12 people were recently killed in a cowardly terrorist attack on the office of the French satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo". These are the cartoons of Muhammad / Mohammad / that supposedly caused the bombing.
Compared to works like "Piss Christ", or portraits of the Virgin Mary made of elephant manure, they're pretty tame.
Has it occurred to anyone else that the more tolerant of religious criticism a society becomes, the more religion tends to flourish there?
For instance, you can go to New York City and see a musical play where a copy of The Book Of Mormon gets shoved up a Mormon missionary's ass. The Mormon Church is flourishing in the USA.
Ditto for most other religions.
Go figure. Let's hope France responds with increased satire and liberty, and not with calls for censorship disguised as sensitivity.
Here's a Canadian writer lamenting the high sales tax in The Frozen Tundra, as compared to that of Hong Kong. (50 years ago, Hong Kong was a 3rd world slum, but was later set up to have the smallest government possible.)
“I did a little calculation yesterday,” says Stuart Iliffe, a Canadian working in Hong Kong as chief financial officer of publishing house PPP Co. Ltd.
“If I earned $100,000 [all figures Canadian unless noted] in Canada, after tax I would keep $54,000. If I earned $100,000 in Hong Kong, and made use of the married man’s tax allowance, I would keep $90,100.”“Hong Kong keeps it very simple. There’s no capital gains tax, there’s no dividend tax, there’s no tax on interest, and you are only taxed on income earned in Hong Kong – not overseas. The system here makes people more entrepreneurial. Maximum personal tax is 15 per cent, but there are lots of allowances to get it lower, and corporate tax is set at 16.5 per cent – so people are not spending half their time trying to avoid or evade. You have money in your pocket and you do things with it. You invest. You buy shares or you start second businesses,” he says.
Ayesha Lau, partner in charge of Hong Kong tax at KPMG China, broadly agrees with Mr. Iliffe, but takes the view that low and simple taxation is one among a number of factors that make the city competitive. “Others are the rule of law, respect for private property, freedom from corruption in the business environment, efficient government, the free flow of capital – we have no exchange controls – protection of intellectual property rights, and the strategic location as a SAR which is part of China,” she says.
“You need to be able to make a profit before you pay tax, so the entrepreneurial culture is not driven by tax alone.”
[The] per capita tax burden on City residents is the highest in Michigan. This tax burden is particularly severe because it is imposed on a population that has relatively low levels of per capita income.
The City’s income tax… is the highest in Michigan.
Detroit residents pay the highest total property tax rates (inclusive of property taxes paid to all overlapping jurisdictions; e.g., the City, the State, Wayne County) of those paid by residents of Michigan cities having a population over 50,000.
Detroit is the only city in Michigan that levies an excise tax on utility users (at a rate of 5%).
I've heard on the radio that they have the 3rd highest overall tax rates in the USA, but can't find documentation....but I did find this:
A study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy looked at effective property tax rates in the 50 largest U.S. cities in 2011. Detroit had the highest property tax rates of all 50 cities on homes, apartment buildings, commercial buildings, and industrial buildings.
What to make of all this?
Here's a picture of Hong Kong.
Here's a picture of Detroit.
The defense rests. Keep the thieves from taking the income of the producers, and you'll have a much better chance at prosperity.
Go here to purchase a coffee table book that documents the effects of letting Statists run your city for 3 generations. It's called "The Ruins Of Detroit". Incredible photography. Treats the bombed-out shell of a city like most artists would treat ancient Rome or Athens.
In which Bill Moyers gives Paul Krugman a nice, long, loving tongue-bath. Not for the faint of heart. Warning: toward the end of the video, both men praise the Depression era's WPA art projects.
I first saw some Performance Art during a high school trip to Quebec. We were going through a mega-shopping mall, and some seriously thin women and men, 7 or 8 of them, came marching down the middle of the mall. They were wearing incredibly tight black leather outfits, with a few red bows and ribbons stuck in unlikely places.
They were carrying two black poles, each one about 6 feet long.
They looked morbidly grim and serious. This woulda been about 1978, long before all the "Undertakers Of The Art World" started wearing black, while regretting that they couldn't find a darker color. We were just a gaggle of rednecks from Mississippi, and had never imagined art like this, much less seen it on display.
I asked a bystander something along the lines of "What the hell?" She didn't speak much English, but explained that these were artists, and that they were protesting against the British/Canadian government.
The "artists" grimly pivoted against the flow of traffic in the mall, lowered their poles, and required the shoppers to step or hop over them. The Canucks took it with good humor and hopped away. Eventually traffic backed up, and the artists in black raised their poles so that everyone could walk beneath them.
They occasionally lowered the poles to just a few inches over everyone's heads, lifting them quickly when a take-no-prisoners shopper approached who was in no mood for art. Or protests. Or whatever the hell this was.
After that they did some impressive stuff on the up and down escalators, leading me to believe that they'd done some practicing in the mall after hours. They went eventually went away as silently as they appeared, leaving a mall full of shoppers mildly perplexed for about 45 seconds. My French wasn't that good, but the general impression was...."what did that have to do with anything?"
