Differing Political Opinions Part 11

We could save a lot of money by not paying our elected officials who have sworn to not do their job and make sure everyone else cant do their job either.
If I did that I would get fired pretty damn quickly.
www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/01/gop.senate.demands/index.html?hpt=T1

Posted at 2:59pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

ViewPointArt says:
"tax payers DIDN'T PAY FOR THIS!"

-----

But we paid for the buildings where it is exhibited.



---and?

Posted at 3:14pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

it (the exhibit) sounds icky.

Posted at 3:14pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2009/06/smithsonian-marks-an...

Posted at 3:19pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

Smithsonian puts LGBT people in the picture
Kathi Wolfe | Nov 24, 2010 | Comments 1

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Queers know not only the truth of this cliché, but that we’re usually out of the picture. Historically (even often now) openly queer subjects have seldom been found in class pictures, family photo albums — let alone in portraits on museum walls.

Thankfully, we’re becoming part of the picture. A new exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, containing 100 works from the late 19th century until today, is the first major museum exhibit of same-sex portraits. At a cultural moment when same-sex marriage and gender identity are the cutting edge issues of the day, the exhibit couldn’t be more timely.

Growing up, like many of us, I rarely saw pictures of people like myself — in the domain of the personal or in the realm of art. As a teen who liked girls but didn’t dare tell anyone, I didn’t view photos of girlfriends holding hands in my high school yearbook. I loved looking at paintings and reading about the lesbian scene in Paris in the early 20th century, yet I discovered no photographs of lesbian salons on my visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

If we don’t see images of people like ourselves in art, it’s hard for us to look within ourselves — to know who we truly are — to discover our historical context. If we’re not in the picture, we wonder, “Why aren’t we there? Shouldn’t we be straight like that boy and girl holding hands in that painting?”

“Portraiture … permits us to enter into the lives of others and explore how identities were forged in the past in ways that connect with our own search for meaning,” says a brochure for the “Hide/Seek” exhibit. “By looking at others across the course of history, we ultimately end up looking at ourselves through portraiture.”

It’s thrilling to view the many, varied, stirring portraits of “Hide/Seek,” as I did one recent afternoon. Perusing the work of well-known gay artists such as Andy Warhol, closeted queer artists such as photographer Carl Van Vechten, Romaine Brooks and other lesbian painters, and straight artists, including, Andrew Wyeth (whose 1979 portrait “The Clearing” of a young blonde-haired hunk will make any gay male’s mouth water), I realized we present-day queers are part of an historical context, our history has helped shape our art, and art has helped shape us.

Until recently, LGBTQ people have had to be largely closeted. Even now, though things have greatly improved in parts of the United States and other countries, many of us still encounter many forms of homophobia from hate crimes to same-sex marriage bans to employment discrimination to anti-gay “jokes.” As a result of this prejudice, queer artists, like other queers, historically have been outsiders. They’ve had to be closeted in their work — to allude to same-sex subjects in code.

“Much of the work in this exhibition necessarily trades in subtext, indirection and code, artifacts of a time when sexual difference was actively policed & prosecuted,” wrote Jonathan D. Katz, co-curator of “Hide/Seek, “ in an e-mail to the Blade. “Learning to survive under this regime meant learning codes, ways of signaling sexuality that, very often, entailed talking out of both sides of one’s mouth, addressing different languages to queer and non-queer populations at the same time.”

One of the more striking examples of this in “Hide/Seek” is a Carl Van Vechten photo of choreographer Antony Taylor and his partner (and dance protégée) Hugh Laing. I had to look twice before realizing they were lovers.

Another example of coded same-sex imagery in the exhibit is a 1914 ad. In it are two men, advertising Arrow shirts. Only at second glance, do you get that they’re queer.

“Those who see themselves as outsiders often have the most informed perspective on the language of power — for it is a matter of survival,” Katz, director of the visual studies doctoral program at the State University of New York at Buffalo, added in his e-mail.

In 1989, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, bowing to political pressure, canceled a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective. Today, our “outsider,” queer perspective is so welcomed that our art is on view in our nation’s capital.

The “Hide/Seek” exhibit runs through Feb. 13 at the National Portrait Gallery. Go here for more information.

www.washingtonblade.com/2010/11/24/smithsonian-puts-lgbt-people-in-...






www.npg.si.edu/docs/hide-seek-statment.pdf


Statement on “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”

“Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” is an exhibition of 105 works of art that span more than a century of American art and culture. One work, a four-minute video portrait by artist David Wojnarowicz (1987), shows images that may be offensive to some. The exhibition also includes works by highly regarded artists such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Thomas Eakins and Annie Leibowitz.
I regret that some reports about the exhibit have created an impression that the video is intentionally sacrilegious. In fact, the artist’s intention was to depict the suffering of an AIDS victim. It was not the museum’s intention to offend. We have removed the video.

I encourage people to visit the exhibition online or in the building.

Public comments can be directed to National Portrait Gallery
PO Box 37012
MRC 973
Washington, D.C. 20013
or
npgnews@si.edu
Martin Sullivan
Director
National Portrait Gallery
Nov. 30,

Posted at 3:23pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fC3sUDtR7U&has_verified=1



here is the offending video - you may have to sign in to youtube since it's labeled as mature

Posted at 3:25pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wojnarowicz

Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and later lived with his mother in New York City, where he attended the High School of Performing Arts for a brief period. From 1970 until 1973, after dropping out of school, he for a time lived on the streets of New York City prostituting himself and also worked as a farmer on the Canadian border.

Upon returning to New York City, he saw a particularly prolific period for his artwork from the late 1970s through the 1980s. During this period, he made super-8 films, such as Heroin, began a photographic series of Arthur Rimbaud, did stencil work, played in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries. Wojnarowicz is also connected to other prolific artists of the time, appearing in or collaborating on works with artists like Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Luis Frangella, Kiki Smith, Richard Kern, James Romberger, Ben Neill and Phil Zwickler.

In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called Graffiti Show. In the 1990s, he fought and successfully issued an injunction against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association on the grounds that Wojnarowicz's work had been copied and distorted in violation of the New York Artists' Authorship Rights Act.[3] Wojnarowicz' successful lawsuit represented a notable and affirmative step towards artists rights in the United States.[4]

Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related complications on July 22, 1992 at the age of 37.[5] His personal papers are part of the Downtown Collection held by the Fales Library at New York University.

His works include: Untitled (One Day This Kid...); Untitled (Buffalo); Water; Birth of Language II; Untitled (Shark), Untitled (Peter Hujar); Tuna; Peter Hujar Dreaming/Yukio Mishima: St. Sebastian; Delta Towels; True Myth (Domino Sugar); Something From Sleep II; Untitled (Face in Dirt); and I Feel a Vague Nausea among others.

After his death, photographer and artist Zoe Leonard, who was a friend of Wojnarowicz, exhibited a work inspired by him, entitled "Strange Fruit (for David)".[6]

In November 2010, a video by Wojnarowicz which was included in the exhibit "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" at the National Portrait Gallery (United States) was removed after complaints from the Catholic League (U.S.) and Rep. John Boehner.[7]

Posted at 3:26pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

Merry Christmas to all of those who are losing their unemployment extensions. Its going to be a cold winter.

Posted at 3:27pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

but at least the budget 'might' get balanced!


i'm sure the warm and well fed congressmen and women will put you in their prayers...

Posted at 3:28pm Dec 1, 2010 EST

I find it interesting that the absolute number one priority for the elected republicans is to extend the bush tax gifts for the rich.

Insane.

Posted at 3:33pm Dec 1, 2010 EST