DAMage Report - Arts Day: Gogh, Gogh, Gone

Catch Arts Day on the DAMage Report - pm PST / 5pm EST on NewDissidentRadio.com - live streaming so you can tune in anywhere in the world!

On Saturday a Van Gogh painting was stolen from a Cairo museum. Then it was reportedly found. And now.... it’s lost again.  Even the recovery is being fumbled like an episode in a comedic sitcom.

The theft of the $55 million Vincent van Gogh painting in Cairo has the art world casting an incredulous eye at Egyptian museums. Only seven out of 43 security cameras were functioning and none of the alarms attached to the museum’s paintings was working. Apparently the security hasn't been working since 2006. The Van Gogh "Poppy Flowers" is one of 304 oil paintings and 50 sculptures in a collection valued at over $1.2 billion.  The robbers climbed on a sofa and cut the picture out of its frame with a box cutter. This same Van Gogh painting was stolen in 1978 and recovered two years later in Kuwait. Egypt may have a little difficulty now in convincing Western museums to return what it considers pilfered works. 

Lots of finger pointing included the deputy culture minister being arrested, along with four guards the guards who were accused of “negligence and failing to carry out their employment duties." Nine other officials from the culture ministry were  prevented from traveling from the country. It seems that if the security hasn't been working since 2006 that there is a long line of people who fell asleep on the security desk.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-24/egypt-to-improve-museum-security-after-van-gogh-theft.html

DAMage Report: What Color is Whitewash in the Crayola Box?

Excuse me... did someone roll us back into the 50s and 60s when I wasn't looking?  The rise in bigotry has been more and more evident in politics lately, but in the arena of the arts? 


In Arizona artists and children painting a mural on an elementary school featuring faces of kids who attend the school were the subject of drive-by racist slurs. The anti-black art campaign, which demanded the removal of  a dark-skinned latino child's portrait in the mural was adopted as well by a radio talk-show host who also served as a city councilman. The twat has since lost his show. Following the protests the school principal revealed a decidely chicken colored backbone, and ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students to be changed to Caucasian skin. When THAT was protested, he claimed it was an artistic decision. Right.


The Councilman Twat said "I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who's President of the United States today and based upon the history of this community, when I grew up we had four black families - who I have been very good friends with for years - to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, 'Why?'


Apparently anyone with skin darker than pasty white looks the same to the Councilman. It's always fun to note that invariably the protest of  "i'm not a racist" from a bigot's mouth includes "i'm good friends with them there black people." (Please insert visual here of me making gaggy face with finger down throat.)


The principal has since back-pedaled and allowed the mural to remain as intended, reflecting the diversity of it's student body. Ya think?


But back to the first point - are we sliding back as a society to an era when people think it's OKAY to yell racial slurs at not only adults, but children?  If art is a reflection of society, and is supposed to get a reaction, then what this mural revealed about the community of Prescott, Arizona, and possibly a portion of the American people is very dark and scary.  Quick hand me the whitewash crayon. We can't have anything "dark" showing up here.


If the art world is dominated by white males, then that singular perspective is going to be reflected in the arts. A friend of mine, who tours with Disney's Lion King, told me recently that the number of roles for a middle-aged black man on Broadway or theater anywhere in the country, is almost non-existent. No one writes the roles, therefore the roles aren't there for the actors. 


It is interesting that it was easier to find news articles and reference points for gender bias in the arts, than it was to locate information about racism and the arts. Does that mean it doesn't exist. Of course not. It means it hasn't been deemed news worthy.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/04/arizona-elementary-school-mural_n_601436.html


http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/principal-arizona-prescott-mural-wont-be-lightened-immigration-racism-obama

Graffiti Art: Sacrosanct or Sacred Cash Cow?

Should really good graffiti art be treated as a rare and valuable artistic resource to be preserved or should it be left in it's original environment and let whatever happens to it happen, as part of the validity (or invalidating in some cases) of the piece? 


That question, as well as who really owns the art has been a big arts world debate this past month. 

