Dread Scott

Scott Tyler (born 1965), known professionally as Dread Scott, is an American artist whose works, often participatory in nature, focus on the experience of African Americans in the contemporary United States. His first major work, What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag (1989),[1] was at the center of a controversy regarding whether his piece resulted in desecration of the American flag. Scott would later be one of the defendants in United States v. Eichman, a Supreme Court case in which it was eventually decided that federal laws banning flag desecration were unconstitutional.

Not to be confused with Dred Scott, the 19th-century American slave.
Dread Scott
Photographic Portrait of Dread Scott
Dread Scott in 2010
Born1965 (age 57–58)
Chicago, Illinois
Notable workWhat Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag
Awards2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2020 United States Artists Fellowship
Websitewww.dreadscott.net

Early life and Art Institute of Chicago

Scott was raised in Hyde Park, Chicago, the only son of his father, a photographer, and mother, who was "largely a housewife" but became a travel agent when Scott's father became ill and unable to work.[2][3] For twelve years, Scott attended the upper-class Latin School, where other students often directed racial slurs towards him.[2]

Scott attended college at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He later moved to New York City to begin his artistic career.[2] His adopted name, "Dread", had multiple meanings: combined with his first name it evoked Dred Scott, a black slave who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom during the 1850s, after having been held in a free state; was an allusion to the dreadlocks of Rastafarians; and reflected a desire to cause "dread" among others.[2]

In 1989, while attending the Art Institute, Scott exhibited What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag, a participatory work that invited viewers to write comments in a ledger, mounted on a podium that stood at one end of an American flag spread on the floor. The work consisted of a collage, which featured flag-covered coffins and South Korean students burning the American flag, and an American flag placed on the floor beneath the aforementioned ledger. Participants were seemingly directed to step on the flag to leave messages, though it was possible to avoid touching the flag by approaching the ledger from the side.[4] The exhibit generated intense controversy: several major politicians, including George H. W. Bush, condemned the exhibit.

As a result of Scott's exhibit and the unrelated decision in Texas v. Johnson, the United States Congress decided to make flag desecration illegal in 1989 with the Flag Protection Act.[5] Scott was one of four people arrested for burning flags on the steps of the United States Capitol in protest against the law. Eventually, the arrests were appealed up to the Supreme Court in United States v. Eichman, with the Supreme Court eventually ruling in favor of Scott and the other protesters and federal laws regulating flag desecration being ruled unconstitutional.[6]

Recent works

In response to the deaths of unarmed African Americans Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police, Scott created a flag, reading "A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday", which has been produced in two separate editions, one in 2015 and the other in 2017.[7] It was inspired by a banner that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) displayed from what was then their national office in New York, reading "A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY". In 2016, Scott's flag was flown at the Jack Shainman Gallery in Manhattan.[8][9]

Scott is a character in Talene Monahon's 2020 play about historical reenactment, How to Load a Musket.[10]

Slave Rebellion Reenactment (2019)

Around 2014, Scott began planning to re-enact the 1811 German Coast uprising in Louisiana.[11] The revolt was the largest rebellion by enslaved individuals in North American history and took place upriver of New Orleans.[12] The project was planned in partnership with the organization Antenna, which promotes visual and literary arts relevant to communities of New Orleans.[13] Over two days in November 2019, Scott and fellow participants reenacted the revolt, with the process filmed by Ghanaian-British artist John Akomfrah and Black cinematographer Bradford Young,[14] and the work was simultaneously made visible through posts on social media, pushing it beyond "a singular iconic tableau or monumental presence . . . through the accretion of multiple images of the same event, created and disseminated" collectively.[15] Rather than ceasing at the point that the rebellion was stopped by a militia, the re-enactors instead continued on to New Orleans; for curator and poet Kristina Kay Robinson, this meant that, "questions of how to grapple with the rebellion’s bloody end were avoided altogether, as it was replaced by a 'cultural celebration' in Congo Square."[16]

