Mirth & Girth is a portrait painting by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) student David K. Nelson, Jr., depicting the popular late African-American mayor of Chicago Harold Washington wearing only a bra, G-string, garter belt and stockings. After a brief showing at a May 11, 1988 private student exhibition in the Art Institute, angry African-American aldermen, including Ald. Allan Streeter, Ald. Bobby Rush and Ald. Dorothy Tillman, arrived with Chicago Police Department officers and confiscated the painting, triggering a First Amendment and race relations crisis and a civil lawsuit.
Free speech advocates condemned the seizure of the painting, while the aldermen maintained that the painting was an insult to Washington and should have been taken down. Some students at the SAIC showed their support for free speech by holding rallies in front of the school and at the Richard J. Daley Plaza, while other students criticized Nelson for poor timing in showing a racially insensitive image.
At some point between when the painting was confiscated and when it was returned, a gash was made on the canvas. Nelson filed a federal lawsuit against the city, claiming that the painting's confiscation and subsequent damaging violated his First Amendment rights. He and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) settled with the city for $95,000 (1994; ) in compensation for the damaged painting after the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the lower court's decision.
Background
Harold Washington
Harold Washington, the subject of the portrait, was elected in 1965 to the Illinois House of Representatives. Washington won Chicago's 1983 Democratic mayoral primary election, defeating Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley. He was then elected mayor, prevailing over Bernard Epton in a racially polarizing general election. His first four-year term was characterized by the Council Wars, a period of political conflict with the mostly white aldermanic majority in City Council. Seven Washington-backed aldermanic challengers prevailed in the April, 1986 special municipal election, facilitating progress with Washington's agenda. Washington died suddenly of a heart attack in his office. His death was followed by a period of mourning by Chicagoans, particularly in the African-American community.
Creation of painting Shortly after Washington's death, Nelson (who is white) painted Mirth & Girth, a "full-length frontal portrait of a portly grim-faced Harold Washington clad in a white bra and G-string, garter belt, and stockings". The painting was approximately tall by wide. In the portrait, Washington is holding a pencil in his right hand. His aide, Alton Miller, initially mistook Washington's slumping over his desk as an attempt to pick up a pencil that had fallen onto the floor. The title of the piece is presumably derived from Girth & Mirth, an organization for overweight gay men.
In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Nelson stated that he had painted Mirth & Girth over the course of one night, standing in his underwear. He said that he had painted it in response to how the city populace revered Washington shortly after his death. Nelson stated, "(i)n Chicago, at this time, Harold Washington is like an icon. He's like a deity." In particular, Nelson painted the portrait after seeing prints of "Worry Ye Not", another poster that depicted a smiling Washington with a blue-robe adorned Jesus Christ, looking down on the Chicago skyline. Nelson later testified that he had based the iconoclastic elements of the painting on a rumor that doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital had discovered female underwear beneath the suit Washington was wearing at the time of his death.Nelson v. Streeter , 16 F.3d 145 (7th Cir. 1994). Three weeks after the controversy erupted, in an interview with the New Art Examiner, Nelson explained that the portrait referenced an existing photograph of Washington holding a cigarette prop at an American Cancer Society event.
The caricature was not Nelson's first. He had drawn a portrait of his mother as Whistler's Mother for Mother's Day. Nelson had also drawn a caricature of his father as the model depicted on boxes of Cream of Wheat. Nelson explained, "(t)his kind of irreverence and iconoclasm runs through all my artwork". In an April Fools' Day edition of a Weekly World News parody produced by Nelson, he illustrated SAIC president Anthony Jones as an infant in the arms of a bare-breasted Madonna.
Display and confiscation
Initial display On May 11, 1988, Mirth & Girth was displayed at a private exhibition in one of the school's main interior hallways. The painting was part of a set of six that Nelson was displaying in a judged three-day student fellowship exhibition held to showcase upcoming graduates. Another of his works was a self-portrait titled "I'm Sensitive, and I Love All Humanity", depicting Nelson holding little people of multiple nationalities. As soon as the exhibit opened, between 7:30 and 8:30 am, the painting drew enough negative attention for the Art Institute to post a security guard in front of the painting. Shortly thereafter, the school began to receive angry phone calls about the painting.
Soon after the exhibit opened, word of the controversy reached the Chicago City Council, which was in session. Alderman Bobby Rush (then of the 2nd ward) immediately put together a resolution that would cut off the city's contribution to the Art Institute unless it apologized for displaying the painting. In part, the resolution read "Whereas, the artist David Nelson obviously exhibits some type of demented and pathological mental capacities ...". Another resolution was written that asked the Art Institute to remove the painting immediately. After passing both items, a group of aldermen left to deliver the resolutions to the Art Institute.