The heated discussions have been sparked by our quirky friend, Mister Banksy. Who no doubt is having quite the chuckle over all this. I think I'm in love with this guy. His self-effacing and contradictory sense of humor definitely makes him as intriguing as his art. So I take back everything I ever said about the art always being more important than the artist. It's no surprise that the artist Banksy is becoming as much an artistic product as the art he produces.  I do believe whether this is intentional or not depends on which brand of coffee he drank on a particular morning. And that makes me smile.


Banksy defies, resists, hops in and out of, any and all boxes the public, including art critics, try to place him in. The thing is he doesn't do it in a vapid "look at me" way. If you study his art with its political, ecological and social commentaries you can see that he creates to provoke thought. Isn't that what art is supposed to do. From this is born the conundrum. Should it be preserved and protected so generations can be exposed to its thought provokedness... or by removing it and turning it into a commodity, does it invalidate the purpose of the art? 
Is it like the process of living: you're either lucky you got to experience something by being in right place and time or you weren't?


Banksy recently left four works in Detroit. One was "removed" by a non-profit gallery, one was destroyed during attempted removal and one was power-washed away by a building owner (ouch). 

The lone remaining painting is of a cartoon rat balancing on a tight rope (which is really a rusted old chain that hangs there.) The Tightrope Rat has become a favorite for Banksy fans and undoubtedly an arts destination since the exact location is now well publicized for visitors.


The "preservation" of the "Packard Plant Mural" has created an uproar with the arts world (once again) dividing on each side of the crumbling graffiti splattered wall.  The gallery that removed the painting from the original site has had to hide the art after receiving numerous threats. The mural's removal touched off an impassioned debate about the meaning, legality and ownership of graffiti art. It's a valid question. Once the artist walks off... who does it belong to? The building owner, the city, whomever finds it and claims it?

In a recent and rare interview Banksy gives his thoughts on permanence of graffiti art.

"Graffiti isn't meant to last forever.... I've always been uncomfortable with the way galleries put things on a pedestal. I think art should be a two-way conversation, not a lecture from behind glass. I'd like to say I'm politically motivated but the reality is I'm just far too lazy for capitalism. If Banksy has become a brand, then it's a brand that doesn't believe in itself. There's probably a contradiction in hiding your face while shooting off your mouth. But I don't think it's terminal."

So according to Banksy, anything that happens to the art he leaves behind - whether it is enshrined on site as an altar to the gods of graffiti or destroyed by random or intentional "accident" is all a part of the dialog with the art. Just don't let the galleries put it behind glass.

Some additional off topic thoughts on Banksy:
For someone who makes a mockery of being high profile and tries to hide his identity Banksy has been garnering quite the share of publicity. In the last decade, Banksy's name has appeared in more than 720 New York Times articles. This year, Banksy was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, and "Exit Through the Gift Shop" - a self-documentary, opened to gushy reviews and to date has  grossed more than $1 million in only 31 theaters." 

Does he deserve all the attention? The innovativeness of some of his thumb his nose at art and society antics are definitely creative. Banksy once printed counterfeit currency in London, replacing the Queen's head for that of Princess Diana's. Where the bill would normally read "Bank of England" he printed "Banksy of England." In disguise, armed with a hammer and nail, he hung re-imaginings of the Mona Lisa inside the Louvre. His escapades go on and on. It's really quite fun following his mad hatter dance in the news.

http://www.freep.com/article/20100529/ENT05/5290305/Gallery-that-took-Banksy-mural-puts-it-in-hiding

http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/detroit/index.ssf/2010/05/banksy_bombs_detroit_sorting_t.html
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/drawn-from-the-shadows-wanted-man-comes-out-to-play-20100528-wlcx.html

DAMage Report - The Artistic Glass Ceiling

Show postponed until tomorrow - same place, time, topic. Gives y'all time for.... HOMEWORK!!! (Evil laugh) Tell me your five favorite female artists - in any genre... and if you don't know of five - FIND some. Seriously.


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We tend to think of gender discrimination as something that is reflected mostly in the corporate world, or even an issue that is no longer that much of a problem. The days of female artists being repressed and unrecognized are over... right? Wrong. Truth is that women artists are still way the hell down on the art totem pole - in all the genres of art. 