Here's a cool pic of a performance artist covering a nekkid girl with liver and chocolate syrup. It doesn't mean anything.
My second exposure to Performance Art was in college. Some hippie chick did an interpretive dance while her boyfriend made a lot of noise with reel-to-reel loops, unlikely percussion instruments, and another guy sometimes shaved a gong with an electric razor. No idea what that was about, but it was an interesting distraction.
Here's Wikipedia's definition of Performance Art: A performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media; the performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.
Here's a better definition, one that I can take full credit for: Weird bullshit that serves as a distraction for the gullible members in the audience. The con artist/creator gains credibility when viewers actually wonder what the hell it means.
Here's a piece showing a guy kinda crucified on a Volkswagen. Probably supposed to make you think about the evils of Capitalism, but it's not about that. It's about being cool and pretending to be deep, meaningful and significant.
If you've paid attention to the news for the last month, you've been exposed to some Washington D.C. Performance Art about the "Fiscal Cliff". John Boehner and The Teleprompter Jesus have tied themselves to a ticking time bomb. If they don't come to an agreement about taxes and spending, the entire universe will blow up. Or something.
It doesn't matter. It's Kabuki Theatre. Performance Art. It's fun to watch them put on their black leather outfits, dance, and recite reverse Led Zepellin lyrics in front of a Solyndra Stockholders Powerpoint presentations, but it's meaningless. A fun distraction. They're doing what you've elected them to do.
Here's why this is all nothing but sound and fury and electric razors on gongs. This is from a recent Wall Street Journal essay by two Clinton administration economists. I hope you'll go here and read the whole thing. They lament that Uncle Sam doesn't have to keep books the way that a private business is required to. Uncle Sam doesn't have to show future liabilities.
All discussion of our 17 trillion dollar debt is based on rosier-than-likely scenarios. Because within my lifetime, the U.S. government is going to have to come up with 86 trillion dollars to cover the IOU's our elected "artists" have spread across the nation and the world. Here are the money quotes from the article:
When the accrued expenses of the government's entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the annual cash deficit.
Nothing like that $8 trillion amount is available for the IRS to target. According to the most recent tax data, all individuals filing tax returns in America and earning more than $66,193 per year have a total adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2006, when corporate taxable income peaked before the recession, all corporations in the U.S. had total income for tax purposes of $1.6 trillion. That comes to $6.7 trillion available to tax from these individuals and corporations under existing tax laws. In short, if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of these American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the year before the recession, it wouldn't be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities. Some public officials and pundits claim we can dig our way out through tax increases on upper-income earners, or even all taxpayers. In reality, that would amount to bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon.
In other words, they can tax the rich, the middle-class, the poor, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Wal-Mart, your Mama, Starbucks, and every other person, business and entity for 100% of their taxable income, and it won't even come close to closing the gap.
So when you turn on your TV and see Nancy Pelosi wearing a corset made of sardine bones, holding a velvet whip in one hand and reading the works of John Maynard Keynes from a pink iPhone held in the other, it's just Performance Art. There are no true spending cuts on the table, just reductions in future increases.
When some Republican hack goes on Fox News via a video montage of his baby pictures, the Pakistan war dead, and a collage of tax rate charts, all to justify his violation of the Grover Norquist pledge, it's just Performance Art. It doesn't matter.
Eat, drink, and be merry. And do it in black leather. Or put on a Yoko Ono CD and dip your head in blue wax. Whatever you think will make an appropriate statement.
I'm probably going to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth for the first time this weekend. (I've made dozens of trips to the Kimball and Amon Carter already.)
1963 Dan Flavin American, 1933-1996 Warm white fluorescent light, edition 2/3 96 inches
Although Dan Flavin is invariably described as one of the patriarchs of Minimalist sculpture—along with his colleagues Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, and Robert Morris—he has generally rejected the appellation "Minimalist" and even the term "sculpture" as too confining a designation, often pointing out that his works are ephemeral, temporary, and installed in relation to given architectural conditions. Flavin began making his signature works of industrially prefabricated fluorescent tubes and fixtures in 1963. Emanating different colors of light, Flavin's installations have an indeterminate volume and appear virtually without mass, and it is true that their ethereal presence remains distinct from the emphatic physicality of most Minimalist sculpture. A more rigorous connection can be seen with Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades, which offer an important precedent for Flavin's off-the-shelf materials and his reliance on the common, found object. Like Duchamp, Flavin considered his works to be "proposals" rather than sculptures, part of a system of investigations rather than static objects.
Diagonal of May 25, 1963, 1963 is one of Flavin's first and most important investigations into the formal possibilities of using standard fluorescent light fixtures in commercially available colors. The image of the diagonal was a critical early theme executed by the artist, in series and according to simple mathematical configurations. Flavin made a number of diagonal "proposals" in different colors, alternating their angles from right to left. Flavin executed the first diagonal in gold light, subsequently making diagonals in green, yellow, and red. The Museum's Diagonal of May 25, 1963 may be the most conceptually and formally pure work in the series: pure white, ultraviolet light.
