Frank Warren at Lisner

One of the world's greatest art ongoing projects is PostSecret, and its creator, my good friend Frank Warren, will be at Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University on January 23rd discussing the project.

Online link to buy tickets for the Lisner event is here. Also check out this video.

American Hero

Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III
The right guy, at the right place, at the right time. This 57-year-old former Air Force fighter pilot has been flying for more than 40 years, and has been with US Airways since 1980.

Andrew Wyeth

Chadds Ford, PA January 16, 2009--Andrew Wyeth, often referred to as America's most famous artist, died in his sleep at his home in Chadds Ford, surrounded by his family early this morning, after a brief illness. Wyeth, 91, was painting until recently, with some new works exhibited at the Brandywine River Museum in 2008.

Wyeth ignored the preferences of the art establishment during the heyday of abstract expressionism but nonetheless won international acclaim with exhibitions throughout the world, received many awards, and inspired countless imitators. His work brought some of the highest prices for a living American artist. His painting, Christina's World (1948), is one of the best-known images of the 20th-century.

"The world has lost one of the greatest artists of all time," said George A. Weymouth, a close friend and chairman of the board of the Brandywine Conservancy.

Andrew Newell Wyeth was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania on July 12, 1917, a son of the internationally renowned painter and illustrator N.C. Wyeth and his wife Carolyn Bockius Wyeth. Theirs was a creative family: Henriette Wyeth Hurd, Carolyn Wyeth and Andrew were painters; Ann Wyeth McCoy was a composer; and son Nathaniel was an engineer and inventor with many patents to his credit.

At age 15, Wyeth began his academic training in his father's studio. In that year, on one of his boyhood walks, he discovered the Chadds Ford farm of Karl and Anna Kuerner. Wyeth was intrigued by Kuerner, a German immigrant and World War I veteran, developing a close relationship with him over the years. Wyeth has found subjects in the Kuerner farm's people, animals, buildings and landscapes for hundreds of works of art over more than 75 years.

The Wyeth family spent summer months in Maine, and Andrew Wyeth's early watercolor landscapes, much influenced by the work of Winslow Homer, met with enormous critical acclaim at his first one-man show at the William Macbeth Gallery in New York City in 1937. An exceedingly self-critical artist, this immediate success did not reassure him. Feeling that his work was too facile, he returned to his father's studio for further concentration on technique.

Wyeth soon began working in egg tempera, a technique introduced to him by his brother-in-law, the painter Peter Hurd. Tempera became his major medium. He said that it forced him to slow down the execution of a painting and enabled him to achieve the superb textural effects that distinguish his work. His other mediums were watercolor and drybrush watercolor.

In 1940, Wyeth married Betsy James, whom he had met in Maine the previous summer. It was Betsy who introduced Wyeth to her long-time friend Christina Olson, who had been crippled by polio. Olson's character represented "old Maine" to him, and she became his model for many works of art, including Christina's World.

Wyeth caused a sensation in 1986 with the revelation of a large collection of paintings featuring German immigrant Helga Testorf, a Chadds Ford neighbor. The paintings were first exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the following year, and were then exhibited internationally and seen by millions.

In 1987, the exhibition An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, featuring 117 works by N.C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth, traveled to the Soviet Union and to nine cities around the world.

In addition to his wife, Wyeth is survived by two sons, Nicholas, a private art dealer in Maine, and his wife, Lee; and Jamie, also a very well-known painter, and his wife, Phyllis; and granddaughter Victoria Browning Wyeth.

Wyeth received many awards during his lifetime. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy named Wyeth the first artist to receive the Presidential Freedom Award, the country's highest civilian award. In 1970, he was the first living artist to have an exhibition at the White House. Wyeth's other tributes include the gold medal for painting from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1965), several painting and watercolor awards and numerous honorary degrees. In 1977 he made his first trip to Europe to be inducted into the French Academy of the Fine Arts, becoming the only American artist since John Singer Sargent to be admitted to the Academy. The Soviet Academy of the Arts elected him an honorary member in 1978. He received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990. Most recently, he was awarded National Medal of Arts in 2007. He also received numerous honorary degrees.

One-artist exhibitions of his work routinely broke attendance records at major museums, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco. His work was also exhibited at museums throughout the world, including the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo; the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg; the Palazzo Reale in Milan; and the Academie des Beaux Arts, Paris, among many other museums. He was the first living American artist to have an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. An exhibition of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2006 drew 177,000 visitors in 15 1/2 weeks, the highest-ever attendance at the museum for a living artist.