"...half of trained artists in the U.S. are female, but women make up only two percent of the artists featured at the National Gallery of Art and seven percent at the National Portrait Gallery."  The imbalance isn't just historical though.  "At the Hirshhorn Museum, which specializes in contemporary art, women are five percent of featured artists."
Some hard cold glass facts from the 90's thru current day:

•  There have been only eleven female winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature over the last 100-plus years
• In 2008, women comprised only 16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films
• In 2000, of 18 modern-dance choreographers who received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, 13 were men. The men received a typical grant of $10,000; the women $5,000
• In 53 weeks of the New York Times Book Review in 2002-03, out of 807 books reviewed, only 28% were authored by women. 
• 51.2% of all artists in the U.S. are women 
• 59% of Ph.D.s in Fine Arts go to women.
• 66.5% of Ph.D.s in Art History go to women.
• 59% of trained artists and art historians are women.
• 33% of art faculty are women.
• 5% of works in museums are by women.
• 17% of works in galleries are by women.
• 26% of artists reviewed in art periodicals are women.
• Women artists' income is 30% that of male artists'.
• 30% of Guggenheim grants go to women.
• 25% of $25,000 NEA grants go to women.

The numbers go on and on and on.... except maybe in basket weaving, similar numbers are reflected in all areas of the arts as well as in all areas of arts grants and support. Obviously by the number of women artists getting degrees in the arts, there are a large percentage of dedicated women artists in our society. Oh, and by the way - if you throw race into the mix, for example black female authors or painters and the numbers completely nosedive. 

These statistics demand some hard questions. Is it because of what women paint, write, how they create? Does gender choices in subject matter affect "acceptability" or popularity?
Are they less talented in the arts than their male counterparts? 
What could possibly account for a continued bias in male versus female created art?


Now to be fair, if the majority of women are painting babies, puppies and ballet dancers and flowers - yeah, they're not going to get the gallery space and recognition of male artists who are painting contemporary art or even landscapes. Cute and art don't necessarily mix in the fine art world. But But we're not talking hobby artists - we're looking at the serious artists who are actively making a living, or trying to, with their art. They are educated artists, passionately pursuing their craft. So why can't they get equal recognition? 


Jerry Saltz said, while criticizing MoMa for it's lack of representation of female artists in its collection: "Art should be bought on merit, not the sex of the artist. The sex of the artist is the last thing on my mind when I'm looking at good art."  To be fair, MoMa has heard the outcry over the past decade and is featuring a major exhibition of female photographers, as well as releasing a book this month, "Modern Woman," about women artists. http://www.artbook.com/9780870707711.html
Glad to know someone is taking the problem seriously.


If you think this is all hyperbole and female hysteria... name five nationally recognized female visual artists in the United States. The majority of people will probably name Georgia O'Keefe, maybe even Frida Kahlo (a Mexican artist) if they remember any female artists at all... but beyond that... not so much unless they happen to follow particular female artists works. It certainly doesn't come from encountering it in school or mainstream media. 
REF Story: http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/05/17/female_filmmakers/


Top 50 Female Visual Artists According to Someone: http://www.faqs.org/shareranks/811,50-Female-Visual-Artists

Lucy Hunnicutt - Art Shown in Story: http://www.southernbreeze.net/tour152.htm

BOOK GIVE AWAY: Author Teresa Roberts Logan is sending me an extra copy of her illustrated book "The Older i Get, The Less i Care" (you can find out more here: http://www.laughingredhead.com/links.html. Sooooo - in keeping with celebrating women artists, i'll be giving away a copy today on the DAMage Report on Hollywood Outlaw Radio at 2pm PST/5pm EST (http://www.horadio.com). You gotta listen to find out how to win it. I also recommend adding the DAMage Report facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/thedamagereport

DAMage Report - Faking It

One of the more popular and memorable stories I did earlier this year included mention of a performance art piece called "The Rape Tunnel." (http://lakotadamagereport.blogspot.com/2010/01/wtfart-line-between-snake-oil-and-art.html)

It turns out that the concept was a hoax designed to generate dialog. Not about rape but about contemporary art. Now art should generate dialog, but what about non-art or art that isn't. Does this make the hoax itself art? Or just viral marketing?

