13 ways of looking at a painting

Race relations in Chicago grew shakier in May when aldermen and police went to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and removed a student painting that showed the late Mayor Harold Washington in women's underwear. In June, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of the student, David K. Nelson Jr., against Aldermen Allan Streeter, Dorothy Tillman and Bobby Rush and an unknown police officer for depriving him of his civil rights. Nelson is asking for $100,000 in damages. Soon after the incident, S.L. Wisenberg read this prose poem on WBEZ-FM, Chicago's National Public Radio affiliate. The title was inspired by Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

1.It is demeaning for a man to be seen in women's clothing. It is not demeaning for a woman to be seen in men's clothing. Analysts say this is because men are in power. They wear clothes that signify power. Women's clothes are frilly, silly, restrictive — except when they are like men's.

It doesn't matter any more if your mother wears Army boots.

Playboy magazine shows women wearing and not wearing women's underwear, and pays them for it. Newspapers carry sketches and photographs of women, and sometimes men, in underwear. The pictures are an effort to sell such underwear at Marshall Field's and other stores.

2. (Once on a train I heard a young man say: Don't imagine three white bears. It was impossible.)

3. Imagine former Mayor Jane Byrne in men's underwear. Imagine Jane Byrne in a pair of striped boxer shorts and a white undershirt.

Imagine the late Mayor Richard J. Daley in women's underwear. Imagine Madonna in Richard J. Daley's underwear.

Is this libel? Why or why not?

4. Cartoonists attacked Daley for abusing power. Harold Washington spent one term trying to get it.

5. In the Art Institute are statues without clothes. There are paintings of women without clothes and some men without clothes. There are paintings of men and women with clothing draped loosely. Most of the work is by white men. Does it matter?

6. The critics complain that modern art has no content.

7. In college I dreamed my history professor was wearing black lacy women's underwear. With garters. In class the next day I was embarrassed to meet his eyes. I was writing a historical paper that referred to sex. I was embarrassed. As embarrassed as a white male professor would be, exposed, wearing black lacy women's underwear.

October 1988 | Illinois Issues | 30

8. In the city where I was born, there were rumors that the young white male mayor had been wearing women's clothing and smoking marijuana at parties. There was no indictment, no records in the police department. This mayor did not seek another term.

In its recent investigation of jobs for sex, the Better Government Association did not ask Cook County Board President George Dunne about his underwear.

Don't imagine George Dunne's underwear.

9. Male humans wear the furs of other species but they cannot wear the underwear of the female of their own. Women wear furs, often bought for them by men, and they wear gym shorts and boxer shorts patterned after male fashion. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a pair of male underwear from 1795. It looks very much like pantyhose. Twenty years later, English dandies wore whalebone corsets. There were many caricatures of men being laced up in them. They were ridiculed for being as vain and silly as women.

10. No one said the mayor really wore women's underwear. The image bubbled up from the artist's brain.

(Don't think of three white bears.)

11. At my L stop last week was a flyer that said, If it had been President Reagan, the alderman would have just laughed.

It was not Reagan. It was not Daley. It was not Attila the Hun. It was not a betrayer of state secrets. It was not Lizzie Borden and her axe, hacking at women's underwear. The artist was right when he said Harold was an icon. If you know history you know why he was an icon, why Washington had been pictured like Jesus, beaming down on the city.

12. Imagine Gandhi in women's underwear. Imagine Jesus in women's underwear. Imagine Martin Luther King Jr.

13. I imagine the artist shooting arrows randomly, without taking careful aim. A man limps towards him. Oh, says the artist, I didn't know. I didn't imagine —

(Don't imagine three white bears. Don't imagine three white bears, don't imagine three white bears, sunning themselves by a cool blue sea.) □

S.L. Wisenberg's work in various genres appears in various publications (Chicago Times, Chicago Reader, The Progressive, Benchmark: Anthology of Contemporary Illinois Poetry). She teaches writing at The School of the Art Institute.

October 1988 | Illinois Issues | 31