There's this one, by Beau Stanton, which is attacked because the rays emanating from the head remind some people of the Japanese imperial battle flag, and which the L.A. school district plans to paint over.
And this one, by Shepard Fairey (who's famous for those Obama "Hope" posters) which depicts Robert F. Kennedy.
Now, Shepard Fairey is using "the only leverage I have" and saying that if Stanton's mural is painted over, he demands that his own RFK mural be painted over.
The Stanton mural is not on the theme of Japan or Korea. It's a painting of Ava Gardner!
Fairey said it’s important for the school district to understand that it made a poor decision in succumbing to what it apparently considered to be the path of least resistance. The artist said he wants to create and encourage some counter-resistance.
His Kennedy mural is arguably one of the school’s defining visual elements. It is on an outside wall of the entrance to the library, which is built on the footprint of the Ambassador Hotel ballroom where Kennedy gave his last speech, in 1968. Moments later, an assassin fatally shot the presidential candidate in a pantry area next to the kitchen....
“I have talked to a teacher from RFK about where the students stand, and they overwhelmingly want the mural to stay,” Fairey wrote to [school board President Monica Garcia, who represents Koreatown]. “If Beau’s mural is removed I will reach out to students to have them take part in my mural being painted over as a symbol of the sacrifices that are sometimes necessary to stand up for important principles."...
“What [Stanton] has in his mural is nothing close to the battle flag. It’s not the same color scheme. It’s not the same focal element. It’s stupid to me. I thought that cooler heads would prevail because this is absurd.”The school district's senior regional administrator, Roberto Martinez, has compared the Stanton mural to Confederate statues and argued that, in both cases, the value of the art doesn't outweigh the offense to people. Fairey says:
“I’m from the South,” Fairey said. “I know that loving the Confederacy is at best a nostalgia for some sort of rebellious identity that probably never existed except as fantasy, or at worst it’s coded racism. The comparison of the mural to Confederate statues is asinine.”...Confederate statues do display respect for the Confederacy, but I don't think anyone believes that the sun rays in the Ava Gardner mural were intended to display respect for the WWII Japanese.
Sun rays are a common element in Stanton’s work, and Fairey has used them, too. Critics of the decision have pointed out that it could be an aesthetic, ethical and logistical quagmire to begin purging representations of sun rays from all or parts of Los Angeles.They want to get rid of the sun!
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I think it is universally true across the United States that public school administrators are dim bulbs to begin with. Add in their natural liberal bias and all of this is expected.
If it weren't for identity politics, the Democrats would have NO politics.
From Althouse's posts about the chaos in Madison public schools, the above is a fair conclusion.
Good for Fairey.
Wow. Kudos to Fairey.
The fundamental problem is that schools of higher education are enrolling too many people who cannot and will not read at those schools' levels. Those students are assigned to read texts that they cannot and will not read.
Such students did not really read their high-school textbooks, and they are not about to read their college textbooks either. And so the overwhelming majority of such students will fail academically, long before they graduate.
The school administrations that made these foolish enrollment decisions then need to explain these large numbers of academic failures. Their explanations are that such students are so offended by stuff on campus that they cannot study.
The non-reading students are offended by statues, paintings, building names, Halloween costumes, and fraternity boys wearing sombreros at fraternity parties. All that offensive stuff is preventing non-readers from succeeding at schools of higher education.
"They want to get rid of the sun!"
They think they can scorch the earth all by themselves.
I will say, the sunburst element in Stanton's mural is pretty ugly.
Maybe he could paint the background white and add four black trigrams.
"Moments later, an assassin fatally shot the presidential candidate in a pantry area next to the kitchen...."
Likely our first taste of Palestinian terrorism. Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy because of Kennedy's support of Israel.
Not that the LameStream Media© would tell you that....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan
Is there a productive means to an end with the eternally offended?
Here's a great article about the utility of white-bashing.
Read that article. Basically liberals are teaching our young people to see racism, even when it's not there. And it's perceived by these young people that they can please authorities by fighting racism. And so that's what they do.