It interesting that psychologists had a field day with this one.
The artist, the galleries, the project were all fictional. But it is interesting to note that for a cursory check the designers of this hoax had photos online of the artist, of the tunnel and the multiple stories published about the topic lent it immediate validity... at least for the short term. (On a side note - it is also interesting that when doing research we tend to rely maybe a bit too heavily on google to find our facts, not taking in account lag time for links to related stories. If google finds it, it must be real, right?)

Hoaxes and art are age old partners.

In 1998, William Boyd published a biography about american artist Nat Tate. Gore Vidal, John Richardson (Picasso's biographer), and David Bowie all participated in the elaborate ruse. One of the participants said "We were very amused that people kept saying 'Yes, I've heard of him'. There is a willingness not to appear foolish." The entire project was apparently a satire aimed at poking fun at the New York art scene.

Another was the abstract artist phenomenon Marla Olmstead - a four year old who created a media frenzy in the art world. Turns out daddy may have given her a little bit of help.

This one is one of my favorites, dating from 1064: "previously unknown avant-garde French artist Pierre Brassau exhibited at an art show in Goteborg, Sweden. Art critics from Swedish papers praised the works. Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer." Pierre was a chimp.

Oh and that blood art with the girl aborting herself: "Aliza Shvarts, a Yale art student, proclaimed she'd been working on a project by repeatedly impregnating herself, self-aborting, and then planned to encase the remnants of the abortions in a glass cube as "art." It made the blog rounds after being reported in the Yale student newspaper, and then made the jump to the mainstream media before she admitted the project was "creative fiction" intended to stir debate."

The excuse "used to create debate or dialog" seems to be the safety net everyone is using with these hoaxes. And what exactly is the difference between a lie and a hoax? If you lie while laughing behind your hand, it's a hoax? Granted, some media such as the Onion or paraody shows play off the fictional but then they don't pretend that what they are serving up is real. The need for an artist and for media to create "stories" or promotional opportunities is a Pandora's box. Don't get me wrong - I have a great sense of humor and i love a practical joke. However, as a society, if we are lied to enough, we become jaded and disbelieving, to the point where we may dismiss without thought anything that falls outside the "normal/acceptable" box. True in life and true in art, the lessons of the boy who cried wolf (also know as balloon boy) need to be tattooed on the heads of some idiots.

So can i lose the nickname "Rape Tunnel" Phillips now?

Ref Stories: http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2009/09/about_that_rape_tunnel_did_art.php
and just for fun:
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2009/09/artlurker_explains_rape_tunnel.php
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/01/im_building_a_rape_tunnel.html
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/enter-at-your-own-risk-rape-tunnel-turns-art-hoax/

Museum of Art Hoaxes: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/display/category/art/

DAMage Report Today on Hollywood Outlaw Radio (horadio.com) at 2pm PST/5pm EST

DAMage Report - The only good artist is a dead artist

The only good artist is a dead artist. At least that is what some people believe as indicated by what they will spend on original artwork. Once you die your value increases a hundred or even a thousand fold ... assuming of course that you were a halfway talented and collectible artist.

A 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso sold Tuesday night in New York for $106.5 million dollars. This is a new world record auction price for a work of art. The price for Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (or Nude, Green Leaves and Bust for those of us that butcher the french language) had been estimated at around $70 million  before the sale. The painting was purchased by the Brodys in 1950 for $17,000. I suck at math - what kind of return on investment is that anyway? Something like a bazillion percent? You know Pablo is probably looking up from that special place reserved in hell for artists, yelling "WTF!"


The most expensive private sale was Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948, which sold for $140 million in 2006. He died at age 44 in 1956. 


According to the experts that sit around calculating this stuff, "dead artists tend to retain their value better than living ones. Some insurance companies have an automatic increase of the insured value of items if an artist dies.” It makes you wonder exactly how many famous artists had contracts taken out on them by impatient  collectors who were afraid they would die before the artist did. 


