America's Worst Painting

No, America's worst painting is not from "The Painter of Light™," but from Sean Hannity's favorite painter, Jon McNaughton.



It's turning out to be right-wing art history week. A few days ago we heard commentary on statues from the Tweeter-in-Chief. Today Fox News' Dumbest Anchor® tweeted the video above with the comment "Amazing video and Art! Love this." As an investor and collector of McNaughton's work, he's only coincidentally trying to increase the value of his own collection, but as an art expert I'd also like to ask Sean if the black snake being crushed under Donald Trump's heel represents who we think it represents (Hint: not Satan). If there's any doubt that the black snake is Barack Obama, all one has to do is to look at the artist's earlier "Forgotten Man" masterpiece in which President Obama is standing in the same spot with the Constitution under his foot while getting dirty looks from all the earlier white presidents as the forgotten man hangs his head sitting on his bench. Now, in the glorious Trump years, the forgotten one is off his bench and planting a tree of hope, and Barack Obama is being trampled underfoot.

Heavy-handed symbolism in representative art is always ugly, but heavy-handed racist symbolism gives this waste of canvas the prize for America's Worst Painting.

Donald Trump, Art Lover

Defender-of-Nazis Donald J. Trump took to Twitter this morning to defend Confederate statues again, typing a string of tweets with an unexpected and completely out-of-character lesson in art history and the appreciation of beauty.

August 17, 2017

June 6, 1980

The first time that Donald Trump's name was linked to beautiful statuary in the news was back on June 6, 1980 when an article about Bonwit Teller on the first page of The New York Times ran with the headline, "Developer Scraps Bonwit Sculptures." Trump's name itself didn't appear until the sixth paragraph about the landmark Fifth Avenue department store that was being razed to make room for a "$100 million 62-story bronze-colored glass tower of apartments, offices, and stores" that we now know by its shorthand name, Trump Tower. Trump had promised the Metropolitan Museum of Art that he would donate two 15-foot-tall Art Deco bas-relief panels by Rene Paul Chambellan if the cost of removing them was not "prohibitive." In the next paragraph, Trump's fictional "vice president of the Trump Organization John Baron" explained, in a voice that sounded very much like Donald Trump's, "the merit of these stones was not great enough to justify the effort to save them." Even though the Met was anxious to add these pieces to their collection and the appraiser consulted by the Times valued them at "several hundred thousand dollars," the unnamed three independent appraisers that "John Baron" cited had valued them at "worth less than $9,000 in resale value" and not worth his estimated $32,000 cost of removal. So the Trump Organization removed the sculptures with jackhammers instead. The Met was interested in acquiring the decorative metal grillwork above the main entrance as well; Trump sold it for its scrap value.

Would Donald Trump or his spokesman "John Baron" have taken more care if the sculptures depicted Robert E. Lee or Nathan Bedford Forrest in "beautiful" equestrian poses?

James Rosenquist 11/29/1933--3/31/2017

I just got an update from the New York Times website that James Rosenquist has died at 83.

Here he is on a MoMA video speaking about 'F-111.'

Happy 164th to Vincent van Gogh

On its website, the Van Gogh Museum describes Vincent's 'Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette' from 1886 as 'a juvenile joke.' Maybe it's because I was a juvenile 19-year-old visiting Amsterdam when I was first exposed to (and surprised by) the original painting by an artist I knew for sunflowers, starry nights, and self portraits, but it's always been one of my favorites ever since. Revisiting it today on the virtual walls of the internet after many years, it struck me that it could be yet another in Van Gogh's long series of self portraits.

Happy Birthday. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.

Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette (1886)
in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Trump Is Still Mastering the Art of Making GREAT Deals with Designers!

"I have so many websites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a website. It costs me $3."         --Donald J. Trump, Trump Tower Campaign Announcement, June 16, 2015

Today the improbable presumptive nominee of the GOP made another official announcement, about his choice of running mate Mike Pence, and he spent another whole three American dollars* on a new logo.

Maybe it’s just me, but this seems very inappropriate for a campaign logo pic.twitter.com/KJfHIuj2Sf

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) July 15, 2016

On the left, the Aryan Nations logo.

On the right, the Trump Pence logo. pic.twitter.com/ie3Qb6E5i9

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) July 15, 2016

Breaking the mattress of America. pic.twitter.com/M4Cq62YS2c

— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) July 15, 2016

In graphically depicting what he intends to do to America, the new campaign logo is Donald Trump at his most candid. pic.twitter.com/GG2BQS3dXz

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) July 15, 2016

OMG it gets better.#TrumpPence logo plagiarized??https://t.co/vzeKUEEsgh pic.twitter.com/2zd8tJVr8L

— Kerri Lyn (@GoddessKerriLyn) July 15, 2016

#TrumpPence Nope. Trumps logo to remain the same .. pic.twitter.com/yG6pTU5YTB

— Republican Swine (@RepublicanSwine) July 15, 2016

________________________
*The new slang term for "three dollars" is "trumpence" (pronounced like tuppence in Mary Poppins).

Happy 86th Birthday to Jasper Johns

This 1999 print was made by Robert Rauschenberg from a 1955 photo of his partner Jasper Johns (nicknamed Jap) with an iconic painting in its studio.


