Sending this to the White House
Posted on 11/05/2009 10:34:40 AM PST by 444Flyer
A painting by the artist Alma W. Thomas, which had been selected to go on Michelle Obama's wall in her East Wing office, will no longer be mounted.
"The reason why it was moved was because it didn't fit the space right," Semonti Stephens, the first lady's deputy press secretary, said of "Watusi (Hard Edge)," which had been borrowed from the Hirshhorn Museum.
Stephens noted that the Obamas still "have a piece of [Thomas's] work in the residence. So they appreciate the artist's work." A Thomas artwork titled "Sky Light," also on loan from the Hirshhorn, hangs in the family's private quarters.
Some conservative Web sites, including http://Freerepublic.com, have accused Thomas of plagiarizing the work "The Snail" by the French artist Henri Matisse. The White House denied that it was removing Thomas's piece because of those accusations.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I guess I just don’t get it. I mean, I have better artwork on the bulletin board of my office, rendered by the loving hands of the 3-10 age group (grandchildren).
Sending this to the White House
LOL, and notice that the black piece is on top of them all. Racist if you ask me.
Here’s another goodie regarding Obama’s main propaganda “Hope” poster creator:
“Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey”
“Most well known for his “Obey Giant” street posters, Shepard Fairey has carefully nurtured a reputation as a heroic guerilla street artist waging a one man campaign against the corporate powers-that-be. Infantile posturing aside, Fairey’s art is problematic for another, more troubling reason - that of plagiarism.
Lincoln Cushing, Josh MacPhee, and Favianna Rodriguez, worked closely with me on researching this article, having initially brought Fairey’s plagiarism to my attention. Cushing is an art historian and author of Revolución: Cuban Poster Art, Visions of Peace & Justice, and Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Josh MacPhee is an artist, activist and author of Stencil Pirates: A Global Survey of the Street Stencil, and Favianna Rodriguez is an artist, activist and Chicana print maker. Their invaluable research and documentation provides the foundation for most of what appears in this article.
[ Left: Still from director Michael Anderson’s 1956 film adaptation of George Orwell’s cautionary story of a dystopic future, 1984. Right: Fairey unmistakably stole his image from the “Big Brother is Watching You” propaganda posters used in Anderson’s film, without crediting the source.
What initially disturbed me about the art of Shepard Fairey is that it displays none of the line, modeling and other idiosyncrasies that reveal an artist’s unique personal style. His imagery appears as though it’s xeroxed or run through some computer graphics program; that is to say, it is machine art that any second-rate art student could produce.
In fact, I’ve never seen any evidence indicating Fairey can draw at all. Even the art of Andy Warhol, reliant as it was upon photography and mass commercial imagery, displayed passages of gestural drawing and flamboyant brushstrokes.
Fairey has developed a successful career through expropriating and recontextualizing the artworks of others, which in and of itself does not make for bad art. Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein based his paintings on the world of American comic strips and advertising imagery, but one was always aware that Lichtenstein was taking his images from comic books; that was after all the point, to examine the blasé and artificial in modern American commercial culture. When Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey, a 1961 oil on canvas portrait of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, everyone was cognizant of the artist’s source material - they were in on the joke. By contrast, Fairey simply filches artworks and hopes that no one notices - the joke is on you...”
“Shepard Fairey Accused of Plagiarism — Again”
http://providencedailydose.com/2009/10/18/shepard-fairey-accused-of-plagiarism-again/
“UPDATE: This week Fairey admitted to lying about which photo was the basis for the Obama poster...”
(snip)”As much as we hate pooping on other once-Rhode-Islanders, this appears to be just one of Fairey’s many (typically unattributed) appropriations of others’ work, for profit. This website makes a pretty damning case that swiping others’ work is endemic to Fairey’s art. And an equally strong case that his work has become void of meaning — a purposeless branding of his own name, and the “Obey Posse’s.””