The kids who are "upset" about this "racist art" are not upset at all. It's manufactured emotional upset to manipulate the authorities of the school and get their approval. See? I'm a good student! And if the authorities don't like what the kids are doing, then the kids get confused or even upset for real.
It's like a cat bringing a dead mouse for a gift. The kids want approval from their racism-seeking elders. And the "adults" in the room are like some crazy cat-lady. "Oh! You brought me a dead mouse! That's wonderful!" They can't be honest because they are in some weird symbiotic relationship with the ignorant.
Of course the cat is blameless. The kids are ignorant because the teachers have made them that way. They are indoctrinated as opposed to free thinkers.
This is shameful and kudos to Fairey for making a stink about it.
Good for Fairey. His HOPE was unoriginal naive Soviet-type art, but it spawned numerous spoof-memes that mocked He Who Shall Not Be Mocked, so that was valuable. His is a principled stance, though doubt he has the power to compel the school to paint over his work. Ironic since this kerfuffle is about power. The power to make other people do what you want, even when contrived and absurd -- covering up a painting of the sun's rays (more power!) because someone else 75 years ago used it as a powerful symbol of conquest.
Madness is always lurking about...
Saint Croix said...
Basically liberals are teaching our young people to see racism, even when it's not there.
and the rest of everything you said is 100% right on.
Confederate statues do display respect for the Confederacy, but I don't think anyone believes that the sun rays in the Ava Gardner mural were intended to display respect for the WWII Japanese.
I'm sure the people who manufactured and co-ordinated the Confederate Statue Outrage, and their Red Guard rank-and-file, are *totally* interested in a rational exchange of views on this next outrage on the never-ending outrage schedule. It's just a matter of demonstrating logically how a Confederate statue is not like a portrait of Ava Gardner, and the nonsense will stop, right?
The school districts senior regional administrator [airs his imbecilic opinion...]
Well, this is what you get when stupid people get any kind of power, and not-so-stupid people are still stupid enough to not understand what the stupid people (or their not-so-stupid manipulators) are really doing.
"His is a principled stance, though doubt he has the power to compel the school to paint over his work."
Yes, but the protesters against the Stanton mural had no power to compel. They just won by making acceding to them feel like the path of least resistance. Fairey is presenting the idea that one can beat that, even without the power to compel, simply by putting up resistance on that path. Then where to the path-of-least-resistance weasels go?
Just change the red rays to green.
Confederate statues do display respect for the Confederacy,
More for the men who fought at great risk and died to stop invasion. Big difference.
On another blogged I commented that as the pace of change changes and gets ever faster it will be increasingly delicious to watch as the creative energies of generations will be torn down before their very eyes - not even waiting until the acceptance that comes with old age to watch it happen.
This process will cease to be inter-generational and will become intra-generational, in the sense that said generation will watch their creative energies torn down - possibly many times - even within their own cohort, possibly within a decade or less.
I accede to Fairey's argument, yet I have no sympathy. His politics and his creative energies were useful to a man, an administration, and a political activist ethos which now seeks to unthing something, something close enough to give him pause.
Now he knows what that pause feels like. I hope a photographer is present in a few decades to capture his expression as he gazes upon monolithic soviet-style blandness...blandness devoid of the very soviet style hero-portrait he created. This is what happens when you give a destructive force a creative cloak to wear.
I have no sympathy.
Wow, I'm a little shocked. That first mural is not even remotely close to being even vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese battle flag. The people who judged it so must be the same people who see a black person in every cartoon monkey.
Not many statues of Jefferson Davis, except for the one in the US Capitol.
Destroying history and art for political reasons is what Communists do.
Also in the annals of taking offense, yesterday I learned that the acronym for Domain Driven Design, DDD is offensive because it might make people think about breasts and porn. The same source stated that the term craftsmanship was unacceptable. We are living in a deeply stupid age.
It's a painting of Ava Gardner!
That is an excellent reason for replacing it with a portrait of Arnold Ziffel.
I hope taxpayers didn't pay for any of this stuff.
The painting does immediately bring to mind the Japanese flag. That's power of branding.