His work is included in many major American museums, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the National Gallery of Art, as well as the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, to name only a few.

Services will be private. A celebration of his life and work will take place at the Brandywine River Museum at a date to be announced. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Brandywine River Museum and the Farnsworth Art Museum.

-- Brandywine River Museum

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline February 6, 2009

20th National Drawing & Print Competitive Exhibition. A minimum of $1500 available in purchase prize money. Drawings and prints (not photography) in any medium are eligible. A non-refundable entry fee of $30 entitles the artist to submit up to three entries. The Juror is Allegra Marquart, Professor of Printmaking at Maryland Institute College of Art. Deadline February 6.

Enter online here.

National Drawing and Print Competitive Exhibition
Attn: Geoff Delanoy
College of Notre Dame of Maryland
4701 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21210

Email: gormleygallery.ndm.edu

Taxman

It makes me feel kinda warm and fuzzy that the nominee for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, who essentially will be in charge of the IRS, and who is supposed to be a financial genius, made an "innocent mistake" and failed to pay $34,000 in taxes between 2001 and 2004.

If financial geniuses can make $34,000 mistakes on their favor, get audited by the IRS, get off a couple of years' worth of back-taxes, and then become the IRS' boss, things are good for the rest of us "regular" financial types.

But, since some of Geithner's mistakes were forgiven by the IRS because of the statute of limitations, he actually got off not paying off some of his back taxes. I hereby call for Geithner to donate that tax amount that he should have paid, but didn't because of statute of limitations, to the Smithsonian Institution.

Live Model Drawing at MPA

The McLean Project for the Arts in Virginia is offering a January session as well as Winter and Spring sessions of Open Studio -- Live Model Drawing.

Details here or call 703.790.0123
for directions and registration.

The arts to get their $ from the economic recovery package

"For the last month, Americans for the Arts has been working with the field, Congress, and the Obama Transition Team to include support for the nonprofit arts sector and individual artists in any federal economic recovery package. With your help, we have been compiling examples of how the recession has affected arts groups. We are getting this compelling information along with our economic impact data into the hands of key policy leaders in Washington.

Last week, Americans for the Arts officially proposed Nine Recommendations for Economic Recovery & the Arts to help nonprofit and governmental arts groups as well as individual artists during this economic downturn. Today, Americans for the Arts President and CEO Bob Lynch met with the Obama Transition Team to discuss these and other ideas.

Also today, the House Appropriations Committee released an $825 billion economic recovery package. Included in the proposed bill is an infusion of $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (in addition to its annual appropriations) to specifically preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support. The House plan proposes additional opportunities throughout other parts of the federal government that could also help the nonprofit arts sector and individual artists. Many of these other opportunities correspond closely with our Recommendations for Economic Recovery & the Arts."

Details here.

Steven Soderbergh's Che

More on my expectations of Steven Soderbergh's Che, which bring some prejudices, notions, knowledge, facts, and ideas about how a film should depict Guevara.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara de La Serna Lynch. Charcoal on paper, 5 x 17 inches, c.1999 by F. Lennox Campello
Read it here.

At the Corcoran

Alberto “Korda” Díaz’s image of Che Guevara as saint, guerrilla, and fashion statement is considered to be the most reproduced image in the history of photography. The stunning documentary film, Chevolution (Red Envelope Entertainment, 2008), codirected and produced by Trisha Ziff, explores how and why this image became so important. Through original footage, notable interviews, and a look into vast archival collections of Che images, this film tackles the complexity and contradictions of what this important photograph still means today. Ms. Ziff is a curator of contemporary photography, filmmaker, and Guggenheim scholar who lives and works in Mexico. Following the screening, she discusses the film and takes questions from the audience.

The lecture is January 21, 2009 at 7PM. Sign up for the lecture here.

That photo of Che by Korda has been commercialized beyond belief, and Korda never received any compensation from the appropriation of his image. A few years ago, just before he died, the Cuban dictatorship allowed him to sue a French company and prevent the use of the image on a "Che" Vodka.

A couple of years ago I helped one of the collectors that I advise to acquire a huge collection of vintage Korda photographs which were his private copies and proofs and which passed to his daughter upon his death. They are now safe in a private collection in West Palm Beach and she received some good money for them.

