I love this magazine!
Sep. 2nd, 2009 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whocares1970Have I ever mentioned that I love the Commentary magazine? Well, I do! :)
Here are some excerpts from an article in the last issue:
"A distinct weariness toward strident political art soon arose and was expressed in the universally bad press earned by the Whitney Museum’s controversial 1990 Biennale, the most important modern-art exhibit in the United States and one intended to represent the very latest in art-world fashion. Its most notorious feature was the button given to each visitor at the entrance, featuring an innocuous word or phrase, such as imagine or to be. Only every hundredth or so button spelled out the complete phrase: I can’t imagine wanting to be white."
"Given all the concern in the art community about confronting urgent sociopolitical problems, from the status of women to the fate of the environment, it was distinctly chary about responding to the terrorist attacks of that day. Surely it was not for lack of visual material; September 11 was rife with enough imagery to prompt a dozen Goyas to make new -Disasters of War. But this was not to be. The tremulous rage that performance artists had routinely aimed at Jesse Helms or Reagan was nowhere to be found. Nor was there any noteworthy attempt to humanize the victims, perhaps out of fear that it might dehumanize their killers."
"Of course, Fairey was not the only artist to root for Obama, who had pledged the creation of an Artists Corps, a new federal program that would be a “domestic Peace Corps for artists.” The response from the arts community was overwhelming, and 13 of its senior statesmen—including Serra, Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, and Ed Ruscha—joined forces to produce “Artists for Obama,” a limited-edition suite of prints available for a minimum donation of $20,000 to the Obama Victory Fund."
"In one three-month period, 787 Obama paintings were auctioned on eBay, showing the new president in every possible pose, and a few impossible ones: standing commandingly before the White House, cradling a basketball and wearing a Washington Wizards uniform, gamely wrestling a bear on Wall Street, even flying naked on the back of a unicorn.
Here are some excerpts from an article in the last issue:
"A distinct weariness toward strident political art soon arose and was expressed in the universally bad press earned by the Whitney Museum’s controversial 1990 Biennale, the most important modern-art exhibit in the United States and one intended to represent the very latest in art-world fashion. Its most notorious feature was the button given to each visitor at the entrance, featuring an innocuous word or phrase, such as imagine or to be. Only every hundredth or so button spelled out the complete phrase: I can’t imagine wanting to be white."
"Given all the concern in the art community about confronting urgent sociopolitical problems, from the status of women to the fate of the environment, it was distinctly chary about responding to the terrorist attacks of that day. Surely it was not for lack of visual material; September 11 was rife with enough imagery to prompt a dozen Goyas to make new -Disasters of War. But this was not to be. The tremulous rage that performance artists had routinely aimed at Jesse Helms or Reagan was nowhere to be found. Nor was there any noteworthy attempt to humanize the victims, perhaps out of fear that it might dehumanize their killers."
"Of course, Fairey was not the only artist to root for Obama, who had pledged the creation of an Artists Corps, a new federal program that would be a “domestic Peace Corps for artists.” The response from the arts community was overwhelming, and 13 of its senior statesmen—including Serra, Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, and Ed Ruscha—joined forces to produce “Artists for Obama,” a limited-edition suite of prints available for a minimum donation of $20,000 to the Obama Victory Fund."
"In one three-month period, 787 Obama paintings were auctioned on eBay, showing the new president in every possible pose, and a few impossible ones: standing commandingly before the White House, cradling a basketball and wearing a Washington Wizards uniform, gamely wrestling a bear on Wall Street, even flying naked on the back of a unicorn.
What is striking about these paintings is not their quality, about which the less said the better, but their consistent tone. They belong to that class of objects known as “devotional art.” Such objects are not only intended as votive offerings, to serve as the focus of veneration; the actual process of making them is itself an act of piety, a consideration that all but places them outside the realm of aesthetic judgment."
The article is called The Art of Obama Worship
