While temperatures hit
the 100-degree mark this summer, Washington, DC, area painters were
donning hats and sunscreen and grabbing their outdoor easels in a quest
to create paintings for their 100th birthday party celebration. |
| Eyes of Frida Kahlo (front view) |
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| Eyes of Frida Kahlo, left view |
| Eyes of Frida Kahlo, right view |
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| Eyes of Frida Kahlo, seen in a dim light |
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| Eyes of Frida Kahlo, seen in the dark |
The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards
is a visual art prize produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment
District through the amazing generosity of Mrs. Carol Trawick. The prize honors artists from Maryland, Washington, D.C. and
Virginia. Censorship of political content has long been a feature of the Chinese art world under Communist Party rule, but gallery owners and artists at SH Contemporary were told on Thursday that city officials were being extra careful ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition set to take place in Beijing next month.Pictures of Mao? Oh No! God forbid that an artist actually show the image of one of history's greatest mass murderers... Read the whole article here.
“It’s especially sensitive this year because the 18th Party Congress will start soon,” said a fair organizer after trying to convince another booth to remove a painting that censors didn’t like because it appeared to include images of Mao Zedong.
The last-minute removal of art works, some of which had passed initial vetting for the fair, underscores the party’s reach and the pressures building in the political system ahead of the secretive conclave that will anoint new leaders.
As an artist and writer I've spent years researching and creating work, both written (I've written an online bio of Che as a young man) and visual arts about this complex man. I have read all his diaries and writings and speeches and interviews, and from his own words comes out a RACIST psychopathic personality which I've discovered that most people are not aware of.Five gets you ten that they ignore this email and go on trying to do good things under the banner of a murdering racist whose image has been redone by 60 years of lies. I hope that I am wrong.
Don't listen to me if you are the types of people who are easily seduced by dogma and what Hollywood and ignorant Latin American and European icon-makers have made of the myth of Che. I ask that you listen to Che from his own diaries and memories - if after reading what Che has written, said or done, you still believe that any decent human being who is struggling for the rights of others should have a poster of Che as a positive image, then you are way beyond logic - Read on:
On Mexicans: "Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians."
On Blacks: "The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."
On Black Cubans: "We're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing."
On Homosexuals: Che played a principal role in setting up Cuba's first labor camp in the Guanahacabibes region in western Cuba in 1960-1961, to confine people who had committed no crime punishable by law, revolutionary or otherwise. This "crimes" involved homosexuality, drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness and playing loud music. Che defended that initiative in his own words: “We only send to Guanahacabibes those doubtful cases where we are not sure people should go to jail… people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals, to a lesser or greater degree.... It is hard labor, not brute labor, rather the working conditions there are hard.” Che's homophobia is expressed in the poster placed at the entrance to the forced labor camp, where homosexuals were confined, which read: “The work will make you men”', replica of the slogan “The work will make you free” used in the Nazi concentration camps. It was intended to correct the homosexual behavior applying rigorous punishments with the intention of modifying this social deviation, which does not constitute a crime punishable by law.
On the thousands of executions that took place in 1959: In an appearance on Channel 6 of Cuban TV in February 1959, Che declared that "at La Cabaña all executions are carried out under my express orders.” He adds: “It is necessary to work at night, the man offers less resistance at night than during the day. In the nocturnal calm the moral resistance is weakened. Do the interrogations at night. It is not necessary to make many inquiries to shoot somebody. What one need to know is if it is necessary to shoot him. Nothing more. You should always give the accused the possibility to do his discharge before executing him. And this means, understand me well, that the accused should always be executed, without mattering which has been his discharge. Make no mistake about this. Our mission doesn’t consist in giving procedural guarantees to anyone, but to make the revolution, and we must begin by the same procedural guarantees.”
On the right of workers to strike: In a TV speech June 26, 1961, when he was Minister of Industries Che said: “The Cuban workers have to start being used to live in a collectivism regimen and by no means can they go on strike.”
I support what you are trying to accomplish - but I am sickened to see that you do it under the image of a murdering psychopath - I blame it on ignorance on your part, and hope that you can do your own research and then put that image of Che where it belongs, the garbage bin.
Un abrazo,
Lenny Campello
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| Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz: "What are you here for?" Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: "I'm getting fitted for a hearing aid" |
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Malik's artwork explores the African–American historical and religious experience. His overarching intent is to "create artwork that examines relationships between history's truth, unearthed by contemporary scholars of African decent, and it's detrimental, but more accepted falsehoods, perpetuated for centuries – this falsification of history is so pervasive, that it remains the dominant historical narrative taught in schools and provided in the media". He uses his artwork to promote awareness of these historical inaccuracies.Asman Gallery
So now we all know what not to do when restoring great works of art. Don't go into a church in Spain and try to touch up a century-old fresco if all your attempts at art so far have ended with people asking you what you're painting. But it turns out that even professionals can screw up horribly when it comes to art restoration. Here's how art restoration screwups can lead to impromptu nose-jobs, cracked paintings, or sand-blasted sculptures.(Via) Read the whole article here.
