Is This Painting Offensive? Student Art Showing Cops As Animals Draws Criticism From Republicans

It all began with a simple government art contest months ago. Now, a student painting is at the center of a national controversy touching on free speech, attitudes toward police, social justice and political outrage, dredging up arguments sparked in the wake of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

The painting, shown above, hung in a hallway of the Capitol for months, relatively undisturbed. Just before the end of 2016, Independent Journal Review, a right-wing viral news site, published a post on the painting titled "Painting of Cops as Pigs Hung Proudly in US Capitol."

On Thursday, Paul Ryan said on "The Mike Gallagher Show" of the painting: "This is disgusting, and it’s not befitting the Capitol.”

Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, told Patch Thursday that the painting will be taken down the following day.

The painting was selected from the Congressional Arts Competition, in which thousands of students submit works to be evaluated by independent judges and the winners' works are hung in the Capitol. The painting in question, named "Untitled #1," was created by David Pulphus, a high schooler at the time of the contest from Missouri.

Pulphus, a resident of the district including Ferguson, Missouri, painted the piece in the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, which drew attention to race relations and criticisms of police conduct in the subsequent months and years.

Readers of the IJR were outraged about the painting, and the story was picked up by TV news outlets, so lawmakers responded. First up was Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who was recent in the news for a controversy over his pet rabbit's airfare, who took the painting down last Friday.

Hunter returned the painting to the office of Rep. William Lacy Clay, a Democrat from Missouri.

Kasper, Hunter's spokesman, told Patch, "The Capitol is not a modern art museum and the painting clearly violates the competition rules."

He continued: "But this was far less about a painting and more about how the House—as an institution—shows its respect and appreciation for police officers that stand on the thin blue line every day, especially in light of recent, targeted cop killings. The painting can hang in a million other places, but it should not hang in the U.S. Capitol."

On Tuesday, Clay, joined with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, hung the painting back up, telling observers, "This is really not about a student art competition anymore. It's about defending the Constitution."

The back and forth continued, as Republican Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Brian Babin took the painting down again. Clay later had it put up again, again.

Even in the midst of a grandstanding turf war, Hunter tweeted out this picture, saying there was no animosity between him and Clay:

Still, the disagreements are real: Hunter dismissed Clay's appeal to the constitution.

Much of the opposition to the painting centers on the depiction of the cops as "pigs." "Pig" is a common derogatory term for police and thus stirs up intense feelings. For what it's worth — which may be quite little, depending on your point of view — the cops themselves in the painting appear to be wild boar, rather than pigs, which usually refers to the barnyard animal. However, the terms may be used interchangeably.

Art showing people as anthropomorphized animals has often been controversial. "Maus," a comic book by Art Spiegelman about the Holocaust which drew different national and ethnic groups as different kinds of animals, won both acclaim and criticism for its unique treatment of a deeply important topic.

In an op-ed in the St. Louis American defending the painting's place in the Capitol, Clay wrote of the artist: "His winning entry is a provocative, symbolic representation of the great anger, pain, frustration and deep deficit in trust for local law enforcement that many young African Americas feel in their hearts."

He continued: "The painting also reflects generations of struggle, sacrifice, abuse of power and tenuous relationships between minorities and a system of justice that still provides equal justice for some…but not for all."

Ultimately, it appears that the architect of the Capitol has the final say on whether the work stays or goes. Rep. Dave Reichert, a Republican from Washington, asked the architect to make a decision on the matter, according to The Hill.

Patch reached out to the architect for comment on this story but did not receive a response. This story will be updated with any reply.

Photo credit: Screenshot from USA Today YouTube video