Nelson returned to the painting about an hour after it was first displayed. He had forgotten a hammer and nails to hang the painting, and had left it leaning against the wall for an hour. Shortly after he returned, city aldermen, police officers and local reporters arrived at the scene, leading to a dramatic confrontation between aldermen and other students, while Nelson remained incognito nearby.
Confiscation Aldermen Edward Jones (20th) and William C. Henry (24th) were the first aldermen to arrive from the City Council session. According to the federal lawsuit, Henry showed he had a gun, and then with Jones removed the now-hung painting from the wall and placed it on the floor, facing the wall. After they left, another student rehung the painting. Three other aldermen, Allan Streeter (17th), Dorothy Tillman (3rd) and Rush, arrived later. They took down the painting and attempted to remove it from the school, but were stopped by a school official. The aldermen then took the painting to the office of the school president Anthony Jones (no relation to Edward Jones). The painting had a gash, and it had been wrapped in brown paper.
Alderman Tillman threatened to burn the painting in President Jones' office, but a Chicago Police Department (CPD) lieutenant present with the aldermen, Lt. Raymond Patterson, advised against this. Instead, another unnamed alderman called CPD superintendent Leroy Martin. Martin telephoned Patterson in Jones' office and ordered Patterson to take the painting into police custody, telling Jones that the painting amounted to "incitement to riot". Patterson overrode this direct order, citing his own powers as the lieutenant on the scene and hung up on Martin. A CPD sergeant accompanied Rush, Streeter and Tillman to a waiting police car with the wrapped painting in hand. Parts of the incident were later broadcast on television.
The incident was marked by a volatile shouting match between the aldermen and students, and met with condemnation from free-speech advocates. As the aldermen escorted the painting to the police vehicle, a mass of students outside of the Art Institute jeered them, naming the aldermen "commies", "fascists", "brownshirts" and "philistines". Seventeen bomb threats were recorded at the school after the controversy erupted.
Responses
African-American community Shortly after the incident, a black alderman told reporters that he believed the painting was the work of a Jewish artist. Nelson replied through a Chicago Tribune story that he "is not Jewish". The remark was made in part because racial tensions had already been elevated a week earlier after the firing of Steve Cokely, a mayoral aide, by African-American mayor and Harold Washington's successor Eugene Sawyer. Cokely had accused Jews of "engaging in an international conspiracy for world control". His firing caused a rift in segments of the black community, leading some to believe that Sawyer was also involved in the same conspiracy.
In a New York Times article published on May 13, 1988, Alderman Streeter reiterated his stance regarding the removal of the painting, saying that he would have "gone to jail to get that painting down", calling it "an insult to a great man and an affront to blacks". On May 16, 1988, Streeter appeared on the local public television station news program Chicago Tonight. He reinforced that Nelson had abdicated his "responsibility to his constituency" to "do what is right". In the segment, he reaffirmed that he believed the aldermen had "a law, the law of common sense, the law of morality, the law of decency [that] transcends the First Amendment". Operation PUSH, an organization that pursues social justice and civil rights, threatened to impose "sanctions" on the Art Institute unless the Art Institute acted to prevent offensive portraits from being shown by students or contributing artists in the future. Separately, the Illinois Alliance of Black Student Organizations called for racial parity with regards to faculty and student enrollment within the school. African-American students alleged that there was an underlying attitude of racism at the school, while other black students distributed a flyer listing incidents of theft and advice given to foreign students about socializing with blacks. By contrast, another white graduate noted that school officials looked at students' slides and paintings without knowing the race of the student. The school noted that 236 of its 1,312 undergraduate students were minorities, a higher percentage than comparable private professional art schools.
On February 12, 1994, during a rally to raise money for the defendants' mounting legal bills, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan supported the three aldermen's right to seize the painting, calling it "an act of righteous indignation". Farrakhan referred to Washington as "a father figure for black people", and described the painting and subsequent lawsuit "a total disrespect for our feelings and our community".
Free speech advocates
On May 12, 1988, representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) picked up the painting and returned it to Nelson. Jay Miller, another representative for the ACLU, described the incident as "vigilante stuff", noting that the action "was done in the name of one of the great civil libertarians of our time. Harold Washington had a 100 percent voting record in Congress and in the state Legislature on issues of civil liberties and civil rights." In 1984 Washington had supported the civil rights of sculptor John Sefick after Sefick had created a satirical statue of Washington. By comparison, former mayor Michael Bilandic had ordered a Sefick statue satirizing his handling of Chicago's crippling Blizzard of 1979 covered by a blanket, a decision that was later overturned in federal court.