Before the Economy decided to nose dive and took everyone including the art market down, there was some interest in the fact that certain living artists were pulling in some major bucks at auctions. Contemporary artists Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons became symbols of speculation when prices for their work soared 175% between 2000 and 2008. But then the bubble burst, especially for the contemporary art market, which experienced a fall of about 40% as speculative bidders vanished. Let's hope Hirst and Koons had stuffed their  easels with some cash for a rainy day, because it is unlikely that living artists will experience that potential return on their creations... at least while they're alive.... anytime soon.


Not to be morbid but do you think the people holding onto Frank Frazetta originals are secretly rubbing their hands together and calculating how much profit they just made? There is definitely something goulish about the fact that an artist will never TRULY know the worth of their work, because they rarely achieve their pinnacle of success until they're six feet under. Doesn't do them a damn bit of good then. No wonder artists have a rep for being nutcases. We're never truly appreciated until we're dead. 


Here's a thought to make it a bit more fair on the artist, who after all poured their soul into creating these great works of art: they need to tack on a death tax to their paintings when they sell them to collectors. It could be  a projected percentage of value increase applied. Example: The price of the painting is $500 with a projected 1000% value death tax applied at a calculation of 100 years and.... oh nevermind - i suck at math. No wonder artists starve.


http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2010-05-10/dead-artists-are-still-a-better-bet-than-living-ones

Also a nod of respect and sorrow at the passing of artist Frank Frazetta on Monday night. He was considered the grandfather of fantasy art. If you don't recognize the name, I promise, you'll recognize the art. He did the covers of the Conan novels as well as the gorgeous busty women chained to stone pillars that inspired more than one lusty male... and a few females as well,  I'm sure. I have yet to encounter an artist who didn't appreciate his wonderful illustrations. Many of us were influenced by him on some level - whether by the fire of his imagination or his exquisite use of light and color. His passing is a great loss to the art world.

DAMage Report - Blood, paint and tears

The Holocaust has been portrayed for generations as an event so unfathomably unlike any other that it is indescribable.

How do you convey an experience that is so horrific that simply speaking about it can never adequately express the pain, the terror, the trauma?
You use art.
Almost 300 survivors of the Holocaust have provided paintings, drawings, sculptures, video and photographs to communicate through the medium of art, their experiences. The first exhibition of survivor art of this scale “Virtues of Memory: Six Decades of Holocaust Survivors’ Creativity” features pieces from 1945 through the present day and gives a vision of the Holocaust through the eyes of survivors.

In ten to fifteen years there will be no survivors left alive. All we will have for future generations to understand THEIR experiences are their words... and their art. Humans are visual creatures. Often the real power to comprehension is via that medium.

Most images of the Holocaust until now have come from black and white photographs taken by the Nazis, and from movies imagined and interpreted by film-makers. The exhibition, which will be on view for a year, shows the "real" and personal side of the Holocaust from the viewpoint of those who were there, communicated through art with blood, paint and tears.

Curator Yehudit Shendar points out “The exhibition tries to explore for the first time how survivors actually remember a place we too often call indescribable. It is not only describable, it is describable in very vivid colors. A lot of people look at these pictures and say 'It's too gruesome to look, well, it was too gruesome to live."

One of the true values of art - it provides us with a means to understand things outside our scope of experience. All art, whether it is paintings, photographs, movies, performances, stories shows us a view of the world, and the human condition, that is born through the experiences and minds of others. Without art, we are blind. Without art, we experience nothing except that which we come in direct contact with. Without art, we are lost in ignorance.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aUn3iV10gwO0

Additional art about the holocaust:http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/holocaust/art.htm


LAtalkRadio.com - DAMage Report with Johnny DAM and the crew at 2pm PST. 

DAMage Report - Shut Your Mouth and Close Your Eyes - Censorship

Artist Jaesun Duggan had the joy of discovering his oil paintings in the Norfolk Public Library, as part of a display by the Franklin Art Association, were taken down and placed in a closet by a religious group that meets in the library.

The congregation for Providence Baptist Church, which holds Sunday morning services in the library, objected to the nature and deemed them unsuitable for their children. "One of the paintings, "Loa Offering," depicts red-shrouded skeletons. The other, "Dream Adrift In a Sea of Abyss," features a doll's head with a flower sticking out of it."


