From "Amy Sherald Cancels Her Smithsonian Show, Citing Censorship/The artist said that she made the decision after she said she learned that her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty might be removed to avoid provoking President Trump" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see photos of the paintings).
Whatever you think of the painting — "Tranforming Liberty" — it really is an awful idea to replace it with a video that included people critiquing the artist's point of view. Show the artist. She has a point of view. If you don't admire her, don't give her a show. But don't weave in the critics! They're not even art critics as far as I can tell. They just seem to be discordant voices about the visibility of trans people. Ridiculous! Embarrassing! Let the people see the paintings as painted and talk about them amongst themselves or write about them in social media or, as critics, in traditional media. Don't muck up the show!
As for the share of blame that belongs to Trump...
[Last March, Trump] issued an executive order that asserted that the country had “witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history” by the institution. He argued that the Smithsonian had “in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” The administration’s review has been particularly focused on the Portrait Gallery and in May, Mr. Trump announced on social media that he was firing its director, Kim Sajet, for what the White House characterized as being partisan and “a strong supporter of D.E.I.”...
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92 comments:
So she’s withdrawn it. That may very well be another “FIRST”!
Gotta push that 15 minutes of [notoriety] as far as possible.
Hey let’s not just gloss over she voluntarily withdrew it. Sounds to me like she's trying to manufacture a ‘ban’ out of ‘consideration’, wherever she garnered that idea. I don’t think an artist should be entitled to the same mileage as an artist brave enough to provoke them to ban it.
Kim Sajet -- DEI-supporting, Dutch, Nigerian-born, Australian-educated -- was directing our National Portrait Gallery?
Before anyone jumps to unfounded conclusions, let me note that she is several shades whiter than Donald Trump.
So leaving Nigeria was probably a smart move for her, if only to save on sunscreen.
Yah, and artist and a milk maid…
…on some level it’s kind of gratifying they just withdraw the crap and save good people the throuble…
I've seen her Michelle Obama portrait in person. It's terrible from both an aesthetic and technical standpoint. One may not know that it's a portrait of Obama unless told it's Obama. Sherald was DEI hire artist...black women helping each other out. She doesn't deserve a Smithsonian show, but would be welcome at any county fair. She'd likely get a 2nd place or 3rd place ribbon.
Barack's portrait showing him coming out of the green plants is technically far better, just odd.
Most of the nation do not want to see a trannie statue of liberty - thank you and goodbye.
" The administration’s review has been particularly focused on the Portrait Gallery".
The National Portrait Gallery can take their medicine. The wall text next to Trump's portrait was partisan BS, they deserve whatever's coming to them.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. No patience for cry bullies, and no mercy, either.
The Statue of Liberty posed as tranny? Where are the right wing museum art defacing squads? Two wrongs only make a bigger wrong but more satisfying for all that.
Public art should have no need of credentialed explainers.
From the article…
“…her painting, ‘Trans Forming Liberty,’ which features a transgender woman holding a torch in the posture of the Statue of Liberty.”
Ummm, no. Except the fact that they are both standing humans holding something in their right hands, their postures are nothing alike.
Without reading other comments - oh, I think a transgender Statue of Liberty would provoke more than just President Trump. And for a broad definition of "provoke," I think the provocation would not be limited to the Republican side of the aisle.
You know who else had a big hard on for suppressing “degenerate” art?
Not to mention, given that the statue's robe is practically a burka, how do you show it as a 'tranny'? Does it have an erection or something?
Art used to inspire, elevate, evoke admiration, display beauty.
Since “Piss Christ”, the motto has become “all offense, all the time”, but only in order to spit in Western eyes.
She’d never do a “Piss Mohammad” or “Tranny Allah”.
This isn’t creative, unique, clever or even “stunning and brave”.
It’s just more anti-White, anti-West, anti-American detritus.
The Statue of Liberty is already kinda trans. Big Michelangelesque gal with a very hard face.
Her stage name is probably Frieda Mring or something like that.
RR
JSM
"Mr. Trump announced on social media that he was firing its director, Kim Sajet, for what the White House characterized as being partisan and 'a strong supporter of D.E.I.'..."
