{"id":486048,"date":"2026-10-05T19:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T19:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/486048\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T19:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T19:42:12","slug":"review-dread-scott-at-ybca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/486048\/","title":{"rendered":"Review : Dread Scott at YBCA"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1989, 24-year-old artist Dread Scott\u2019s \u201cWhat Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag\u201d invited guests to walk across Old Glory to write their answer to that question in a ledger. The provocative piece drew the ire of the sitting president George H.W. Bush. When Scott and other protestors later burned a flag at the U.S. Capital, their arrest eventually led to a Supreme Court ruling<\/a> that flag-burning is protected speech under the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Scott provides a deliberate callback to that work with \u201cDefending the Flag\u201d (2026), in which the stars and strips are hung on a proper pole, but anyone who steps near it is prevented from doing so by a retired military service member brandishing a prop rifle.<\/p>\n

The latter work isn\u2019t the chief focus of \u201cDread Scott: The Body Politic,\u201d currently running at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but it does provide an important context. Armed troops are willing \u2013 if not required \u2013 to die and kill for the flag, sacrificing their bodies and those of others. Yet, they rarely show the same reverence for the citizens whom the flag supposedly represents.<\/p>\n

The majority of \u201cThe Body Politic\u201d does indeed consist of images that reproduce likenesses of the human body. Upon entering the ground-level gallery where the show is installed, the first thing one notices is the wall-sized canvas piece \u201cLife\/Death\/America\u201d (2026). The powdered graphite-on-canvas piece used nearly 20 models, who rested their bodies on special paper before it dried. A diverse range of ages, genders, and body types can be made out in the finished images. The ghostly impression of bodies vaguely resembles crime scene chalk outlines after a mass-casualty event. Scott said during the show\u2019s press preview, the piece is deliberately evocative of Pompeii.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to focus on the strength and diversity of the body politick,\u201d he said. He elaborated that the recent years\u2019 onslaught of deaths \u2013 including from Covid, Israeli murders in Gaza, and even \u201cactive shooter\u201d events in the United States. \u2013 led him to emphasize how each of those bodies belongs to a living person no longer breathing. \u201cPeople are being disappeared!\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar to the wall-sized piece are three smaller 2023 works hanging on another wall. \u201cHands Up\u201d employs a similar ink-on-canvas technique for a piece reminiscent of the \u201cHands Up, Don\u2019t Shoot\u201d protests movement from an earlier decade. \u201cMug Shot,\u201d is a diptych, resembles classic police arrest photos, with one panel including a nameplate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFight the Power\u201d changes the raised palms of \u201cHands Up\u201d into closed fists, drawing a direct line from those victimized to those radicalized. What\u2019s more, it\u2019s impossible to ignore that all of the above images resemble Black subjects against white backdrops. Scott was never one for subtlety.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, it\u2019s interesting to see the additional works for which hindsight has given renewed relevance. On the wall opposite from \u201cHands Up,\u201d and others are three silkscreen-on-pigment print pieces from 2022. All three are part of Scott\u2019s \u201cObliterated Power\u201d series, with each piece named after the government building depicted in the original photograph: \u201cPentagon,\u201d \u201cSupreme Court,\u201d and \u201cCapital.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheDocumentation of Obliteratred Power (Supreme Court), a silkscreen over pigment print by Dread Scott<\/p>\n

\"ADocumentation of Obliteratred Power (Capitol), a silkscreen over pigment print by Dread Scott<\/p>\n

Each piece features and aerial photo of its respective building, with the named subject scribbled out in black marker, as if by a teenager crossing someone they dislike out of a photo. The pieces were first presented in 2022 long before DOGE eviscerated government agencies. The final piece of \u201cThe Body Politic\u201d is a sort of self-portrait of Scott himself. \u201cThe Fire Next Time\u201d employs the same body-print-on-canvas technique as the other pieces, with Scott\u2019s trademark dreadlocks instantly recognizable on a bare human skull. The body shape is imposed over a lightly-visible image of the U.S. flag as it burns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The body is clearly more visible, yet it\u2019s debatable whether it or the flag would be considered more valuable. After 37 years, Scott\u2019s work is no less incendiary than it was when he was an upstart. His approach is simple, but the reactions they provoke remain palpable.<\/p>\n

Just don\u2019t get too close to the flag. The guy with the rifle won\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

\u201cDread Scott: The Body Politic<\/a>\u201d runs through January 31, 2027 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1989, 24-year-old artist Dread Scott\u2019s \u201cWhat Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag\u201d invited guests…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2311,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-486048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-museums","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}