The religious group found the paintings objectionable and removed them, sticking them in a closet. While meeting in a public place. Uh-huh. Censorship and imposing your values on others doesn't get much more obvious than that. If the group wants to control what their members see and don't see (hello, can you say cult) then they should NOT be meeting in a public space. The artist naturally was a bit torqued. 


Censorship is a subjective topic. What is and isn't appropriate is often open to interpretation, dependent on a person or society's beliefs and self-image. Is censorship EVER appropriate? Sure. There are certain things that are and never will be deemed acceptable by common sense and humane morales. Anything that victimizes another such as child pornography, murder, abuse, racism - these are all things that most of us agree are unacceptable. The common denominator being that they involve one or more attacking a person or specific group that they have targeted. The sticky-wicket comes when censorship is applied outside the areas of criminal behavior. And it is. Often.Then censorship becomes an subjective imposing of what is and is not appropriate based not on accepted criminal behavior but on personal preference.  The definition of  what is “appropriate” varies depending on one’s religious, moral, ethical, and cultural background. 

A censor denies an individual's right to know, access, and come to their own conclusions on a topic. There really is only one purpose for any form of censorship: to enforce ignorance about a targeted topic. It is most often an abused tool used by those imposing their own ideas on others.


Nudity in art is one of the quickest visuals censored and has the highest double-standard. What is and isn't porn is subjective. Subjective equals personal opinion. What is and isn't appropriate for children is also subjective to a degree. A painting of bare booty should not automatically get the "OMG it's porn" stamp. We are getting ridiculous with our censorship bans in this society and allowing the uptight puritanical views of one or two people (or a gossipy clutch of hens) to dictate what we are and are not allowed to view and enjoy. 


I have found out what it is like to be silenced, my voice taken away and my right to share my ideas tossed in the closet. It is unbelievably frustrating.


Answer me this - Except for censorship of anything criminal in nature, what gives any person the right to dictate to others what they can and cannot look at, read, enjoy, and say - based on what they think is inappropriate? 

We need only allow a little censorship to become acceptable and before we have realized it, those little bricks of discrimination will become the blank wall that divides us from the real beauty of our True individual nature and ultimately ourselves. - Jaesun Duggan 

REF: http://sunchronicle.com/articles/2010/03/13/news/7092615.txt

Yesterday's Damage Report Story and recent art

AMage Report - Nudity and Art 
Sex, religion, and politics - three fundamental topics guaranteed to provoke most people to a response. Given that fact, it isn't surprising that artists have often explored them... with varied degrees of success, but almost always gendering some response from the audience. Sometimes, any response- even a negative one is all that is required.One of the jobs artists have in society is to wake people up from complacency, get them to think, churn up that grey stuff called a brain.

Some artists do that by pushing the envelope and courting controversy with fanatical passion. We need people like this in society. Whether we agree with their vision or not, we all need to have our eyes and emotions opened up periodically.

Marina Abramovic is an internationally renown performance artist, now in her 60s, who has incorporated some very drastic acts into her performance art over the years. These include stabbing herself, brushing her hair until her scalp bled while chanting "Art is beautiful, Artist must be beautiful" and inviting an audience to use instruments on her body in any way they chose... including a gun.

Some of her pieces are currently being reinacted by performance artists she has selected at MOMA. She is also present, sitting silently at a small table and staring down visitors who sit across from her.
The exhibit has stirred some controversy, not because of the history of her work, which she purposely pushed the edge on to make points about politics, war and sexuality, but because of the live nudes used in the performances. Visitors are immediately made uncomfortable as they have to squeeze past two nudes to enter the exhibit. It beautifully reinforces the concept that we like to keep a distance and detachement from those things that make us uncomfortable. As a society we have equated nudity, even in art, with pornography so consistently, that for most having to brush past a nude stranger - even though there is nothing sexual in their positioning - is unbearable. It isn't a matter of what is proper that evokes discomfort, but a matter of being forced outside our normal comfort zone.

Hopefully the show will give some visitors pause and make them consider WHY they are uncomfortable. Because being pushed out of the normal box can be a healthy, enlightening experience if it isn't dismissed out of knee-jerk fear.