Stephens’s explanation makes sense because it is inconceivable that the White House’s art experts would imagine Thomas’s painting was fraudulent or a copy. From the time of its birth, it would have been clear that Thomas’s work was an homage; “The Snail” was extraordinarily famous when Thomas painted “Watusi.”
Thomas’s painting was first exhibited in the ‘60s. At that time, you could no more plagiarize a Matisse collage such as “The Snail” than you could pass off the “Mona Lisa” as your own.
“You can see her making the leap in the earlier of her two paintings on the White House list, “Watusi (Hard Edge),” from 1963. ***It’s an out-and-out steal of a Matisse collage.*** Thomas *just* shifts the pieces around, cools the colors down, and adds a title that refers to a Chubby Checker song. But through *copying* Matisse, she began to work out a format she would use again and again.”
This was a really ‘nothing’ painting of Matisse’s. Probably just another ‘experiment’ in color and form like many hundreds of others, just to keep his ‘chops’, and as such, it becomes the ‘perfect’ thing for someone like this Obama favorite (dead for 31 years, by the way) to plaigarize.
To get another, better look at the abysmal taste in art of this “President”, I have to direct people to the dreadful poem written by Elizabeth Alexander, which she read at his Inaugural. It is neither better or worse than the doggerel
written by Maya Angelou for Clinton’s Inaugural 17 years ago. It is actually embarrassing to read both these poems and realize THESE are poems that have some ‘special place’
in the sensibility of these oddball children who somehow managed to be elected President of what maybe USED to be the greatest nation on Earth. And let’s never forget, as I said in another thread, Clinton, when asked, said that Kenny G was his favorite musician.
This was a really ‘nothing’ painting of Matisse’s. Probably just another ‘experiment’ in color and form like many hundreds of others, just to keep his ‘chops’, and as such, it becomes the ‘perfect’ thing for someone like this Obama favorite (dead for 31 years, by the way) to plaigarize.
To get another, better look at the abysmal taste in art of this “President”, I have to direct people to the dreadful poem written by Elizabeth Alexander, which she read at his Inaugural. It is neither better or worse than the doggerel
written by Maya Angelou for Clinton’s Inaugural 17 years ago. It is actually embarrassing to read both these poems and realize THESE are poems that have some ‘special place’
in the sensibility of these oddball children who somehow managed to be elected President of what maybe USED to be the greatest nation on Earth. And let’s never forget, as I said in another thread, Clinton, when asked, said that Kenny G was his favorite musician.
The decline of the classical liberal arts education in America. The poets were black, as I guess is the artist in question, and that’s what made the poems ‘special’.
I would have gone for something either Hughes or DuBois wrote if color mattered somehow.
Maybe Mrs. O’s designer will whip up a watusi dress.
Many works of art stand alone. Many others emerge as you learn the backstory.
I can’t recall which of Beethoven’s pieces were written as his hearing started to fail him, but I do know he composed them by feeling the notes with a wooden stick against his head to catch the vibration.”
I agree with you. Matisse had already proven himself with his artwork. I doubt he considered this work much more than an experiment.
Regarding Beethoven, he was completely deaf when he composed the 9th Symphony, his most famous work. He conducted it by beating out the time, with his back to the audience. He had to be turned around when it was over to see the standing ovation.
Of course, some criticized the 9th Symphony at the time. I always remember that when I see unreasonable criticism on the Internet.
So the Ubamas will be hanging the velveteen portrait of Malcolm the Tenth in the White House residence?
Ran out of time to post thank you Beelzebubba.Good eye:)
LOL!! The people are staring at the bank wall...
This was a really ‘nothing’ painting of Matisse’s.
Did her autographed poster of Che take up too much room?
Or maybe it was the genuine antique Chinese portrait of Chairman Mao that was too big and didn’t leave enough room.
And, of course, there is the portrait of Dear Leader with the halo..... so much art, so little room...
But the muzak of the eleven different ‘Dear Leader Worship’ songs is helping with the ambiance, no doubt.
Can’t...really...argue...with...that...
btt
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