Fairey said it’s important for the school district to understand that it made a poor decision in succumbing to what it apparently considered to be the path of least resistance.
The real lesson: Don't let the path of least resistance be mistaken for taking a principled stand.
Principled stands require taking an actual stand.
Yes, but the protesters against the Stanton mural had no power to compel. They just won by making acceding to them feel like the path of least resistance. Fairey is presenting the idea that one can beat that, even without the power to compel, simply by putting up resistance on that path. Then where to the path-of-least-resistance weasels go?
Under that line of thought maybe a bunch of Hollywood actors could boycott the Oscars and force them to cancel the show until the Twitter crybullies started to behave more like adults.
Yeah, never happen I know.
Are those live plants on the right? Weird shit.
Or was it a manufactured triggering of Korean emigres proxy memories of Japanese abuses in WWII?
We don't put swastikas on public buildings.
What idiot approved the rays in Koreatown in the first place?
What I find even more astounding is that people were trying to argue with her when the correct response is obviously to tell her that she is a moron and then ignore whatever she has to say on anything else.
The image doesn't look much like Ava Gardner either. It's important to teach our children about Ava Gardner. We need a worthier image of her.
We don't put swastikas on public buildings.
Actually, in the US there are plenty of public buildings with swastikas on them. They were erected pre-WWII. I've seen a US Army shoulder patch from 1939 that had a swastika on it. Bet they changed that in a hurry. In Asia reverse swastikas are on Buddhist temples.
Settle down Koreatown. The good guys won.
I do agree that the mural is very, very ugly. Covering it up on purely aesthetic grounds would be acceptable.
"As soon as we saw that message, we knew it couldn’t stay up," said Student Government Vice President Ethan Smith.
I think they tore down the statues of Lenin and Stalin because nearly everybody was agreed that those statues were an affront. Is there that same kind of critical mass that agrees that the Stanton portrait is some kind of Japanese battle flag? Maybe they could blunt their he impact by having a fearless girl statue placed in front of the mural.
This ploy only works if the people who hate the AG mural are great fans of RFK. The activists of Koreatown could double down and paint over both of them.
Hate speech:
"I feel like Western civilization is the greatest thing that has happened to this species, and that its basic principles, and the very identity of the West, is under attack in the Academy, the Media, and cosmopolitan American culture."
Not hate speech:
"Time to wreck this little shit. The irony of his rant is that once we make his ass famous for this, he will never accomplish anything, his white male-ness notwithstanding…Columbia should expel him. His future should be bleak…Good luck Chip… "
Destroying history and art for political reasons is what Communists do.
So do Muslims, and for the same exact reasons...
"Maybe they could blunt their he impact by having a fearless girl statue placed in front of the mural."
Or a full scale replica of Fat Man.
The Russians erected a six ton bronze bust of Karl Marx in some small East German town. After the Soviets left, the people there wanted to remove the statue but the cost of removing it was far too expensive. So there it sits. A monument to the implacability of the past......I think the Confederacy is too embedded in our history to ever be removed.
The same source stated that the term craftsmanship was unacceptable.
To be replaced by craftpersonship no doubt?
Key word in all this? “ Asinine”
I'm glad to hear the artist standing up to the perpetually aggrieved.
OT: Why I LOVE Sarah Sanders.
This artist is trying to communicate an important message: Ava Gardner was a Jap spy, sapping the essential bodily fluids of many a military-aged young American man in the 40s. No doubt in league with Marlena Dietrich. Gina Lollobrigida was late to the party, but the Axis was infiltrating Hollywood SAG even as their erstwhile Communist allies were writing and directing scripts.
It's not about the painting or even the statue. It's creation of a point of leverage to grind competing interests.
It'll stay. For now.
"Following Fairey's intervention and the subsequent media attention, the school district revisited the issue and put plans to cover Stanton's mural on hold.
Eugene Hernandez, an administrator of operations for the district, sent a message to stakeholders Monday that said, in part, that the district will "not be taking immediate action on the mural at this time."
https://laist.com/2018/12/17/this_controversial_mural_at_a_school_in_koreatown_will_stay_up_after_all.php
so, if i make a mural of Ava Gardener, with a background of burning crosses and swastikas; that would be FINE; on account of because it was a mural of Ava Gardener?