But from the millions of Che T-shirts and posters and endless reproductions of the photograph, Korda never received a penny.

My favorite Che T-shirt is below...

Artists' Websites: Jen Blazina

Longing Installation. Cast resin, steel, screen-print, bridal satin, reverse painting; varying dimensions by Jen Blazina

I find Jen Blazina to be one of the most interesting artists from the Greater Philadelphia area. Last year she was awarded two residencies: the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant to attend a fellowship at The Women's Studio Workshop.

Before that Blazina has been awarded numerous other residencies including: Women's Studio Workshop in New York, in 2006; Scuola di Grafica in Venice, Italy; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, in 2005 and 2007; The Creative Glass Center of America's Residency Fellowship for 2003 in New Jersey; Millay Colony for the Arts in New York. She has also been awarded numerous grants including the Leeway Foundation Grant, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Independence Foundation Grant.

Visit her website here.

Obamartmania

There's an orgy of art shows about Obama going on across the nation and I am a little overwhelmed by the huge number of galleries and venues which have all come up with the same idea of doing an art exhibition with BO as the subject.

In fact I'm even participating in one here in Philly myself; more on that later. I am in the process of creating my own Obama piece for that show.

The Man from Illinois, by Scott Seidman - At Manifest Hope DC
Around the DC region, from what I can gather from emails, buzz and talking to people, the Manifest Hope DC and the one at Heineman-Myers Contemporary Art seem to be the ones that people are talking about.

These kind of love-in art shows present a tremendous opportunity for artists looking for the cheap element of shock to help them gather their 15 minutes of fame. This is where an opportunist shockmeister can produce some really offensive artwork and exhibit it in the name of dissent. In this case, you don't even need an offensive work, just something against the huge pro Obama art tide.

Because we live in a free nation, and because people are people, and because the mainstream media only pays attention to art and artists when there's shock involved, someone exhibiting some anti-Obama artwork would make worldwide news in a sea of pro Obama artwork.

Artwork about Bush, at least what I saw in the last 8 years was 100% negative, and anti-Bush from the very beginning of his Presidency. I can't think of a single pro-Bush artist or work of art, and because logic tells me that not every artist in the world was anti Bush, I (perhaps with flawed logic) then deduce that no artist had the cojones to show his pro-Bush sentiment.

Artwork about Clinton always included a healthy mix of pro and con pieces.

But I seriously doubt that someone will have the cojones to create and exhibit any anti Obama work of art (at least not now). And because of that, they will miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to offend and be propelled to worldwide fame. Look what it did for Andres Serrano and Chris Offili! On the other side, no matter what those guys ever create, they will always be known for "Piss Christ" and "Virgin Mary."

We know you're out there.

Update: I forgot about Bailey.

Miriam Kagan

Miriam Kagan's GenerationYGive is a must read blog and this is the reason why she started blogging.

Visit it here.

More on Obama at NPG

Yesterday I told you that the Shepard Fairey portrait of Obama had been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.



Today I learned from my colleague Martin Irvine, whose fine DC art gallery represents Fairey, that the work had been acquired through the generosity of my good friends and ubercollectors Heather and Tony Podesta.

Wanna buy some Rothkos?

J. Ezra Merkin, the New York financier tied to Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, is hearing from collectors interested in buying his dozen $150 million Mark Rothko paintings, the world’s largest private grouping, according to his art adviser.

Though the paintings aren’t for sale now, “everything has a price,” said Ben Heller, 83, who helped Merkin buy the abstract expressionist paintings during the past five years.

“I am flooded with phone calls,” said Heller, the stepfather of actress Kyra Sedgwick who was himself a Madoff victim.

The Rothkos, housed in Merkin’s Park Avenue duplex, include two 9-by-15-foot studies for murals that Rothko executed for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building and Houston’s Rothko Chapel, and a third, smaller study for a Harvard University mural. The Four Seasons mural paintings are in the National Gallery in Washington.

Merkin’s Ascot Partners LP lost $1.8 billion from investments with Madoff, according to lawsuits. A second fund, the $1.5 billion Gabriel Capital LP, which also invested with Madoff, was closed last month.

Read the whole piece by Lindsay Pollock here.

Maruch Cafeteria

Located just a few minutes' taxi ride Miami Airport, Maruch Cafeteria is a perfect example of how real Cuban food can be sampled from a working class perspective, rather than from the haute cuisine perspective, or even the "real restaurant" approach, as Maruch is more akin to the million delis that dot New York City with hot food, but from a Cuban angle.

