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Botero on Abu Ghraib
From an online slideshow accompanying an AP story (thanks to bill): "Colombian painter Fernando Botero poses with some of his new paintings depicting the horrors of U.S. guards' abuse of captives at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, Monday April 11, 2005 in Paris, France. Botero says he became so upset that he felt compelled to produce works showing his trademark chubby characters naked and being blooded by Americans. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)"
Man, I didn't know Botero was still alive, but good for him. We can't paint pictures like this in America--artist Guy Colwell did it and his dealer got punched in the face. In fact, Americans don't care about this issue, except that they generally support torture. Abu Ghraib should have been the event that ended Bush's tour of the White House. Instead he got re-elected. I've pondered on this a lot, and come to the conclusion that I share this country with an inordinate number of racist redneck murderers. Troll repellent: "Of course the 9/11 attacks in the US were unspeakable, but those were not caused by Iraqis, therefore Iraqis did not need to be killed or tortured."
Report from the Slo-o-o-o-o-ow Dimension
Here's why I don't go to openings much these days in that so, so slowed down, meditative realm of ancient medieval stone carvers we call the art world. This is New York City we're talking about, as opposed to some monastery on a remote island in the Mediterranean. In the 12th Century AD. Dialogue of actual conversations from the last month reported more or less verbatim. The artists are from my everyday peer group, as opposed to Current Huge Market Entities sheltered from the world by handlers or whatever. Art Opening One:
Artist 1: "So what are you up to these days? Haven't seen you in a while."Art Opening Two:
Moody: "Oh, making work, and I spend a fair amount of time on a blog I'm doing."
Artist 1: "Oh, I didn't know about that. I'll have to check it out."
Artist 2: "How long have you been doing it?"
Moody: "Four years."
Artist 2: "Wow, that's a long time."
Moody: "Yes it is." (Long pause.) "In fact, [Artist 1], I wrote about your work on it. And posted a photo, and put up a link to the gallery where you showed. It was some really perceptive commentary, ha ha."
Artist 1: "You did? When was that?"
Moody: "About two years ago."
Artist 1: "Wow, no one told me about that. I'll have to check it out."
Artist 3, introducing Moody to Artist 4: "[Artist 4], this is Tom. He makes work, and has a blog. (Pause) He mentioned you on it."I just have to add, it's really tough to be bouncing around cyberspace at the speed of thought, looking at great work and having conversations about it with people all over the world, and then have to enter the slow slow decelerated zone of meditative contemplation where the inhabitants either don't use the Internet or pretend not to. I mean, yuck. The point of this post is not to whine about being underexposed but rather to bitch--again--that from my limited experience great tools are not being used in a field that would benefit enormously from them. And yes, it's possible that both these artists use google and know exactly what's been said about them online, and are really good poker players, but how productive is that? Sorry to explain away my joke but I want to be clear on these points.
Moody: "Yes, I posted a photo of you performing. You looked great in it, of course."
Artist 4: "And you didn't email and tell me about it?"
Moody: "I figured everyone googles and it would come up that way."
Artist 4 looks at feet.
Vermeer lives: Home Life, by Andrew Coulter Enright. Full size image can be found on his weblog.
Enright also asks an interesting question about the High Line, the elevated rail line in Chelsea slated to be renovated as a public park: how is it going to integrated with the rail yards that are the proposed West Side Stadium location? From maps he posts on his site, the two properties overlap significantly on the High Line's north end. The stadium developers will no doubt love having to delicately build around the old rail structure. ("Whoops! We accidently compromised some load bearing girders with a backhoe! Damn, now we'll have to tear the rest down!") I'm sure it's all being taken into consideration, though, given Mayor Bloomberg's concern for environmental factors in that part of the city.