Whose quote is that? If it was Trump's, he missed a fine opportunity to drive home his point with a sledge hammer, for example, Kim Sajet is a strong supporter of illegal racial and sexual discrimination.
"Frieda Mring." Genius, JSM
DEIsm is an umbrella ideology for class-disordered ideologies, including: racism, sexism, ageism, etc. #HateLovesAbortion
I agree the Secretary's solution does not work but he was trying to save the show. I think she should have negotiated to have the painting available as a print, postcard, etc in gift shop where I bet it would have been a big seller, behind Obama portrait. But maybe she has another venue.
Ha! You want to imagine me on a train to Alligator Auschwitz while you jerk off?
That’s very on brand.
MAGA!
The transgender spectrum includes homosexuals, bisexuals, simulants, etc. The Rainbow symbol and rhetoric is hate speech in the human context.
Maybe the CIA was onto something: keep it abstract. Since the 1930s, whenever self-identified artistes turn to representation, their inner Stalin comes out: all politics, all the time.
You’re hell bound on a train to nowhere, hag.
h/t Savoy Brown
The Smithsonian has been a corrupter rather than a preserver of American history for quite a while. For example, when the Nation Air and Space Museum gained custody of the forward section of the B-29 Enola Gay, the museum took the opportunity to reiterate the discredited and ahistorical claptrap about her bombing mission against Hiroshima. Fortunately, the public outrage and denunciation of the exhibit by several prominent historians forced the Smithsonian to take down the propaganda and replace it with authentic facts. Another example, the Smithsonian's American Indian wing displayed full-scale dioramas of the lifeways of the plains tribes with mannequins posed wearing their traditional garb and using their meager toolkit in their usual, that is they used to display those dioramas until the honest curators retired and were replaced by propagandists. Now the tools and weapons are just laid out and labeled with no illustration of their use, and clothing is displayed with little suggestion as to how it was worn or by whom. If those exhibits were one's only source of information, them one might conclude an eagle feather war bonnet was as likely to have been worn by a little girl as by an older warrior with many coup counts.
Sounds like she's more agit-prop than artist. But the whole kerfuffle reinforces my opinion that the so-called art world we're saddled with today is just a money laundering scheme.
"Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples."
- Wilhelm Reich
In response the artist should make a statue of a transgendet Robert E. Lee, funded by private sources obviously. Just think of all the biting terse explanation the little card next ot it would provide
In more important news, it’s time to get my dogs groomed
A Tranny Michelle painting would be provocative
So some 2nd rate artist that no one has heard about, is upset because she wants her propaganda piece to be shown without any pushback or context.
Sads.
She can find other places to show her art. And if "Christ in a piss bottle" is any example, she can get Government money for it.
She never should have paid to show her paintings at the Smithsonian to begin with. If you don't like the idea of a video, book an artist with the opposite POV, and show them at the same time (Not side by side).
WIth all the American History to show, why is the smithonian paying for leftwing propaganda art?
What a loss... She was right to bow out, but I suspect few will care.
The First Amendment was fun while it lasted.
“Teabaggin’ is the nadir of a coprophiliac’s life.”
—— Harris Glenn Milstead
Amy Sherald
Who?
the artist who rocketed to fame with her 2018 portrait of Michelle Obama
I'm sorry, who? I have no memory of her supposed rocket ride to supposed fame.
has withdrawn her upcoming solo show from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery
Oh, NO!!!!!
Anyway...
The Statue of Liberty is already kinda trans. Big Michelangelesque gal with a very hard face.
I read that as "Michelle-esque" at first glance. Hard face, indeed.
The image is an uninspired rendition of a dull idea. Is the NYT this hard pressed for news?
good!
Now do a transgender Michelle Obama, Amy.
A statue of liberty without penis envy, is the good point.
Continuing italics is a blogger screwup, by the way. Comments ought not to be able to interfere with each other, just as a basic programming requirement.
The Smithsonian would make a pretty good diner, if they sold hamburgers there.
The Statue of Liberty does have manly features. It’s been trans all along.