The City of Hialeah borders Miami airport, and just a handful of years ago it was an almost 100% Cuban and Cuban-American area. It appears to me that the ethnic diversity of the city is changing radically over the years, as I see a lot of businesses with Dominican, Colombian, Central American and even Brazilian names and products. Signs are nearly all in Spanish or have a Spanish translation, and they are also beginning to reflect the ethnic changes in the city, as Papuserias and Dominican Hair Salons are popping up everywhere. It is a clean, busy, nearly all working class neighborhood, with quiet one level homes with immaculate lawns in palm tree neighborhoods as well as super busy main commercial streets such as Palm Avenue and LeJeune Road.

I'm not sure how long Maruch Cafeteria has been there, but it is certainly a neighborhood hot spot, and chances are that if you drop by at lunchtime or dinner time, you'll see a lot of cops from the nearby precinct eating there, as well as a crowd of mostly working class Cubans and a sprinkling of Central American day laborers, often baffled by the Cuban dishes, but attracted by the cost of the food and the size of the servings.

There are about twenty small tables, and a small army of Cuban women of all shades, ages and shapes working behind the hot food counter, which is an array of Cuban food ranging from the kind of food that you'll see at any Cuban restaurant around the world, such as ropa vieja, tostones, black bean soup, yucca, etc., to less common but still very Cuban items such as vaca frita, ajiaco, tasajo, chicharron and more. If it is a sandwich that one desires, it is custom-made on the spot, and they offer the ubiquitous Cuban hot pressed sandwich or the lesser known, but tastier (at least to my taste) medianoche sandwich.

As you enter Maruch, the smell of garlic and cumin warn you that this is the real deal, and all the food (except for desserts) are behind a hot food counter with handwritten Spanish signs above each item. The prices are also written above each item, and range from $4.95 to $9.95 or so for a plate.

A plate usually includes one main item (pork, fish, chicken, goat, and beef) and two sides, plus rice and black beans or congri (both the congri made with black beans and the one from Oriente province made with red beans).

Congri is sort of a Cuban version of dirty rice, as the rice and beans are cooked together, and the white rice turns black or red, depending on the bean used.

There are several items of each kind of meat, such as 2-3 kinds of fish choices, 3-4 pork choices, etc.

The meat portions are huge.

In fact they are an exaggeration of culinary offering and would probably distress a hoity toity restaurant critic, but fit perfectly into the cultural norm of a neighborhood Cuban hole in the wall, mom & pop restaurant cafeteria, such as Maruch is.

When I say big, I mean really huge. Imagine a steak the size of a laptop screen, or a piece of fish 2-3 times the size that one normally gets in a restaurant.

In fact, I have never seen bigger portions of food served in any Cuban restaurant, or any other for that matter, anywhere else in the gazillions of restaurants that I have been in my life. These are Texas-sized portions times two!

When I last visited Maruch, I ordered chuleta de puerco, rice and black beans, yucca con mojo, platanos fritos, boniato and a couple of beers.

It was an enormous meal; an exaggeration of food to a spectacular degree and I enjoyed every bit of it. The pork was tender and well-seasoned, the black bean soup gave up their garlicky cuminy smell that separates Cuban black beans from all other ethnic Latin American black bean dishes, and the mojo for the boiled yucca was spectacular, reeking of garlic, olive oil, onions, and lime juice. The boniato (Cuban yam) was sweet and tender and the platanos fritos thick and sweet. This orgy of starches really complemented the huge portion of pork, and I ate it all.

In spite of the huge meal, afterwards I had a cuatro leches for dessert. "You must try cuatro leches," said in Spanish the raven-haired and green-eyed Cuban waitress, who looked more like a tanned Irish woman than what Hollywood thinks as Cuban. "The owner makes it herself."

Cuatro Leches is a taste numbing Cuban dessert cake made from four different kinds of milk (such as cow's milk, evaporated milk, condensed milk, etc.). Cuban culinary urban legend has it that there are ocho leches makers out there, who introduce other milks (such as goat milk, and other milks that one better not ask about) into the recipe, which is not for calorie counters, even at just four milks.

I finished my meal with a cafe cubano, or a Cuban coffee, which is a tiny shot of super-sweet espresso with enough caffeine to ensure that I'd be up half the night remembering the orgy of food that I had consumed.

