"The sculptures were meant to be provocative: 'Miss Mao' shows Mao as a topless woman with distorted, babyish features..."

"... while 'the execution of Christ' depicted a firing squad of life-size Mao statues aiming rifles at Jesus. But Gao denies they were defamatory.... Gao is accused of breaking a law that wasn’t even enacted until nearly a decade after these artworks were first exhibited. In 2018, China criminalized acts that 'distort, smear, desecrate' or otherwise 'damage the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.'... Gao, who is a Christian, maintains that his artwork was not intended to defame Mao but rather to explore, through cartoonish depictions of a symbolic figure, the concepts of original sin and repentance.... For [his wife] Zhao, who was not married to Gao when he made the statues, it makes no sense for authorities to claim her leaving with her child would 'endanger state security,' as officials claimed...."

From "Seven-year-old New Yorker stuck in China over father’s political art/Gao Jia, the American-born son of a well-known Chinese dissident artist, has missed first grade because his parents have been stopped from leaving China" (WaPo).

"Some critics have pointed to the statue’s disproportionate head, shoes and arms. Dr. King’s shoes were made slightly larger, to evoke the big shoes he had to fill..."

"... his left arm was bulked up, to underscore the weight and power of the untitled book he holds; and his head was slightly enlarged, to be better seen, according to the sculptor, Andrew Luy.... A few want to fix the statue somehow, and at least one said it should be redone.... The city, whose population has about 8 percent Black residents, is standing behind the artist and his work.... The city will add a small sign nearby to explain the exaggerations, an idea that Mr. Luy said he supported. 'Art evokes some emotion in people, and it has for eternity,' Mr. Luy said. 'It is very subjective, so I was prepared for positive and or negative comments about it.'"

From "Statue of Martin Luther King Draws Criticism Over Its Proportions/A statue in Florida has prompted complaints about its shoes, arm and head but also a discussion about art and representations of historic figures" (NYT).

What do you think? Your first question might be how tall was MLK Jr.?

Let's talk about the home page of The New York Times.

As it looks right now:

1. I had thought the Jeffrey Epstein story was running out of energy, but here it is back on the front page and in the top spot. But it's a real estate story: "A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair." As if we're into his mystique!

2. Sharing the top of the page is "How to Break Free From Your Phone" — a generic self-help topic, not news at all. The pretty blue of the sky in the illustration lines up with the blue sky in Jeffrey Epstein's stairwell. The legs of the phoneless woman in the grass chime with the legs of the stairwell woman. Both women grip something tubular — one, a flower stem and the other, a rope. We are reminded that Jeffrey hanged himself — reminded whether he did it or not. 

3. 2 things to angst over: declining school enrollment and a nuclear reactor on the moon.

4. Something that isn't even vaguely surprising — an old bookshelf contained a particular old book. It might be worth $20,000. Who cares!? This is like the news that somebody won the lottery. The winning ticket is rare, but you know it's in the great mass of tickets, and somebody found it.

5. Suddenly, it's time to talk about your intestines. That seems to scream: slow news day.

6. At last, the name Trump appears. Tariff business. The ongoing story. The photo is of immigrants — caption (outside of my screen shot): "Trump’s New Tactic to Separate Immigrant Families."

7. And then, there's Thomas Friedman, supplying the overarching and very high-level-abstract theme: "The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away." It begins: "Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened...."

***

Strangely low-level anxiety wafts up from the usual jumble of well-worn topics.

"Five Catholic saints are on the list, including Elizabeth Ann Seton.... However, there is not a single female athlete, unless you count sharpshooter Annie Oakley."

From "Who’ll be in Trump’s hero garden? There are a few surprises. The list of nearly 250 includes the famous, the obscure and, in some cases, the intentionally controversial" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"Among those admiring the work on a recent visit was Liliya A. Medvedeva, who said she was 'very happy that our leader got restored.'"

"'We won the war thanks to him,' said Ms. Medvedeva, a pensioner born in 1950, adding that she was grateful that Stalin didn’t send her father to the Gulag even though he was taken prisoner during World War II — something that was equated with treason at the time. 'Yes, there were many mistakes, but everybody makes mistakes.' In a country where criticizing government action can be dangerous, it is unclear how many people disagree with Ms. Medvedeva’s positive view.... But nostalgia for the Soviet era is strong, especially among older generations traumatized by the painful transition to capitalism...."

From "Stalin’s Image Returns to Moscow’s Subway, Honoring a Brutal History/The Kremlin has increasingly embraced the Soviet dictator and his legacy, using them to exalt Russian history in a time of war, but he remains a deeply divisive figure in Russia" (NYT).

"President Putin has repeatedly condemned Stalin over the years, and recognized that terrible crimes were committed under his rule.... [But i]n 2017, Mr. Putin told the filmmaker Oliver Stone that 'excessive demonization of Stalin has been one of the ways to attack the Soviet Union and Russia.'... 'The creeping re-Stalinization of the country is dangerous...' said Lev Shlosberg, a Russian opposition politician and member of the liberal Yabloko party that started a petition to dismantle the monument in the Moscow metro...."