TBH
That cartoon you have running in your head. Is it black and white or is it in color? Or is it claymation like Gumby?
Is there anything more tedious and predictable than a transgender Statue of Liberty? I guess maybe a transgender Statue of Liberty of color.
TeaBagHag said...
“You know who else had a big hard on for suppressing ‘degenerate’ art?”
Stalin? Gorsky? Communist China? Communist Cuba? Islamofascists who don’t like people drawing Mohammad, or pre-Islamic art?
Unlike those people, though, Amy Sherald (and probably other people like her) is suppressing herself due to her paranoid fantasies/wishes about being a repressed artiste.
Attempting to fix the italics.
thats a micro niche audience, ot, a real talent in chuck mangione passed on,
Ms. Sheral seems to specialize in erasing women and replacing them with black men. Her painting of the famous WWII photo The Kiss replaces the white female nurse with a black man too (kissing another black man).
I would applaud her honoring the black male soldiers who served nobly in that war while suffering under discrimination, but instead, she erases women. Specifically, white women. That sort of behavior is akin to blackface and is intentionally just as offensive, dehumanizing, and crude, not to mention misogynistic. Yes, women can be misogynistic. And I doubt any surviving black male WWII veterans would appreciate her representation of them, either.
I honestly don't understand this elevation of visual artists over other types of expression, including reaction to a piece of visual or sculptural art. It's all expression. If it's staged, that would seem inauthentic. But isn't it similarly inauthentic to take the work of other artists and turn them into statement pieces merely advocating this or that cause?
Autocorrect changes the lower case 'i' in the HTML italics tag to an upper, which does not turn the italics back off. You have to go back into the tag and change to lower case. Otherwise the italics stay on, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Here’s the cartoon that you were asking about, Dusty:
https://youtu.be/8YbpHpOLLa0?si=jz_SDwDyC6ZRmlZU
So as I understand it, if you are an “artist” you have the right to demand that your work be exhibited at any or all venues regardless of its merit or public acceptance. You are the sole arbiter of where and how it is displayed. Even if the theme is so sophomoric that it would that it would make a junior high kid blush.
Did I get that right?
I have been watching this art world drama for a long while, affirmative action in the art world, the meteoric rise of the career of Ms. Sherald, the firing and resignation of the director of the NPG, Kim Sajet, mediocre artists getting major shows and massive professional recognition because they are Black, etc.
I think Sherald is a good artist but not a "great" artist. The subject matter of Black visibility has become stale and unoriginal. The satisfaction of seeing Black people represented in art museums imo doesn't rise to the level of the sublime, of the transcendent, of what makes great art --something anyone can relate to and find inspirational and universal. Sherald's work is mostly about politics and fame as a Black artist.
Reading this story I have to admit feeling there's some justice in seeing Sherald's overly inflated ego cause her to essentially self deport. She doesn't actually deserve that show and she's cancelling herself in a temper tantrum because she is no longer capable of gratitude.
The painting in question, the Statue of Liberty as a Black transwoman, imo, is a big middle finger to the USA and the Trump administration. Fine if that's how Sherald feels, but that work doesn't belong in an exhibition at a US taxpayer supported institution whose purpose is to celebrate American greatness. She can think and say what she wants but we don't have to pay for someone to spit in our faces and call it celebrating American greatness.
Transgenders are free to be open in the US and people are free to push back against extreme gender ideology. But her painting doesn't address that back and forth which actually is the current situation.
Where is Piss Christ when you need it? I hear Hunter Biden has got a warehouse full of his stuff available.
Looking at the painting, I would never have guessed it was about the Statue of Liberty without the title. Absent the rays coming off the headpiece, it's just an image of a woman holding a torch. I'll give the artist credit for drumming up more exposure for her art with this controversial move.
Let me know when TeaBagHag has an intelligent thought.
Is Amy Sherald a trans-woman? If not, why all the drama?
https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/ft9rdy/south-park-relax-guy
RE: Trump and paintings. Thank God Matt and Trey remain the voice of sanity.
Can anyone describe what the phrase "the visibility of trans people" means? And how that "visibility" would be debated?