In his 1965 essay "'...in daylight or cool white.' an autobiographical sketch," Flavin refers to the Diagonal of May 25, 1963 as a "diagonal of personal ecstasy" describing its "forty-five degrees above horizontal" position as one of "dynamic equilibrium." The artist envisioned the diagonal as a contemporary symbol that "in the possible extent of its dissemination as a common strip of light or a shimmering slice across anybody's wall, had the potential for becoming a modern technological fetish."(1)
– Michael Auping
(1) Dan Flavin, "'...in daylight or cool white.' an autobiographical sketch," Artforum 4 (December 1965): 20–24.
********
Which do you think took longer? Going to a hardware store and buying an 8-foot flourescent light fixture, or writing the excess verbiage posted above?
For an explanation of this, check out Tom Wolfe's mini-masterpiece "The Painted Word".
A couple of days ago, I went to the Dallas Museum Of Art. They have some great stuff in there.
I also got a chance to check out the Nasher Sculpture Center for the first time. It was incredible. (I used to run the Jukt Micronics metal shop. Many of the artists that Mr. Nasher purchased had some serious metalworking chops. A few of them did welds that looked like birdshit on a wire, but most of us can overlook that.)
And then there was the Dallas Museum Of Art's exhibit called "Variations on Theme: Contemporary Art 1950s–Present" Much of the art in that particular display was pretentious junk. Give a relatively talented 8th-grader plenty of time and materials, turn her loose, and tell her to start painting/building/stuffing and protesting. Mix her output with that of the Modern Masters on display at the DMOA, and I would defy any layman to distinguish the 8th-graders stuff from that of, say, Mark Rothko.
But here's why you should go see that exhibit. The descriptions on the wall beside each painting are freakin' hilarious. (To learn more about the descriptions and manifestos and stances and alliances that are now so critical to your enjoyment of contemporary art, check out Tom Wolfe's brilliant The Painted Word. It is not a satire. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll go to the DMOA to see what he was talking about.)
This piece was my favorite. It's by Gerhard Richter, who Wikipedia claims is now the top-selling living artist.
Here's the description:
The text, just in case you can't read the pic, is as follows:
Gerhard Richter German, born 1932 Mirror, 2008
Mirror glass
Lay family acquisition fund, 2010
This piece, which is a fully functional mirror, questions the nature of representation, a central concern of Gerhard Richter in his long career as an artist.
Shit, people, it's a fully functional mirror !! The sumbitch works !!!! And not only does it work, it questions the nature of that which it represents. YOU can look at it this mirror at the DMOA for only $14.00
Playing with the notion of what is an accurate depiction of reality, it simply and literally reflects what is in front of it, whether museum visitors or other works of art.
Much like the ones for sale at Home Depot.
The ubiquitous mirror is at once a common, everyday material and a mysterious object, invested with mythic capabilities and allusions, capturing a moment in both time and space.
It is almost impossible to pass a mirror without looking; it demands our attention, and thus, our time.
Here's the real thing, which rivals the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Mona Lisa, and maybe even those paintings of dogs playing poker. It looks a lot better when other people are taking the picture.
By the way, I impovised some bullshit of my own when I transcribed the text that describes this mirror. I bet you didn't catch it, did you? None of it matters. It's just buzzwords piled on catch-phrases dumped in with jargon. And lots of "juxtaposition". Everywhere I looked, there was "juxtaposition".
One word of warning. I don't know much about Richter's work, but I think that this might not be the original Richter mirror. After a close examination, I think this might be a clever fogery done by another artist. Something about the style seems off, and the technique is less polished. Is there anyone in the DFW area who could examine this piece and make a determination?
This next bit o' commentary was in a different exhibition. They're impressed that this Japanese dude constructed two different J.C. Penney clothing pedestals that are filled with identical amounts of water. I think.
Here are the pieces in question. I swear to God I think that we used to stack books on these at Barnes And Noble, but they didn't have identical amounts of water in them back then. (The piece on the wall was actually kinda cool, but didn't have water in it.)
Anyway, I had a fun day off in the Dallas Museum District. Seriously, check out the other stuff at the DMOA, and be sure to take in the Nasher Sculpture Center.
I'm just guessing, but I bet McNaughton's paintings appeal to the same folks who like those paintings of golf courses with verses from The Psalms written on the mat below the canvas.
Here's McNaughton's latest, titled The Empowered Man:
You can go here for the artist's interpretation of the work, or you can read mine, which was produced by something called "Pixmaven", the instarnt art critique phrase generator.
In the center, the view sees a young man from the 99%. He's holding a copy of the "restored" constitution in one hand and a wad of cash in the other. There is an obvious correlation here, with regard to the issue of content, the subaqueous qualities of the spatial relationships brings within the realm of discourse the exploration of montage elements.