Maruch Cafeteria is located at 92 East 8th Street, Hialeah, Florida 33010, telephone (305) 805-9302‎. Next time that you're hanging around Miami airport with a few hours to waste, or just feel like exploring a true gem of typical Cuban food, go to Maruch and tell them that Ana Campello's son sent you.

From Soup to Nuts

Jack Rasmussen. Boned, 2008. Acrylic and collage, 18x24 inches.

From Soup to Nuts: Art for All Tastes is the title of the exhibition at the
Jean Albano Gallery in Chicago and it is not only noteworthy because of the very cool art in this group show, but also because it includes the above piece by my good friend Jack Rasmussen; his first exhibit in 30 years!

Secretary of the Arts

Quincy Jones has started a petition to ask President-elect Obama to appoint a Secretary of the Arts.

While many other countries have had Ministers of Art or Culture for generations, the United States has never created such a position.

Although I am generally opposed to expanding government, we in the arts community need this and the country needs the arts -- now more than ever. If you feel that this is a decision that you can support, then please take a moment to sign this important petition and then pass it on to your friends and colleagues.

Sign the petition here.

My thoughts on some candidates for the position, and my ideas on how to keep a new Department of the Arts from becoming a huge burocratic mess will come later.

Obama at NPG


The stencilled portrait of President Elect Obama by street artist Shepard Fairey, which became the key image of the Obama election campaign and did wonders for Fairey, has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC for its permanent collection.

Of peripheral interest, artist Shepard Fairey has been under a lot of scrutiny in the internets for his alleged violations of intellectual property in lifting imagery and design from Third World artists. Read all about it here. If these allegations are true... well you see where this is heading.

Also, at the risk of being pedantic, it was my understanding that all contemporary portraits in the NPG had to be executed from the live person. In other words, they couldn't be done from a photograph, etc. I will contact the NPG and ask them about this. I am assuming that Fairey did his famous portrait of Obama from an appropriated photograph, rather than have Barack pose for him.

Congrats

For a couple of years now I have been telling you to acquire Michael Janis' artwork.

From the 1,047 artists from 43 countries sending almost 3,000 images, 100 were selected for publication in New Glass Review, the Corning Museum's annual international publication of glass artists.

The judges were Rachel Berwick, Department Head of Glass, Rhode Island School of Design; Mieke Groot, independent curator, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and uber glass artist Dante Marioni, from Seattle, Washington, which (as glass freaks know) is the fine arts glass capital of the upper crust of the fine arts world and one of the world's most beautiful cities.

And the DC area's own Michael Janis, from the Washington Glass School, is in that exclusive group in the forthcoming book for 2009.

Death, Tarot Card Series. By Michael Janis. Cast glass, steel, glass powder, 18" x 36" x 2"

Artists from the Washington Glass School continue to push the envelope of contemporary glass, and yet their own city's museums seem to be the only ones lagging in spotting them ahead of the rest of the art world.

But for now all that I have to say is "Congratulations Mike!"

Che: El Chacal de La Cabaña


A while back in the mail I got some preview tickets to the opening of the new Steven Soderbergh two-part epic about the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentinean blue blood guerrilla leader, starring Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro in the leading role (which has already earned him the coveted Best Actor award at the 2008 at the Cannes Film Festival).

Because I was away on vacation, I couldn't go, but I do plan to see this film, as I have been an avid Guevara follower nearly all my life. Here's a little known Guevara fact: His paternal grandparents, Roberto Guevara and Ana Lynch, were born in California!

"Che Guevara" by F. Lennox Campello. Charcoal c. 2003. 6 x 15 inches
My father fought alongside Guevara during the Cuban Revolution, and like most of those brave young men who fought against the Batista dictatorship (both in the mountains of Oriente province and the streets of Havana and Santiago de Cuba) he never expected the Cuban Revolution to institutionalize a worse dictatorship than Batista's bloody regime.

Che was a declared Communist all along, but Communists were rare in the ranks of the rebels.

In fact, to this day most people don't know that the official Cuban Communist Party was part of the Batista government while the Revolution was underway and even Guevara, a Communist all along, had harsh words for the Cuban Communists during the struggle. In 1958 he wrote that there were "mutual fears" between the rebels and the Party, and "fundamentally, the Party of the Workers has not perceived with sufficient clarity the role of the guerrilla."