Robert Rauschenberg, Jap (Ruminations series, 1999)

A Primary Election Day In New York That Matters!

Around the city the polls opened at  six am, but in my county they're open at noon until nine pm, so I have to wait until after work to vote for Bernie. 

It's going to be a long day in the office. 

"Peace For Paris" by Jean Jullien via @Banksy

Peace for Paris pic.twitter.com/Lh1PQ91ncY

— banksy (@thereaIbanksy) November 13, 2015

Though I originally saw it from Banksy, it seems its creator is actually Jean Jullien.

Viewing Charlie Hebdo artists as cartoonists rather than victims.

This was recorded two days after the murders of Charb, Cabu, Tignous, Wolinsky, Honoré, and others in the Charlie Hebdo offices. Even if you don't understand a word of French, this video from On n'est pas couché will give some idea of how well known and well respected these artists and their profession were -- and are:

40 Years Ago Today Above New York City.

Celebrating Patti Smith's Birth on 12/30/1946

Here's Patti singing Horses and (a truncated) Hey Joe in 1976:

 

The sprechstimme line at 3'55"(which doesn't exist on the Horses album), "If you are male / and choose other than female / you must take responsibility / to holding the key / to ... freedom", seems so key to her later masterpiece about Robert Mapplethorpe, the beautiful Just Kids that brought her new literary fame and a National Book Award in 2010.
Please watch this wonderful and very touching conversation between Patti and Jeffrey Brown about the book and its award that aired on the PBS NewsHour three years ago:


And, finally, Patti reads a Christmas and birthday story from Just Kids (and smiles):


Happy Birthday.

The Other Big News Of the Month: Banksy in New York

"All pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside."
-Paul Cezanne

Throughout this month of government shutdown and Obamacare's rollout, the city of New York is being treated to one new work by Banksy every day.  You can check on all the works presented around the city on Banksy's "Better Out Than In" website every day. Most, as would be expected, are static additions to walls and doors, but here's a video of today's rolling three-dimensional addition to the cityscape, "Sirens of the Lambs":


Brilliant. And thank god it's out on the streets and not stuck in one of the national museums that's been shuttered by the Tea Party since October 1.

As a bonus, here's another piece, from October 6, that appeared only as a video:

"There is no why."

Today is the 39th anniversary of one of the great works of art of the twentieth century (and one that would be totally impossible in our current international police state).

Finally, a pickup truck I WOULD be caught dead in!

SAMO and a Radiant Baby! 

Spotted in a parking lot in Kingston, New York, on Saturday, February 11, 2012. but it looks like it could have been tagged on the streets of Soho sometime in 1978.

The Devil's in the Details

If you have any love for the creative process or the nineteen sixties (and if you're a liberal reading this blog, you have tons of love for both!), please watch these two videos of the Rolling Stones recording Sympathy for the Devil in 1968, from the bare outlines of the song being sketched by Mick Jagger and Brian Jones on acoustic Gibsons, with the addition of Keith on a third acoustic and Charlie Watts. Then the experimentation with new instruments and drums and backup singers begins, and in the second video you slowly but surely start hearing the final lyrics, rhythms, and musical building blocks of the final (in)famous recording. Unfortunately we don't see Keith create what has to be one of the most recognizable guitar solos in the history of rock, but I still find these video documents from June 1968 hypnotizing.  I hope you do too.
Thanks to the Guitar World website, where these were posted earlier today.

Now I need to put on Beggars Banquet and listen to it with new ears.

This Week in the GOP Clown Circus

The "GOP Clown Circus" has officially folded its tent and left town.  Calling the remaining travesty a clown circus after Paul Romtorum won Iowa is an insult to its star buffoons, Perry, Bachmann, and Cain.

• Michele Bachmann has just admitted that god made a mistake in telling her to run. (New York Times)

• Rick Perry seemed to be gone, but with Crazy Eyes out of it, he may not be dropping out. (Huffington Post)

• Herman Cain and his wife are doing fine in political retirement, and he promises, when he does endorse someone, to make it "unconventional."  (Politico)

Here's hoping that Herman's unconventional endorsement will be awarded to Sarah Palin or Donald Trump.  Then the Presidential race would be a full-blown clown circus again, something worthy of a painting by John Wayne Gacy, (Iowa's favorite Hollywood cowboy star).

2012 is Officially the Year of Trump and Boehner

Pantone has just officially announced  that their 2012 color of the year has been inspired by the skin color of Fred Trump's little boy Donald and the weepy Speaker of the House.  They've given this shade inspired by these impressive Republican leaders a clever alliterative name that pays tribute to their  impressive tans, "Tangerine Tango." 

I hope that we'll be seeing a lot of  tear-stained ties and dresses dyed in Pantone 17-1463 at GOP concession speeches next fall.

"There is no 'why'."

It's too bad they didn't let Banksy direct an entire episode.

I haven't seen a full episode of The Simpsons® in years, but now that I have a TV again, maybe I'll give it a try, especially after seeing the news about this Banksy opener that played on last night's episode.

The Visual State of the Blog on the Fifth of January Twenty Ten

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Try it for your own site. It's fun, and I've discovered that I need to use a slightly less pedestrian vocabulary.