A random selection of presidents are shown applauding on the left side of the painting. Libertarian viewers might be perplexed by the applause coming from Reagan and Lincoln, as Reagan spent money like a crack whore on parole and got into some nasty stuff with Iran/Contra. Lincolndid what he had to do, but a lot of it wasn't constitutional. I find this work menacing and/or playful because of the way the reductive quality of the ironic motifs which spatially undermine the accessibility of the work.
The president on his knees in prayer is none other than James Madison, father of the constitution, but also the guy who once said "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." What was McNaughton up to here? With regard to the issue of content, the aura of the spatial relationships visually and conceptually activates the exploration of montage elements. This is obvious once you think about it with an open mind. Thank you, Pixmaven, for the analysis.
To the right of the painting we see the bad presidents. How do we know they're bad? Because they're afraid or sad. From left to right (a colonial construct, but it helps) we see: LBJ, Bush the Younger, The Teleprompter Jesus, Clinton, Wilson, and FDR standing without a wheelchair. Obama's fear of the Constitution, his defensive posture, and avoidance gestures are an obvious homage to the neglected classic Nosferatu Looking At A Cross (Norman Rockwell, 1958).
In summary: Although I am not a painter, I think that the aura of the purity of line notates the distinctive formal juxtapositions.
With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive perturbation of the sexual signifier contextualize a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90s.
As an advocate of the consumerist aesthetic, the remarkable handling of light in this piece recreates the post-colonial tensions often found in the sexist/fascist/extremist paradigm.
Roy Moore said about 2 a.m. Wednesday that even though he had not been declared the winner of the Republican primary for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court that he expected to win without a runoff.
“Statistically, there is just no way we’re going to have a runoff in this race,” the former chief justice said to reporters just before leaving his election night headquarters.
Moore, the former chief justice who was removed from office refusing a federal judge’s order, said about two hours earlier that, with him well ahead of his two competitors in the Republican primary, “the people have spoken.”
Moore was eventually removed from office during his previous judgeship because he wouldn't remove his Ten Commandments statue from his courtroom. Later on he built this large statue of the Ten Commandments and had it placed in the courthouse yard.
The man does love his statues. You could safely call him the Raymond Nasher of Montgomery, if not all of Etowah County.
Moore is well known for two legal fights over the 10 Commandments.
As a judge in Etowah County, he placed a small plaque with the commandments in his courtroom. The American Civil Liberties Union sued unsuccessfully to try to have the plaque removed.
As chief justice, Moore had a more than two-ton granite monument that included the 10 Commandments placed in the rotunda of the state’s judicial building. Several organizations including the ACLU sued over the monument and a federal judge ordered Moore to remove it. Believing the order was illegal, Moore refused and was removed from office.
As a devout, foot-washing, snake-handling Libertarian, I should be objecting to Moore's statue of the Ten Commandments because of separation of church and state. Yeah, I shouldn't support my courthouses being decorated with statues of The Big Ten, scrolls from the Torah, plaques from the Kabbalah, needlepoint samplers from the Koran, or paint-by-numbers quotes from the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Bless His Noodly Appendage).
But I have to object to Moore's statue on theological grounds.
Here's why. Here's Commandment number three in its entirety:
Exodus 20:4....Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Moore's statue doesn't feature the entire verse. (It's kind of wordy, and would take too long to chisel.)
With his 10 Commandments statue, Judge Roy Moore has created a graven image of a law that outlaws all graven images. We aren't supposed to create any likenesses of any thing on heaven, earth, or in the water.
Read it again, folks.
Exodus 20:4....Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Commandment #3, which Moses supposedly brought down from the mountain, outlaws statues, paintings, pencil sketches, needlepoint samplers, that old photo of your grandparents, carvings of Christ on the cross, Michelangelo's Pieta, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, your senior portrait, your baby pictures, half of the internet, most stained glass windows, all art that isn't totally abstract, and the cover of Roy Moore's book.
I repeat: This crazed Alabama Republican has made a statue of a set of laws that outlaw statues.
I don't care who you are, that's funny.
Ordinarily I would link to the sources for all of these pictures graven images, but I don't want to spread sin.
A $600,000 frog sculpture that lights up, gurgles "sounds of nature" and carries a 10-foot fairy girl on its back could soon be greeting Defense Department employees who plan to start working at the $700 million Mark Center in Alexandria, Va. this fall. That is unless a new controversy over the price tag of the public art doesn't torpedo the idea.
Decried as wasteful spending that will be seen by just a couple thousand of daily workers who arrive on bus shuttles, foes have tried to delay the decision, expected tomorrow, April 1. But in an E-mail, an Army Corps of Engineers official said that the decision can't be held up because it would impact completion of the huge project.
The City of Alexandria just announced that there are four works of art being considered and that a final decision needs to be made fast. The artwork was put on display for public comment from March 24 to today. The Alexandria News first reported the hasty announcement to decide a winner.