Were I to visit the National Portrait Gallery, it would not be with the intent to interrogate my beliefs and perceptions. Thanks anyway.
Tempest--teapot.
As illustrated in the article the paintings are okay, I guess, if you’re a fan of the American Primitive art style.
Grandma Moses was better.
Good. Perhaps someone with talent and vision can take her place. I hear that Hunter Biden is looking to sell some stuff.
"As illustrated in the article the paintings are okay, I guess, if you’re a fan of the American Primitive art style."
They look a lot like the kind of clip-art available for use on build-it-yourself websites.
Transsocial? TransAtlantic? Transgressive? Transhumane?
Transgender (e.g. bisexual)? Is the art labeled for judgment?
an idea she rejected because she said it would have included anti-trans views.
People who support censoring opposing views deserve to have their views censored.
So good riddance to bad rubbish.
Yes, you worthless piece of shit, ANY place "trans" is discussed those who are opposed to it should be allowed to express their views. If you can't handle that, then you have no place in public life
"She's a man, baby"
Yeah, I agree. Her art is OK. I think the portrait of michelle. I mean its not representational and could be 1 million other black women, but it looks nice. The dress is really the star of the painting.
The Statue of liberty thing is just mediocre. I bet 10,000 other artists could do it just as well. In fact, its the sort of thing George Bush could paint.
Meant to write "I like the portrait of michelle".
Its amazing how leftwing and Democratic Black women are. For every Candance owens, you have 95 like this person.
And Candace Owens is batshit crazy, so there's that.
Sounds like the opening move on a long march through the institutions, this time in reverse.
Bad timing. 6 months ago, USAID would have funded big money for that.
"Its amazing how leftwing and Democratic Black women are."
Here's some stats that might have something to do with that...
According to grok, black women make up 6.3% of the US population and 11.7% of the US federal workforce.
Sherald hasn’t gone far enough — to be truly authentic she should give up art altogether. What a principled statement that would be!
I think the lady's making bank, not art.
Her paintings have sold for millions. That's because of the buzz, not the quality.
This is more buzz.
Great comment, Rosalyn C.
By the way, Bartholdi, who sculpted the Statue of Liberty, often used stern female faces based on his mother's features for his inspiration. She was no transgender. He also wanted a ball and chain draped over her lower arm as an opposition of slavery. It was very controversial, especially given France's brutal cololialsm at the time and America's relative progress.There are thing to learn outside presentism.
Give it a shot now and then.
“ why is one man allowed to have this power over what we can do in our personal lives, in our own free time-it’s not right and how can we possibly endure this for another 3+ years?”
Reader comment above. How can we possibly endure?
That painting of Michelle doesn’t even look like her.
hawkeyedjb said...
Can anyone describe what the phrase "the visibility of trans people" means? And how that "visibility" would be debated?
Yes, you have the core issue there. True Trans people do actually exist- they do not believe that there are 20 genders, they believe that there are only 2 genders and they wish to be the other one. Real Trans people are very passive, very low-key, they really want to 'pass' as the opposite gender. Or to live their lives such that no one could even tell she was a man. Or such that she is just one of the guys. Real Trans people want to blend in to the background, to avoid exposure. Its a tough life and for those very rare trans people, I wish them well.
Problem is the millions of non-trans people who are only saying they are trans. These fake-trannys are sometimes autistic folks who have a idealization planted in their obsessive natures. and once an idealization is planted they are fixated and can't escape their own brains being stuck on this concept. Or Drag Queens who love eyeballs and applause and won't stop the performance, even after the show is over. Others are just pushy and rude. The fake-trans want a 'Trans Day of Visibility', and "Trans coming out day" and want to get into conflicts about restrooms and shout "Did you just mis-gender me?!?!"
Everyone agrees these fake trans people are screaming for attention, some would call it a cry for help. Forcing a fight so that everyone knows its a dude in a dress. I'm glad I live in a tolerant society that accepts weirdos and lets a consenting adult live however they want. But the fake-trans are the problem here. sorry for the rant...
By cololialsm, I mean colonialism, yet somehow I've managed to make it sound worse.
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