| Artist causes quite a stir | |
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| Topic Started: Jun 4 2008, 03:33 PM (196 Views) | |
| Baldo | Jun 4 2008, 03:33 PM Post #1 |
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NY Times: This morning, a Boston-born performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, tried to set up a provocative art exhibition in a vacant storefront on West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan with the title, “The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama,” in neatly stenciled letters on the plate glass windows at street level. By 9:30 a.m., New York City police detectives and Secret Service agents had shut down the exhibition, and building workers quickly covered over the inflammatory title with large sheets of brown paper and blue masking tape. (See "Related Links" for more images from each of the exhibits.) http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/police-shut-down-assassination-art-exhibition/ Now the kicker is I went to his web site thinking this guy is a nut case, but he has a point to make. I certainly don't agree with his art nor his parading a large penis through the city, but he has some ideas. From looking at the pictures the titles that cause an uproar were more offensive than the actual exhibition. I certainly can understand the Secret Service actions. Here is his personal blog with his comments http://theassassinationofart.typepad.com/the_assassination_of_art/2008/05/youtube-dictato.html I was struck over the past few days by the extent to which we have become a culture driven by "Gotcha" politics. I wrote recently about the flak Hillary Clinton got for her remarks on RFK's assassination in June 68. Obama has had his share of faux-pas, although his were mostly the result of his now erstwhile pastors getting a little too outspoken and provocative by the standards of middle America. The theatrical Michael Pfleger makes an easy boogeyman for the republicans, another bullet for them to swift-boat Obama into a liberal radical, piling on to the assumed reluctance of many white voters to vote for an African American. When I looked at that clip on YouTube, over half a million people had already elected to watch it. We have gone from the dictatorship of the 24 hour news cycle to that of the recorded image that can be played and replayed online on demand. Every single misstep that an exhausted candidate can make on the stump will exist for ever, and can have an impact that it never had before. The iconic example of this new dynamic is of course George Allen's infamous Macaca comment, which helped make the democrats the Senate majority again in 2006. In a way Americans are now writing the headlines themselves rather than waiting to see what a newspaper has decided for them should be front page news. Which you could say is good for democracy. But there is a downside to this: the risk that anyone's actions will have to become entirely scripted to avoid any potential slip of the tongue. And I'm not even talking just about politics. Dior quickly dropped ads in China featuring Sharon Stone after she gave off-the-cuff remarks to journalists at the Cannes Film Festival in which she candidly shared her musings on karma. If you watch the whole clip though, clearly you understand that her intentions are good, and that of course she was not rejoicing in the death of tens of thousands of people. Even more baffling was how conservative bloggers managed to get Dunkin Donuts last week to stop running an ad with Rachel Ray simply because she was wearing a keffiyeh, which apparently makes her a supporter of Arab terrorists. What's next? I am certainly familiar with the threat of censorship, and the pressures to remain politically correct. But you know that being intimidated is not my style. Art will not be silenced, and with your support and that of organizations such as ANAVAILABLESPACE, I will keep on fighting for the freedom of all artists to speak their mind. Yes, even I have to admit this guy got his 15 minutes of fame and maybe he has a point for us to debate. His art work http://www.yazmany.com/main.html |
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| Bill Anderson | Jun 4 2008, 03:37 PM Post #2 |
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Before Political Correctness hit the scene, people pretty much were free to be outrageous. However, after the PC police began to change the rules during the 1980s and 90s, it seems that everyone else followed suit. Some of the hardest enforcers of PC speech have been people from the left who always were going on about free speech and "academic freedom." But, as Nat Hentoff so aptly put it, we can call it "free speech for me, but not for thee." 
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| Greg | Jun 4 2008, 03:56 PM Post #3 |
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In defense of conservative bloggers and that Rachel Ray ad for Dunkin Donuts, there's a lot more to it than what has been reported in the media and those conservative bloggers have been tracking issues of the image of a keffiyeh and what it symbolically represents long before Rachel Ray donned hers. Go to townhall.com. There have been columns written about it. The people who outfitted Rachel Ray knew what they were doing. |
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| LTC8K6 | Jun 4 2008, 08:07 PM Post #4 |
Assistant to The Devil Himself
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http://michellemalkin.com/2008/06/04/assassination-fascination/ Michelle Malkin points out the numerous examples of "assassination art" regarding Dubya, about which absolutely nothing was done. |
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| old lady | Jun 4 2008, 11:07 PM Post #5 |
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Rachel Ray as she appeared in the Dunkin Donut commercial. Michelle Maulkin is a TV personality. She earns her living being a shallow Neocon wacko on TV and in print. She knows who she hates and wants you to hate. She thrives on hate and discontent. Did I mention that she thinks it is a good idea for your children and grandchildren to fight for "democracy" in the Middle East? Rachel Ray is wearing a paisley black and white scarf. Step away from the corporate media.    The Food Network hostess unwittingly unleashed the fury of blogger Michelle Malkin last Friday when she wore a black-and-white, paisley scarf in an ad for Dunkin Donuts. |
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