"The Artist is Present" will be running at the MoMA through May 31st; it includes five of the ninety pieces she has created since 1969.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aQS8EmDpQeYQ
Photos: http://gothamist.com/2010/03/15/marina.php?gallery0Pic=2
Video: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/marinaabramovic/
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DAMage Report - WTF'art?

Today's Arts Day article can be viewed here or on my FB fanpage (Bottom left of this blog.)
http://lakotadamagereport.blogspot.com/2010/01/wtfart-line-between-snake-oil-and-art.html

DAMage Report Link to Today's Article

Arts Day Topic Link - When Barbie Was Bad.
http://lakotadamagereport.blogspot.com/2010/01/damage-report-when-barbie-was-bad.html

On an aside - some of you blog followers will remember the antics of Lakota Princess - who could be very, very bad. I dedicate today's topic to y'all. Heh.

Showtime today at 2pm PST/ 5pm EST / 10pm GMT

What are the odds?

I know y'all just love hearing about the odd things that happen to me. Come on - you know you do. I'm like this magnet for bizarre and funny incidents.

This one is truly strange because come on... what are the odds... really.

I was in the airport yesterday and have just passed thru the security check. A guard led me to a chair so i could put my boots back on, then asked if i was the lead singer for the band that had just passed through. Umm- yeah, like I totally have that rockstar sheen to me. Heh. ~eyeroll~ I figured the guard was being funny so I laughed and  thanked him for the compliment. He shook his head and insisted that he recognized me. He said he had a photographic memory and wanted to know what i did. To myself I'm thinking - let's not piss off the security guard and miss the flight home, so I told him I'm an artist, writer and do a weekly radio show. He got all excited and said an LA radio show was where he recognized me from. Ummm... wow. Now to figure out where he saw my picture associated with the show. I wonder if he is one of Johnny's FB friends. I wish i'd thought to ask. I was just a bit too startled. :D

DAMage Report - Arts Day today

Today's article posted here and on facebook.
http://lakotadamagereport.blogspot.com/2009/12/damage-report-one-hand-lifts-you-up-and.html

on the air 2pm pst / 5pm est
at LAtalkRadio.com - Channel 1

Moronic Ox Literary Arts and Cultural Journal - DAMage Pickup

The Moronic Ox re-published yesterday's story from the radio show. (Yay!!! - thanks David!)
Check it out here! 
http://www.moronicox.com/red-hat-lawsuit-phillips.html

DAMAge Report for Dec. 2, 2009

http://lakotadamagereport.blogspot.com/2009/12/damage-report-character-assassination.html

Catch the show today at http://www.latalkradio.com at 2pm PST, 5pm EST and 10pm GMT.

DAMage Report - Arts Day Article Link

http://lakotadamagereport.blogspot.com/2009/11/damage-report-when-does-it-become-no.html

Please click on the link above to read today's topic. I've created a blog just for the articles for those interested in following the show.

Join me today on the DAMage Report News Show at www.LAtalkRadio.com - 2pm PST/5pm EST/ 10pm GMT. Topic today is about the $43 million dollar Warhol - is it still art or just an investment stored in a safe?

DAMage Report - When Art Imitates Art

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110405053.html

The 1963 painting by Alma Thomas (to the right) is remarkably similar to a 1953 piece by Matisse (below it) and is causing an uproar of controversy on the topic of art and plagiarism. The painting was originally among the works selected by the Obamas to hang in the White House, but was returned - either due to the controversy or because it really didn't match the sofa. The reasons really are inconsequential. What is of interest are the heated debates over the differences between tribute art and outright theft of concept and/or visuals.

It is true that art imitates life. It is also true that in one way, shape, or form, art also imitates art. It can't be helped. Artists ARE influenced in their ideas and their forms of expression.

Picasso said "the bad artists imitate, the great artists steal."

In other words, to steal an idea you have to own it and make it your own.

To imitate, you merely need to copy it and put nothing of yourself into it.