"I hope Grounded in the Stars will instigate meaningful connections and bind intimate emotional states that allow for deeper reflection around the human condition and greater cultural diversity."

Says the sculptor Thomas J. Price at his website, linked at the New York Times in "Times Sq. Sculpture Prompts Racist Backlash. To Some, That’s the Point. A 12-foot bronze statue of an anonymous Black woman has become a lightning rod in a fraught American debate about race, representation and diversity."

Wow! That headline says so much about "meaningful connections," "intimate emotional states," and "deeper reflection around the human condition."

What could be more meaningfully connected, intimately emotional, or more deeply reflected upon than to call you a big old racist if you scorn a monumental statue of a casually dressed black woman?

Price's hopes are dashed. And the Times doesn't even tell us the title of the statue — "Grounded in the Stars" — until the 7th paragraph. After the headline calls it "Times Sq. Sculpture" and "a 12-foot bronze statue of an anonymous Black woman," the text calls it "the bronze sculpture," "the 12-foot statue," "the sculpture," and — quoting others — "a statue of an 'angry Black lady,'" "a D.E.I. statue." 

Shall we just have a cigarette on it?

Trump seeks to excise "divisive" ideology from the Smithsonian Institution.

Read the text of his "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Truth and Sanity to American History."  Excerpts:

The Order directs the Vice President, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.

What was happening at the zoo?! 

More generally, how do you decide what is "improper, divisive, or anti-American"? I'm sure some will say that it's improper, divisive, and anti-American to sanitize race out of the presentation of our history and culture.

Does the order step down from that abstraction and get specific as it discusses enforcement of the Trumpian vision?

Abe Lincoln observes the sunrise.

This morning at 6:50 on Bascom Hill.

Imagine if they'd torn down this statue?!

"Not even 48 hours after word got out a 43-foot-tall nude effigy of Donald Trump hung suspended from a construction crane, the indecent artwork was gone."

"But for most of Saturday and Sunday, a mile or two off Interstate 15, a few hundred yards from the always-bustling Love’s Travel Stop just north of Sin City, the statue had people stopping and staring.... [T]he statue was what some would call 'anatomically correct,' displaying the unknown artist’s concept of the very public billionaire’s private parts.... Alex Lannin, a 53-year-old special-education teacher in Las Vegas, brought Spirit Airlines flight attendant Honey Hunter, 27, of Spokane, Wash., to view the piece. 'I would say [it’s] very creative, like a piece of artwork, you know,' Hunter said.... Real-estate professional Clem Zeroli, 25, brought his girlfriend Tommi Alexander, 24, to pose together for a selfie at the site.... 'It’s not very respectful,” Zeroli said, “but I think it’s kind of funny. Any publicity is good publicity.'"

From "Pop-up exhibit? 43-foot naked Nevada Trump effigy vanishes after roadside ruckus" (NY Post).

We've been through this before.

I blogged naked Donald Trump effigies on August 19, 2016. There were 5, simultaneously, in 5 difference cities. I said: "The brutality is already there in politics, so we should have the words and pictures to express it. Here's Frank Zappa saying that on 'Crossfire' in 1986.... '[Brutality] is already in politics....'"

And on October 18, 2016, I had "Gender equality: Naked statue division": "In August, we saw the naked Trump statue set up in Union Square in NYC, and today we get the naked Hillary statue at the Bowling Green subway entrance in downtown Manhattan."

What goes around comes around as they say, and I'm not encouraging the creation of retaliatory naked statuary. I'll just quote Bob Dylan again: "Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked."

You have to buy something with your money. Why not something atrocious and uxorious?

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And, of course, it's nice to be reminded, once again, that men are always thinking about the Roman Empire.

"Gianna is a beast. She’s better than I was at her age. She’s got it. Girls are amazing. I would have five more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad."

Said Kobe Bryant, about his daughter Gianna, in a quote etched in the plaque at the base of this newly unveiled statue installed outside the Lakers' Crypto.com Arena:

The Athletic supplies context: "Kobe, Gianna and seven others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., on Jan. 26, 2020, while traveling to a basketball tournament for Gianna. Two of her teammates, three other parents, an assistant coach and the pilot were all on board."

The sculptor Sabin Howard said he "studied many images from the war, including paintings like John Singer Sargent’s 'Gassed,' a portrait of soldiers blinded by poison gas."

"'Some of my earlier iterations showed the soldiers … traumatized and wounded by mustard gas,' Howard said. 'But I was asked to take it out because it was too much, too much pain. When I started looking at images online, historical images, I saw how the soldiers and wives and fiancées and girlfriends were human beings. The reference to those photos had a huge impact on me because I saw this was a memorial where you need to remember the humans that partook in this. I like to say it’s for humans, by humans, about humans."