After the revolution, Guevara further added that he "only knew of three Communists who had participated in combat." Besides himself and Raul Castro, one wonders who the third Communist was (Raul Castro's future wife, Vilma Espin was also a known Communist; however, she was one of the urban guerrillas working under Frank Pais, the anti-Batista leader in the streets of Cuba. Pais was strongly anti-Communist. Of interest, a persistent rumor blames Espin as the traitor responsible for Pais' death at the hands of the Batista police. Fidel Castro himself, always denied being a Communist, until sometime in the early 1960s.

Guevara was a very courageous and even reckless fighter (as opposed to Castro, who spent most of the war secluded in the relative safety of the Sierra Maestra mountains). But Che was also the grim executioner of the Cuban Revolution, a fact that he never hid and even bragged about, but which most Guevara admirers conveniently ignore.

It was Guevara who executed deserters and captured Batista soldiers and henchmen during the struggle; and it was Guevara who signed many of the tens of thousands of execution orders after the Revolution, when Cuba was bathed in blood by avenging firing squads.

See some of the documented Cubans executed by Guevara (including over a dozen shot by Che himself) here or if you have the guts, you can see an actual firing squad in action (broadcast over Cuban TV in 1959).


Because of that, Guevara is known to Cubans as "El Chacal de La Cabaña."

"El Chacal de La Cabaña" translates to the "Jackal of La Cabaña," although it is usually translated as the "Butcher of La Cabaña."

La Cabaña is an 18th century fortress complex located on the elevated eastern side of the harbor entrance to Havana, and the location for many of the thousands of firing squad executions which took place after January 1, 1959. Shot were former members of Batista's police, army and air force, informants, traitors, and counter-revolutionaries.

The best known story about this period (which I heard related in a Spanish language radio show in Florida last week) relates to how a Cuban mother went to see Che to beg for her son's life. The son was 17 years old, and was on the firing squad list, to be executed within a week. If Guevara pardoned her son, the mother begged, she would ensure that he never said or did anything against the Revolution.

Che's response was to order the immediate execution of the boy, while the mother was still in his office. His logic: now that the boy was shot, his mother would no longer have to anguish over his fate.

On the other hand, Che's courage as a guerrilla leader and his dedication to his caused are well documented and never challenged and cost him his life.

While Fidel Castro tightened his grip on the Cuban people and replaced the Batista dictatorship with the Castro dictatorship, Guevara put his life at risk fighting in guerrilla wars in Africa and Latin America, until he was caught in the highlands of the Bolivian mountains in 1967 and executed on the spot. Just as he would have done had the situation been reversed.

It is this glowing side of Che's complex character that Che's admirers and apologists always focus upon, and I am looking forward to seeing if this film addresses both the spectacularly courageous side of this iconic figure, as well as his war crimes and dark side of a man with little compassion and remorse.

I am also curious as to how the film handles Guevara's departure from Cuba. "Che", claims Dariel Alarcon Ramirez, who joined the rebels in 1956 and then went with Guevara to Bolivia, "left Cuba after being accused of being a Trotskist and a Maoist.... and because of the problems he had with the Cuban government, specifically Fidel and Raul Castro."

Once I see the film, I will tell you my thoughts on it. Meanwhile below are the lyrics (translated from the Spanish) from Olafresca's song titled "El Chacal."

They forced us to hold you
In historic prominence
They promoted your bravery
To the whole world after your death

Here your face remained
On t-shirts and posters
They don’t say all of the truths
Of the Jackal of the Cabaña

Your hand gripped so tight
That to history it sends
An image from Santa Clara
Where power seduced you

And now your face is in fashion
On t-shirts and posters
They don’t say all of the truths
Of the Jackal of the Cabaña

Aristidio followed you
Til the day he tired (of the lie)
When he told you he was leaving
With a 32. you silenced him

Here your face remains…
And even if you clean the t-shirt to its guts
It doesn’t wash the blood from the hands
Of the Jackal of Cabaña

Of the Cabaña you where the warden
You sent thousands to the death squads
But you preferred to play the warrior
You yourself dismissing the innocent

Now, there is your face
The women you made widows find it strange
How can he be everywhere we look
The Jackal of the Cabaña

A hero to some to others a criminal
Your face is known and your idealistic cause
But the path of violence will never win
Your passion consumed you and you became (the Jackal)

Here your face remains
On t-shirts and posters
They don’t say all of the truths
Of the Jackal of the Cabaña

History has already proven
That you don’t win peace with bullets
In any time or situation
What we need is compassion