Bailey on Botero

That word-processing living machine known as J.W. Bailey responds to my call for reviews and art commentary with the below open letter in response to AP reporter Dan Molinski’s article, "Botero’s Latest Muse: Abu Ghraib," as published in the Washington Post. Comments welcomed:

"The Deconstructed Portrait of a Postmodern Art History Teacher"
By James W. Bailey

The postmodern art theorists (translate: anti-American French and wannabe French "art philosophers") must be having a field day around the world preparing their glowing reviews of Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s new series of propagandistic Abu Ghraib paintings in which he predictably pours gasoline on the exaggerated horrors of the unfortunate documented abuses of some Iraqi prisoners by a handful of American soldiers.

One can easily picture Botero’s sycophant leftist art fans standing at the ready outside museums in Paris anxiously awaiting the arrival of this vapid artistic pabulum while passing the time muttering their memorized anti-Bush screeds in clever but meaningless French art speak phrases, with lit Gitanes cigarettes hanging from their cynical lips prepared to flick them onto the inflammable canvas of art and politics that Botero has composed for his choir.

Botero is quoted by the AP as saying the following: "No one would have ever remembered the horrors of Guernica if not for painting." What self-serving deluded narcissistic tripe! Only the relativist philosophy of postmodernism would be so bold as to ludicrously encourage us to believe that wrapping a female panty around a male Iraqi prisoner’s head equates to Franco and Hitler conspiring to kill more than 1,700 innocent people in the Basque region of Spain by bombing and shooting them to death.

But then again, only such a shallow philosophy as postmodernism could inspire an aging super-famous mega-wealthy artist living in an ivory tower penthouse who longs to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before he dies to say something like that and expect it to be taken seriously by anyone but a burned-out religious convert to the fraudulent philosophy of postmodernism in the first place.

However, to play Botero’s art history game: If Botero is so concerned about horrors being preserved and presented in art so that it can serve as a leftist platform for politically correct history lessons, where are his paintings of the innocent Iraqis who dared to dissent with the ruling elite and were tortured to death by Saddam Hussein and his gang of thugs? Where are his paintings of the Kurds being gassed to death? Where are his one million paintings of the one million Rwandans being hacked to death while Bill Clinton and his gang of State Department cronies diddled around trying to parse the United Nations’ international definition of genocide?

Closer to his native land, where are his paintings of innocent Colombians being blown to bits in Medellin by wealthy drug lords? Are they still in the hands of wealthy private collectors locked away for private viewing? (Some of Colombia’s cocaine barons have no doubt long been enamored of Botero’s strained ruminations on the invented mythology of America’s endless abuse of power throughout the world because their own rabidly anti-American positions on international terrorism seem to dovetail so nicely with his – considering that Botero has already painted a sympathetic portrayal of Pablo Escobar being killed by Colombian police, they’re also probably on his collector’s list as every true mass-murdering gangster longs to be celebrated in art by a famous sympathetic artist at some point in his life, or death.)

I find it quite interesting that Botero, in a classic postmodern art theorist move, has numbered his Abu Ghraib series from 1 to 50, rather than taking the time to research the names and identities of those prisoners he painted that he claims were "tortured." Undoubtedly, Botero’s international art attorney advised him that to attribute names to the faces in his paintings would raise the troubling issue of exploitation of unlicensed imagery for financial gain – that is, royalties might have to be paid out of Botero’s back pocket to those "victims" he's so concerned about.

Of course, good postmodern art theory does not allow for the "innocent victim" of a right wing government to object to their image being used by a leftist artist without their permission if such use advances an exploitative anti-American opinion that intersects with an impending world museum tour – no, such theories better suggest that the leftist artist in question just keep the names, identities, facts and truth out of the whole picture... and keep all the profits once that fraudulent picture is sold to the world by a compliant media all to himself.

But God help you if you happen to be a real innocent victim of a left wing government – the true French postmodern art theorists will never remember your death because they are not about to condone, let alone critically review, any artist that would dare to stray from the party line and paint that aesthetically confusing picture. They would much prefer that history lesson never be remembered and taught through art.

Sincerely

James W. Bailey
Experimental Photographer
Force Majeure Studios

Opposing views on this subject:
Mike Whitney at Counterpunch and also at Al Jazeerah.

Elizabeth Nash at The Independent.