"They want to get rid of the sun!"
And there go most of the surviving Art Deco buildings in the USA.
Other than perhaps Egyptian motifs, is there any more common "deco" on these buildings than sunbursts?
So, it's Year Zero: destroy everything, all must be built anew.
Wouldn't a mural featuring Marilyn Monroe be a better way to honor the memory of RFK?
Japan has been an ally of the USA for decades.
with a background of burning crosses and swastikas
That's not a common artistic convention. Sunbursts are.
https://binged.it/2Gn7bke
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I have no idea what this is about, came across in my search.
https://binged.it/2SYI4Wz
Obviously she is some sort of apologist for Imperial Japan Atrocities.
If Stanton had painted Eva Gardner with a background of reminiscent of an American flag, somebody would be offended and want it taken down.
The library has a wired vibe. Do they have a brass disk on the floor at the exact spot where Bobby took the rounds or where Sirhan took his shot? Or are those holy places underneath a potted plant unknown to the true believer.
The Federal Building and United States Courthouse, built in 1930, is a historic landmark located at 421 Gold Avenue SW - It has swastikas on the building - they are a Tribal symbol here in the SW.
The State of Arizona has had this design on its official state flag for 101 years. It is a reference to the sunset.
But let's keep that a secret.
Bravo.
Hey, this is easy. Let's target Nazi-Lover Philip Johnson's buildings for tear-down. Starting with Nazi-Lover Trump's International Hotel and Tower in NYC.
Don't let acceding to their demands be the path of least resistance.
Fairey is a unique case.
He is wielding the "power" to hold his own art "hostage" to block that "path of least resistance".
But in most cases the weasels seeking the "path of least resistance" pave it with their ability to hold "hostage" those who might block that path.
Truth be told, the mural first reminded me of the musical "South Pacific".
The Japanese flag was created in 1868 during the Meiji Restoration. Both the Army and Navy used it, although the Navy's sun was slightly off center. This flag is still in use by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces.
Libruls policing themselves on PC overreach... this tyme
Pretty much all the arguments have been made in this list. The mural's fugley but it should stay. I despite Fairley but this time he made a good call, so good on him.
And the only thing worse than Illinois Nazis are Control-Lefties.
Thusly spake the BBC:
Ghana Foreign Ministry remove Mahatma Gandhi statue from University campus afta protests say he be 'racist'
"Dem start plus online protest around 2016 wen former India former president Pranab Mukherjee outdoor am as global peace icon for University of Ghana campus top.
Di lecturers argue say some of Gandhi en writings dey suggest say Indians be 'infinitely superior' to black Africans, so dem no want see en statue for campus."
"Wow, I'm a little shocked. That first mural is not even remotely close to being even vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese battle flag. "
Even if it is, who really cares outside of a vocal and touched minority?
"They want to get rid of the sun!"
That will certainly help with global warming.
Bob from Alhambra
"Confederate statues do display respect for the Confederacy, but I don't think anyone believes that the sun rays in the Ava Gardner mural were intended to display respect for the WWII Japanese."
Hmmmm... so we agree, then, that the desire to take down Confederate statues is not motivated by the pain that certain persons claim to feel because of their presence, but rather by their desire to inflict pain upon other persons by taking them down.
What's the deal with the blue fish-monkey hanging on Ava's ear?
Statues of Lenin and Marx should remain as mute reminders of the horrors their philosophies wrought.
The Mao posters had to go, though...
"If it weren't for identity politics, the Democrats would have NO politics."
The WPP electorate is 90% white, their congressional delegation is nearly 100% white (30 newly elected GOPers in Congress, 29 white men and 1 white woman), the Trump Admin is 100& white, 105 of 106 White House interns are white.
The Dem electorate is 40 percent white, while African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists vote for Dems in proportions of 60 to 90 percent.
I would appreciate it if someone could explain the term "identity politics," because I've never seen it explained, and when it is applied as it was above its meaning is not obvious.
Great Walker Brothers video.
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