Paint everyone equally or stop painting

Why This Art Is In Every Hair Salon by Nerdwriter (YouTube)

Near the end, he shows a matrix of Nagel’s artwork, showing 25 skinny white women and then says

“They give the impression of real people—chic, fashionable, independent people—but still leave enough space for you to place yourself in them. For salons, Nagel-women served as aspirational images, though it has to be said that these women, all being of one complexion, it’s likely they were only aspirational for a certain segment of the population. This speaks to the warped priorities of 1980s advertising—and the 80s in general—but that’s a topic for another video.”

What should Nagel have done instead? He was painting for a market. Even if that market would have wanted paintings of all sorts of complexions, is he a racist if he only paints white women? Is that the intimation? Does it matter what he likes to paint?

I never once drew a picture of a black woman growing up. Was I a racist child, then teenager? I drew a lot of women, none of them anything but white. I never drew an asian, nor black, not latina. Does that make me racist?

How much obligation does one have when creating artwork? Does it matter if you wouldn’t be able to sell it? Should you still have to create artwork that you neither want to create nor does anyone want to buy, just to be ethical and moral? What kind of logic is that?

And what if he had painted black women? Wouldn’t he have then been accused of commodifying them? Or trying to make them be slimmer than they naturally are? Or getting their hair wrong? Or culturally appropriating them somehow? Who does he think he is—a white man—drawing black women?

Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, it seems.