doyle on warhol on fame on Kara walker

In order to get to recuperation, one must travel the paranoid forest:

find one’s own way, out of anguish, insecurity, and anger

Jennifer Doyle tells us in her essay on the rhetoric of prostitution that “If we take him at his word, Andy Warhol was pretty certain that love had a price, that it was a business much like art was a business, that sex was work, and that these could be good things” (Sex Objects 45). I don’t think Kara Walker is operating from exactly this kind of cynical ideology, but close enough. Her access to the elite art world is challenged by older artists. They see Walker’s labor actually doing racial harm when it enters the public sphere? In their estimation, Walker’s success is very much all about her willingness to dis-(splay) black [women’s] bodies. Her sexual narratives are the most hyper visible narratives in the silhouettes and in her short films. Is she pimping out her history for public purchase and artistic fame? This is the easiest and slimiest of accusations. As soon as we accuse someone of the kind of violence that is a prostitution of self, selling one’s integrity and decency in exchange for institutional recognition and accolades, we relegate the accused artist, the intellectual, impotent and assailable. Before we go there, we might want to see what the work is actually doing. What does Walker’s labor actually do when it enters the public sphere?