On one hand, Alma's "Watusi" is an almost exact replica of Matisse's "L'escargot" with palette changed and shapes rearranged. On the other hand, it is well documented that Alma created the painting as a tribute, using it as a study of Matisse's techniques. She never hid the fact that it was directly influenced. Furthermore, her study of this particular work was apparently a turning point in her art. Everything that followed reflected the impact of Matisse on her paintings/concepts/approach. As Tilly Greene remarked yesterday, it would have been MORE interesting to see Alma take the influence to another level, rather than just remake Matisse's composition. But it should be duly noted that Alma probably had no idea that her painting would one day hang in the Hirshhorn Museum and be considered one of the great works of American art.

I've often wondered if Picasso and Matisse would roll over in their graves knowing that their napkin drawings are considered fine works of art. Nawwww - Picasso would love it, the arrogant old bastard!

The major difference between plagiarism and tribute seems to be credit given where credit is due. Trying to pass off copies of someone else's original concepts and work as your own is plagiarism, pure and simple. Utilizing the ideas and visuals of a "master" artist to create something new, or to study technique is tribute. All art is an imitation in one form or another, whether it is an imitation of something seen or an expression of an idea born within the mind of the artist. It is the process of communicating the ideas, the visions, the exploration that creates the art in whatever genre the artist chooses to express themselves in.

Does Watusi deserve to be considered a great work of art, given that it is a tribute piece? It depends on who you talk to. Personally I think it is confusing and blurs the already subjective lines of what constitutes "masterful" art - art that rates hanging in the top museums of the world. Does Alma Thomas deserve the scathing disregard for her work that is currently being bandied about? Absolutely not. However, on the bright side - more people now know her name and have looked at her paintings. Bad P.R. is better than no P.R. type thing.

Art is once again the heated topic of discussion - replacing whatever was on television last night as the topic of choice.

Well, for some people anyway.

DAMage Research - Plagarism or Tribute?

http://flavorwire.com/48319/alma-thomas-watusi-gets-the-white-house-kibosh

The 1963 painting by Alma Thomas (to the right) is extremely similar to a 1953 piece by Matisse (below).

it would be interesting to find out what the Hirshhorn Museum paid for Watusi.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110405053.html

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.

Elaborations on earlier artists' work, even full appropriation, have been common practice in art for hundreds of years. Artists long learned their craft by copying the works of older masters; even among high artists, it was standard.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_1_90/ai_82012872/

the 73-year-old artist found herself staring at the hollyhock shadows she had known her entire life and calculating

how to use them in her paintings. A year earlier, she had seen the late Matisse cutouts at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Matisse's work had prompted her to paint an acrylic-on-canvas version of his collage The Snail (1953), in which nearly all the original colors were reversed. Thomas named her painting Watusi (Hard Edge), after Chubby Checker's dance hit "The Watusi." As well as marrying high modernism with the popular culture of black America--then entering the American mainstream--the title she chose noted Matisse's debt to African art.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Decorating-the-White-House-with-Smithsonian-Art.html?c=y&page=9

Pablo Picasso that, "the bad artists imitate, the great artists steal." Thomas' work here is a transformation of the Matisse painting. There is power in the decision to reverse colors and to change perspective from "L'escargot,"giving "Watusi" integrity to stand on its own as a distinctive piece.

**************************

http://venetianred.net/2009/10/27/alma-thomas-on-the-shoulders-of-giants/

illegitimate copying is real. Both Richard Prince (See VR’s “Prince of Pilfer”) and Jeff Koons have been sued by photographers for incorporating copyrighted work into their own. Koons lost the Rogers v. Koons case, but won a more recent suit under the “fair use” doctrine. Readers will remember that earlier this year Damien Hirst threatened to sue a 16-year-old over his use of an image of Hirst’s diamond-incrusted skull, in the process demanding royalties.

Thomas always credited Matisse for the inspiration that produced Watusi. It is obvious that the work launched her on a journey of artistic discovery that produced her unique and forward-looking (if not radical) mosaic style.

To assert that Thomas was “simply copying” Matisse would be to deny the rich and varied underpinnings of her work. Thomas was deeply impressed by the colors and patterns of the natural world around her.

**Credit to Venetian Red Contributors Christine Cariati and Liz Hager for excellent arguments and research