....The four art proposals for the bus terminal include works for a wall and sculpture. But the one drawing most attention is the fairy and frog from artist Cheryl Foster. Her proposals describes the sculpture this way: "A 10-foot fairy, using an American Toad as 'transportation,' scurries to the entrance of the station. The interior of the toad is illuminated and the sounds of nature emanate from his throat." She said that nature inspired her.
While there are Philistines among us who would complain about a $600,000.00 statue of a fairy riding a toad, we must first ask ourselves "How do you really put a price on something like this? C'mon people, it lights up and sounds of nature emanates from the frog's throat !!"
The Republican Party should be featured in the background of this thing. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi Axis Of Incompetence didn't get us downgraded by acting alone.
If you have ever doubted whether businesses LOVE being regulated by friends in government, doubt no more. If you're lucky enough to have Uncle Sam keeping out competitors, you are very fortunate indeed. So who is now fighting against going out into the cold, cruel world of the unregulated marketplace, a marketplace that sometimes wears plaid slacks with a patterned shirt? Interior designers. And they don't like it one bit.
Tears and cheers have punctuated hours of testimony as licensed interior designers warn lawmakers that lives will be lost to flammable fabrics and paints if they don't keep regulation of the profession in place.
"Buildings do not burn. Interiors do," Gail Griffin, a professor at Miami Dade College's School of Architecture and Interior Design, told the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
She scolded the (budget cutting) panel for their ignorance.
"Do you know the color schemes that affect your salivation, your autonomic nervous system?" she said. "You don't even have correct seating. And somebody chose that for you."
Yes, your autonomic nervous system could send you into a state of mis-matched shock, and cause you to lose your salvation. And if you were to ascend to heaven to take your place at the right hand of The Father, it could happen again because God doesn't have a liscenced interior designer in charge of his seating arrangements.
The thinking is that getting rid of regulations will save business owners money on fees and make it easier for new people to set up shop. It's part of the end-job-killing-regulations mantra from Republicans.
But no deregulation proposal has generated more controversy in Florida than the one targeting interior design.
....Unlicensed designers argue that regulations stifle competition and keep the industry in the hands of a greedy cartel.
Pat Levenson of Lake Worth said she wanted to be an interior designer her whole life and returned to school to earn a degree in the field.
"I had no idea that Florida required a government license just to call yourself an interior designer," she said. "I came to realize that the licensing scheme had nothing to do with protecting the public and everything to do with protecting the industry and designers from fair competition from people like me."
Florida is one of only three states that requires a license to practice commercial interior design. Currently, 4,203 individuals and businesses hold such licenses. Getting one requires six years of education and experience, passing a national exam, a $30 application fee and biennial $125 licensing fee.
High-powered lobbyists have been hired on both sides, but the appeals of licensed designers appear to be gaining traction.
Several representatives, including two Republicans, have said they want designers out of the proposal.
Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, said he has been surprised by the intense passion and it has convinced him the profession needs to remain regulated.
"Interior design is more than just selecting a color and a piece of furniture," he said.
Saying that the profession needs to remain regulated is another way of saying that Darryl Rousen has been bought and paid for. Regulation, like interior design, is more than just creating rules. It's about keeping out competitors.
"It's knowing the psychological impact of carpeting, and how carpeting affects the work environment and the living environment. There's something to be said when you walk into a doctor's office and the environment puts you at ease in your moment of illness and discomfort. It's not fun when people get sick because of selection," Rouson said.
Yeah. One time I went to the doctor with a cold, and the doctor had a Thomas Kincaide (Painter Of Light) picture in the waiting room. My fever went through the roof.
Edward Nagorsky, director of legislative affairs for the National Kitchen and Bath Association, said those concerns are unfounded.
"They make it sound like it's so difficult, it's so complicated and it takes years of experience. It doesn't," he said, noting retailers sell products specifically designed for commercial spaces.
"It's a cartel because these licensed designers are fighting for regulations to keep other people from entering the field," Nagorsky said.
The next stop for the bill is the House floor, which one expects is covered in flame-resistant carpet.
The pics of bad interior design came from here. I'm willing to bet that the designs were created by a licensed pro.
Welcome to the first annual "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" event. Ever since the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who dared to make a movie critical of Islam, ever since the death threats against Mohammed-drawing Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, which have led to his forced retirement, and ever since the censoring of Muhammad-drawing Matt Stone and Trey Parker (of South Park fame) by the craven execs at Comedy Central, well, something had to be done.
The idea behind it? Solidarity. Plus, if everybody draws Mohammed, they probably won't kill us all.
Well, the only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Here's my pic. It's a fairly reverent depiction of Mohammed's trip to Jerusalem, the trip he made on the back of a flying horse that had the face of an angel.
