More about Portrait of Christopher D. Fisher, Fourth Reich Skinhead

Contributor

This disturbing visage of a skinhead looks like a literally skinned head, flesh peeled away to reveal a complicated, warped and dark stew of evil underneath.

This seems an apt portrayal of a white supremacist by an African American artist.

Fisher got his fifteen minutes of fame in the early nineties, when he was charged at age 20 with the attempted bombing of a southern California black Methodist church, as well as plotting to kill Rodney King. Fisher had also waged threats against Public Enemy, Louis Farrakhan, and the Rev. Al Sharpton that were taken by the FBI as less serious.

Williams’s portrait was featured in a 1995 show at the Detroit Institute of Arts called “Interventions,” where local artists were invited to--you guessed it--intervene with other works in the museum’s collection. Williams chose to hang this work in the Dutch galleries, referencing the ugly but little-discussed historic slave trade in the Netherlands.

The painting narrowly missed being sold to pay off Detroit’s crippling debts. In 2013 the city was $7 billion under water, and the recovery plan included a $500 million contribution from the Detroit Institute of the Arts (even if paintings had to be auctioned off). Luckily the DIA pulled off a feat of fundraising magic and raised over $800 mil. So, creepy old Christopher D. Fisher remains in the DIA’s collection to this day. He’s nearly always on view.

 

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