The Slave Rebellion Reenactment consisted of more than the re-enactment itself, and instead should be understood as a social and durational work that involved fundraising, recruiting participants, collaborating with New Orleans non-profits, organizing sewing circles to create costumes and props, involving researchers to clarify historical details, acquiring event permissions, and discussing the work in public forums.[15][17] “The heart of the project,” Scott explained, embodies the history of "the formation of and the creation of the army of the enslaved," because this networking and planning for the reenactment, Scott explained, were intended "to be done by word of mouth, mirroring the structure of how a slave revolt had to be assembled.”[18]

Collections

Brooklyn Museum[19]

MCA San Diego

Whitney Museum of American Art[20]

Awards

Scott is a 2023/2024 Rome Prize winner,[21] Guggenheim Fellow,[22] and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow.[23]

References
  1. Cohen, Alina (2018-07-25). "It's Legal to Burn the American Flag. This Artist Helped Make It A Form of Free Speech". Artsy. Retrieved 2020-02-14.
  2. Dubin, Steven C. (October 18, 2013). Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions. Routledge. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-135-21460-9.
  3. Violaine Roussel; Bleuwenn Lechaux (2 February 2010). Voicing Dissent: American Artists and the War on Iraq. Routledge. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-135-19237-2.
  4. Louis P. Masur (1 August 2010). The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-59691-854-2.
  5. Robert Justin Goldstein (January 1996). Burning the Flag: The Great 1989-1990 American Flag Desecration Controversy. Kent State University Press. pp. 77–78. ISBN 978-0-87338-598-5.
  6. Cohen, Alina (25 July 2018). "It's Legal to Burn the American Flag. This Artist Helped Make It A Form of Free Speech". Artsy. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
  7. Greenberger, Alex (August 29, 2017). "Dread Scott's 'A Man Was Lynched by Police' Flag Goes to Collections of MCA San Diego and the Whitney Museum". ARTnews.
  8. Rogers, Angelica (July 14, 2016). "Does This Flag Make You Flinch?". The New York Times.
  9. Brooks, Katherine (July 8, 2016). "Flag Reading 'A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday' Rises In New York". The Huffington Post.
  10. Soloski, Alexis (16 January 2020). "'How to Load a Musket' Review: A Play About Re-enactors Gets Real". New York Times. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
  11. Bush, Tori (2014). "Dread Scott's Slave Uprising Reenactment". The Art Newspaper.
  12. "Dread Scott Reenacts a Slave Revolt to Radically Reconsider Freedom". Hyperallergic. 2017-11-17. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
  13. "About Antenna". Antenna.Works. 2011-05-18. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
  14. Imhotep, Ra Malika (February 18, 2020). "Letter from New Orleans: Playing as Rebels". Burnaway.
  15. Anagnost, Adrian (2021). "Dread Scott's Slave Rebellion Reenactment: Site, Time, Embodiment" (PDF). revue d'art canadienne/Canadian Art Review. 46: 59–74. doi:10.7202/1085421ar.
  16. Robinson, Kristina Kay (February 18, 2020). "Letter from New Orleans: Down River Road". Burnaway.
  17. Johnson, Erik (Summer 2019). "Slavery, Tourism, and Memory in New Orleans's 'Plantation Country". Africa Today. 65 (4): 117.
  18. Orr, Joey (2018). "Radical View of Freedom: An Interview with Dread Scott". Journal of American Studies. 52 (4): 925.
  19. "Dread Scott". Brooklyn Museum.
  20. "Dread Scott, 1965-". Whitney Museum. Retrieved 2018-05-01.
  21. Maximiliano Duron (April 24, 2023). "Seven Artists Win Coveted Rome Prize, Including Dread Scott and Nao Bustamante". ART News.
  22. "Dread Scott". Guggenheim Foundation. Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  23. "Dread Scott". United States Artists. United States Artists. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
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