Attacking iconoclasts (meant here in its literal meaning) has been a constant throughout human history. It's one of the great dividing lines, like laughter and face-to-face copulation, that separates man from beast. Indeed, I'm betting it was a fundamental element of even pre-human history. Can we doubt seriously that some gang of Neanderthals didn't crush the skulls of others who decorated cave walls in "offensive" ways? In the 20th and 21st centuries alone, all sorts of human expression have led to brutality and murder. The ground of Europe and Asia and all the continents with the (possible) exception of Antarctica is fertilized with the blood and bones of martyrs who have done nothing more than make tangible their thoughts in words, music, and pictures. Yet even in a country like ours that threatens consenting adults for making dirty movies with effective life sentences, or in European countries where speech codes imprison malefactors for "hate speech," there is a massive gulf between "mere" censorship and death threats, between the answering of "bad" speech not with more speech but with the blade, the bullet, or the bomb.
This amateurish image was created by Islamic imams and depicts Mohammed as a pedophile. They have defiled their own tradition. There comes a point in any society's existence where it must ultimately, to paraphrase Martin Luther (who himself was more than happy to see opponents put to death), dig in its heels and say here we stand, we will do no other. We don't need to be perfectly consistent philosophically or historically or theologically to assert what is special and unique not just about the United States, with its bizarre and wonderful articulation of the First Amendment, but the greater classical liberal project comprising not just the "West" (whatever that is) but human beings in whatever town, country, or planet they inhabit. And at the heart of the liberal project is ultimately a recognition that individuals, for no other reason than that they exist, have rights to continue to exist. Embedded in all that is the right to expression. No one has a right to an audience or even to a sympathetic hearing, much less an engaged audience. But no one should be beaten or killed or imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or praying to one god as opposed to the other or none at all or getting on with the small business of living their life in peaceful fashion. If we cannot or will not defend that principle with a full throat, then we deserve to choke on whatever jihadists of all stripes can force down our throats.
This is not about U.S. foreign policy, or trade policy, or aid to Israel or Egypt, or the creation of a Palestinian homeland. This is about the right to have the conversations that might inform all that and more. We live in a time of paradox: Never before have so many been so empowered to speak their own minds, to produce and consume whatever form of expression when they want, where they want. The impact on those seeking to regulate and control thought is as predictable as it is depressing and, ultimately, ineffective: Whether they are governments or corporations or religious or ideological groups, they want to stamp out the ability of people to say and think for themselves.
Our Draw Mohammed contest is not a frivolous exercise of hip, ironic, hoolarious sacrilege toward a minority religion in the United States (though even that deserves all the protection that the most serioso political commentary commands). It's a defense of what is at the core of a society that is painfully incompetent at delivering on its promise of freedom, tolerance, and equal rights. It's a rebuttal to the notion that we should go limp in the clinches precisely because bullies and bastards can punch or blow us up.
As you may have heard, The National Endowment For The Arts has been playing footsie with The White House Office Of Public Engagement to get sculptors, composers, producers, taste-makers, fashion victims, composers, the black-wearing undertakers of the art world, and all-around trendoids to start producing art to promote the agenda of The Teleprompter Jesus. Some "60 Minutes" wannabe got the whole conference call on tape. Dang it.
This conference call violated numerous lobbying laws but it was for a good cause, which is supposed to make everything ok.
Here are some of my favorite examples of government encouraging artists to create for the greater good: Unfortunately, the NEA's director of communications has now been publicly beheaded, his head paraded around the walls of Washington on a pike, and his other remains are now hanging in chains outside the city gates as a warning not to ever ever ever do anything like this again. Not when tape recorders are running, anyway.
What irks me is that my own art on these topics won't get the wide audience it deserves. Yes, I was contacted by the NEA to produce new Obamamedia. It's a shame to work and work and work on art, and then see the taxpayer funding disappear due to silly, outdated, separation of Me and Your Wallet laws.
I worked long and hard to produce propaganda artwork based on all five of the agenda items the White House wanted. Instead of being displayed in galleries around the world, they'll have to be posted here.
This is the piece I've worked on the longest, and it's intended to promote the President's Education agenda. Remember the "Fun With Dick And Jane" readers you may have used in the first grade? To promote the decline of reading, and to encourage our public schools to produce even more unfortunate illiterate students for the "Victim" voting block, I painted a series of Dick And Jane books that didn't have any text, only pictures. The ability to read, of course, is an elitist notion, and should be discouraged by The State, since literacy leads to critical thinking.
Here's one of the best in the Dick and Jane series. I call it "Untitled". Easy to read, isn't it?
Ever since I got my first batch of Play-Do, I've been interested in sculpture. To help the President with his Community Renewal agenda, I constructed a miniature replica of the neighborhood where Obama once spent lots and lots of money and hired lots and lots of helpers while working as a Community Organizer. Like Washington D.C., like the Deep South prior to the 1970's, and like other regions where the Mommy Party had a lock on things for way too long, the place is a shithole. I had a hard time making it look horrible enough. Therefore, I used non-traditional materials for this piece. The results are spectacular, but shouldn't be viewed on a warm day.
