationwide to share the best their congressional districts have to offer. The rules are simple: the works must be two dimensional, be no larger than 28 x 28 inches, weigh less than fifteen pounds, and be original in concept, design, and execution while not violating any copyright laws. When eighteen year old David Pulphusâ painting won first place in Missouriâs First District, it was flown to a gallery at the U.S. Capitol Complex, where an ongoing spat has seen it hung, removed, then rehung a number of times.
The painting is packed with motifs â a black man in sweatpants, a graduation cap, and bold red sneakers hovers, crucified, his arms bearing the scales of justice, occupied with the black and white whorls of yin and yang. The city skyline recedes into prison bars, through which two brown eyes gaze plaintively at the viewer. Placards emblazoned with the phrases âRACISM KILLSâ and âHISTORYâ call out to the viewer, while a black and white bird fly headlong at each other. The scene ultimately unfolds and opens up towards the viewer, where a black panther stands, face-to-face with the barrel of a gun wielded by a pig in a police uniform.
The depiction of cops as pigs has been traded verbally as well as visually â Cypress Hillâs track, Pigs evokes a cop ââŠstandinâ eatinâ donuts while some motherfuckerâs out robbinâ your home.â But perhaps one of the earliest and most widespread depictions of cops as pigs must be attributed to one man: former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas.
Known today for his iconic representation of the struggles of black Americans throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and the subject of several exhibitions within the last decade, Emory Douglasâ style is nothing short of staggeringly incisive. Responsible for much of the artistic production and layout of the Black Panther Paper, a biweekly newspaper circulated worldwide from its headquarters in Oakland, Emory Douglas was the designated artist for many of the back covers of the paperâcreating bold illustrations to fill up the entire page, usually accompanied with blocks of bright, fluorescent colors. The illustrations brutally confront the plight black Americans felt living in the 60s and 70s, depicting such subjects as disenfranchised children, decrepit living conditions, and shocking acts of police brutality. Pigs with sharp teeth, adorned with clouds of flies and clad in human clothing frequent these illustrations, usually identified as cops, politicians, fascists and capitalists. In several cases, then-president Richard Nixon is among them, gorging himself on dollar bills, engaging in sexual acts with other members of his inner circle (similarly depicted as pigs), and carrying out orders against the black community, the Panthers, and the Vietnameseâthe war was in full swing, and the Black Panther Party threw their ideological support behind Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong.Â
With the mediaâs constant inundation with acts of protest against police brutality, and calls for police surveillance and accountability, it comes as no surprise that Emory Douglasâ art bears a remarkable significance to David Pulphusâ equally controversial painting. While Douglasâ art and ideology are regarded by many today as emblematic of a time of great distress, one from which we have long since departed, the fact remains that the knee-jerk reaction to Pulphusâ pig-police unabashedly proclaims otherwise. The issues and criticisms he raisesâat age eighteen, in a high school in Missouriâresonate word for word with those Douglas raised almost four decades ago. Furthermore, judging by the fact that his painting has gone back and forth from on the Congressional wall to out of sight almost four times as of this date, there can be no mistake about declaring how divisive issues of race, police violence, and freedom of expression (artistic or otherwise) are to us even now.
-Raka Sarkar, Archival Scholars Research Awardee â17
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