The Safety And Security piece was more challenging. It's an homage to Fredrik Reuterswärd's sculpture "The Knotted Gun". To celebrate our Victim Disarmament Laws, and to celebrate the reach of our Nanny State, I've reproduced "The Knotted Gun" in Jello.
The original statue is made of metal, and could fall over and possibly harm someone. Jello is much safer for The Children ® . Plus, the components are totally disassembled, with a permanent trigger lock. Look what similar policies have done for the crime rate in D.C. ! !
The most controversial work is my performance art piece that promotes Obama's Health Care agenda. Instead of a program, the theatre-goers are handed a bill for their percentage of the national debt. The curtain parts to reveal a contortionist who asks that everyone pass their bills to the wealthiest person in the room. This wealthy audience member, in every performance to date, quickly leaves in a huff - taking his business to either China or Mexico.
The contortionist (via a series of slides projected onto the back curtain) examines the solvency of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the track records of various government departments. A Clunker is brought onstage and destroyed. Kids from the Children's Theatre Program, dressed as soldiers, start a war with the theatre next door (this helps the economy and creates jobs). An assistant leads a large hog onstage, and assists the animal in raping The Statue Of Liberty while chanting "Something For Nothing, Something For Nothing".
To end the performance, the contortionists steps forward and says "But Obamacare will be different", and carries out this symbolic action:The Energy And Environment piece was difficult, but might be the most popular. It illustrates the obscene subsidies you're paying to ethanol farmers. Think of it the next time you're paying at the pump and see the "Contains up to 10% ethanol" sign.
Yes, ethanol production harms the environment. It causes 3rd world food riots. But it's organic, wholesome, and allows the most wealthy Americans to get more of your money. Its use is required by law. This piece is simply called "Ethanol".
Other artists created works in praise of Our Dear Leader and his agenda. I don't know who came up with this one, but it was taught to and performed by some public school kids in New Jersey. I bet Kim Jong-il is envious.....
If you feel that my artwork would complement your lifestyle, I am available for private commissions. For other examples of my art, I encourage you to visit my design proposal for the still unfunded Department Of Culture.
Dick and Jane painting came from here. Pics of Mr. Obama's neighborhood came from here. Article worth reading, BTW. The pic of The Knotted Gun came from here. The head in the nether regions pic came from here. The ethanol crop circles came from here.
I was unexpectedly sent out of town on Monday; hence the lack of posts.
Fortunately, the general "tone" of this site was elevated in my absence. On the previous post, NickM and Dr. Ralph and Tarrant Liberty Guy engaged in a spirited (yet polite and scholarly) debate on the merits of government-funded artwork. (Dr. Liz and the Lazy Slacker chimed in on other issues.)
In appreciation to everyone who read the whole thing, I'd like to offer up this desecration of a Thomas Kinkade painting. Compliments of Democratic Underground. For more of the same, click here. (If you're a Kinkade anti-fan, it's worth it !)
But now comes yet another cause du’jour that is both ludicrous and deathly dangerous all at the same time. From the editorial pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times has come the clarion call for an entire new Department of Government: a Department of Culture. Now, seeing what has happened to education since the creation of the Department of Education, or the state of Housing under the guidance of that august agency, I can understand those who are a bit nervous about a Department of Culture. And well they should be nervous, if not in a downright state of panic.
Bill, I think you need to relax.
I'll admit that governmental goofiness in the public schools is creating a plethora of private academies and an exodus to the suburbs. Government housing boondoggles have long been a corrupt landlord honeypot. V.A. Hospitals are the warm-up act for the medical care we'll get if [the President-elect] is true to his word on socialized medicine.
People seldom use the U.S. Mail for anything vital. The Department of Agriculture never met a millionaire farmer that it didn't abolutely adore.
But a cabinet level Department of Culture could be wonderful, IF they would allow me to design the facility in which it is housed.
I want to design the place, inside and out, as a living, breathing symbol of government involvement in our national culture.
I want to model the facility along the lines of Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project. I can't build an exact replica because the Cabrini-Green building won't sit still long enough to be properly imitated. That place has been morphing into various screwed-up shapes and sizes ever since the government realized they'd screwed up by building it in the first place. If you're not familiar with Cabrini-Green, here's Wikipedia:
Cabrini-Green is a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing development on Chicago's North Side.... At its height, Cabrini-Green was home to 15,000 people, living in mid- and high-rise apartment buildings. Over the years, gang violence and neglect created terrible conditions for the residents, and the name "Cabrini-Green" became synonymous with the problems associated with public housing in the United States.
My architectural homage to the Cabrini-Green facility will never be finished either, symbolizing the constant re-birthing of Art and Culture. A statue of a giant wrecking ball near the entrance would also symbolize constant employment for all my contractor donors and buddies, which is all that matters.
At the top of the steps leading to the Department of Culture (D.O.C.), I intend to place a duplicate of this truly godawful statue from the FDR memorial.
You might remember some controversy about this sculpture. FDR went to great lengths to conceal his partial paralysis from the public (only two photos of him in his wheelchair are known to exist). But various special interest groups lobbied for the wheelchair to be included in any and all sculptures of FDR. Like it or dislike it, the result would horrify FDR.
Two years ago, as the controversy over the monument was fomenting, David Roosevelt said the memorial should not be ''a vehicle for making a social statement.'' But as Mr. Clinton noted today, 16 of Roosevelt's grandchildren have now called for a more vivid depiction of his disability, as have former Presidents George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford.
Hence the cape around the (assumed) wheelchair on this particular statue at the memorial. Art by compromise. You gotta love it.
So if my Department is going to advocate "vivid depictions of disabilities", I want to have another statue in the rotunda of the D.O.C. to vividly depict the disabilities endured by Clinton, Bush, Carter and Ford.
After leaving the rotunda, visitors and employees will encounter the "Piss Christ" fountain, based on the government-rewarded artwork by American photographer Andres Serrano, which depicts a small plastic Christ On The Cross submerged in a glass of Serrano's urine. Serrano got $15,000.00 from the National Endowment for the Arts as a reward for producing this photo. The Piss Christ Fountain will be immediately behind the D.O.C. rotunda, eliminating the need for restrooms in that area, but slightly increasing the space required for the mop closet.
(Like many of you, I think $15,000.00 was too high of a price for a mere photograph. If Andres Serrano is going to have any more works funded by my D.O.C., he's going to have to fill the fountain first. The hard way. We'll provide him with plenty of water for, ummm, processing.)
As visitors leave the P.C. fountain, they will be drawn into the corridor of Lighght. Yes, Lighght.
"Lighght" is both the title and the complete text of a one-word poem by Aram Saroyan, for which Saroyan received $750 from the NEA, way back in 1970 when that was real money. But think about it. Lighght. Lighght.
So perfect.
That poem'll make you throw rocks at Shakespeare, The Psalms, or almost any limerick you can think of. Lighght. I'll have it on the walls. It'll be written on the floor. Lighght. Lighght.
In the midst of all the Lighght, I'll construct a small podium which will give two paragraphs of additional information about the Lighght poem. I don't have room to reproduce the text here, but hit on this link to be enlighghtened, and ghghet back to me after readinghgh. It's O So Serious, and very much worth the trip.
Look below. Very closely. Lighght is there. This is a signed and numbered silkscreened print of the lighght poem that you can purchase through The Paris Review. They don't list the price - they only give an email address to which you can send enquiries. It's available in a limited edition of 150.
Damn, I wish I had typed that.
Visitors ghghoing throughgh throughgh the ghghlass hall of lighght will be ghghiven a chance to ghghive ghghenerous donations toward fundinghgh more of Saroyan's work.
After leaving the hall of lighght, visitors will enter a vast network of administrative offices. There will be thousands and thousands of offices, so I will need thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats to staff these offices. Otherwise, I will be perceived as wasting office space (government waste is a BIG no-no at my D.O.C.) Plus, as the currently fashionable logic goes, this will create jobs.
Every office will have a flatscreen TV playing Ken Burns' series on The Civil War, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is an homage to the importance of Ken Burns' documentaries in obtaining funding for the National Endowment For The Humanities every year at renewal time. Without Ken Burns, the NEH would have very little except a motley band of performance artists who sing the ingredients of cereal boxes while shaving a gong with an electric razor. (I don't know if the performance artist shown below gets any NEA or NEH funding for his art, but when I open the Department Of Culture to the general public, this guy's going to play a role in the opening ceremony. I hope he uses a gong.)
Of course, no government ripoff can ever be fully funded without saccharine pleas that the boondoggle/bailout/subsidy/giveaway under discussion is "for the children". I'll have a large Children's Art Center near the exit of the Department Of Culture, fully equipped with modeling clay, fingerpaint, brushes, canvas, poster board, easels, drum sets, fighter pilot helmets, and toilets. After a long day spent touring the D.O.C., the little kiddos can create their own piece of American Culture !
The kids will have to pay a small fee to participate. They'll have to pay another fee to have their art considered in the Best Of The D.O.C. competition. And to have a shot at winning, they'll voluntarily make an additional contribution to each judge's re-appointment campaign. Therefore, I'm going to name the children's area The Rod Blagojevich "Pay To Play" Pavillion.
All guests and employees will leave The Department Of Culture through the base of a giant mural called "The Robert Mapplethorpe Exit".
So please write your representatives, and let them know that you're in favor of creating The Department Of Culture.
You might remember some controversy about this sculpture. FDR went to great lengths to conceal his partial paralysis from the public (only two photos of him in his wheelchair are known to exist). But various special interest groups lobbied for the wheelchair to be included in any and all sculptures of FDR. Like it or dislike it, the result would horrify FDR.
Of course, no government ripoff can ever be fully funded without saccharine pleas that the boondoggle/bailout/subsidy/giveaway under discussion is "