From "25-ton sculpture honoring World War I soldiers comes to Washington/The sculpture will be the centerpiece and final element of Washington’s National World War I Memorial" (WaPo).

The pieces of 58-foot long high-relief sculpture arrived in Washington this past weekend. The 5 tons sections were maneuvered into the park through "hours of careful balancing, rebalancing and moving the pieces to fit just so." Black plastic covers everything now. The “first illumination” ceremony will be on September 13th. 

We will see how close or far it is from John Singer Sargent's "Gassed":

The men are walking like that because they were blinded, but apparently the new monument will not show blinded men, and it will even — or so it sounds — include women. The sculptor seems to imply that the men in Sargent's painting don't seem human. Was a decision made to show soldiers interacting with their wives and fiancées and girlfriends? Is that what makes men human — in government propaganda — the love of a woman? 

"I have a visceral reaction against, against the attacks on those statues. There were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves..."

"... and, you know, I just, I just have a visceral reaction against destroying history. I don’t like it. I think we should celebrate who we are. We should celebrate the good qualities of everybody. … If we want to find people who were completely virtuous on every issue throughout history, we would erase all of history...."

Said RFK Jr., quoted in "RFK Jr. had a ‘visceral’ reaction to tear-downs of Confederate statues/Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on a podcast that he doesn’t think 'it’s a good, healthy thing for any culture to erase history'" (WaPo).

"Belly casting is a growing trend among mothers-to-be — a chance to make a permanent memento of a momentous experience...."

"Khloé and Kourtney Kardashian turned the belly casts they commissioned into plot points for their family’s reality show, while Cardi B posed for a shoot in her custom breast and belly cast... to announce the impending arrival of her second child.... Japanwala used her entire body for her first collection: One piece, which included her breasts and vulva, left her parents speechless.... Such defiant sculpting is anchored in shamelessness, a rebuttal of the Urdu insult beghairat — roughly meaning 'without shame or honor' — often hurled at women. She’ll hold open casting calls at her studio in Karachi, Pakistan, and finds many women will come to have their breasts and nipples cast, anonymously, without telling another soul. 'That’s a radical act of quiet shamelessness, a secret between the artist and her,' she says...."

From "Why women are making nude casts of their bodies/From Cardi B to the Kardashians, women are stripping down for hyper-realist molds — especially while pregnant — and displaying the results in ways both private and public" (WaPo).

"I think if work is asked to be accommodating, to be subservient, to be useful to, to be required to, to be subordinated to, then the artist is in trouble."

Said Richard Serra, quoted in "For Richard Serra, Art Was Not Something. It Was Everything. He was known as the Man of Steel. But the sculptor was also an eternal poet, reshaping our perception of space, says our critic" (NYT).

The Times critic Michael Kimmelman begins:

... Richard Serra died yesterday....

 It continues:

"If it turns out it was racially motivated, then obviously that is a deeper societal issue and it certainly would make this a much more concerning theft."

Said Bob Lutz, director of League 42, a youth baseball group named after Jackie Robinson's jersey number, quoted in "Jackie Robinson statue found burned, dismantled in Wichita trash can" (WaPo).

The statue, which had stood in a park, was cut off at the ankles, toted away in a pickup truck, subjected to a fire, and left in pieces. It appears to be a bronze statue, so I don't think it's accurate to say it was "burned."

I hope this incident was not an expression of racial hostility. On the "bright" side, I remember an attack on statue here in Madison carried out by people who did not seem to understand the significance of the person depicted in the statue. 

"In 1924, the artist Nancy Cox-McCormack recounted her experience sculpting the bust of Benito Mussolini..."

"... in an article for The New York Times Magazine, 'When Mussolini Poses.' While posing, Mussolini was surrounded by opulent gifts, she wrote, including a music box that 'played only the Fascisti marching song.' The verb 'to pose' was first recorded in the mid-14th century. Its earliest definitions, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, include to propose a theory or question, to arrange an object or, like Mussolini, to assume a position for a portrait. When someone poses for a portrait, he or she presents an 'idealized' version of him or herself, 'often as a person of culture, fashion or erudition,' the lexicographer Grant Barrett said. But people 'posing' in life may be pretending to be someone they’re not to impress or deceive others. A character in a film reviewed by The Times in 1943, for example, was 'posing' as a millionaire’s long-lost daughter...."

Writes Sarah Diamond, in "A Pop, Dip and Spin Through the History of ‘Pose’/Though the word 'pose' is associated with voguing, it is less a part of the vocabulary and more a part of the movement" (NYT).

"There is a certain tension that reads as the aftereffect of the violence that prompted the memorial, latent in the way Koons’ arm juts out diagonally from its base."

"It is this remarkable mix of benevolence and tension in Koon’s gesture that marks his ‘Bouquet’ as an important artwork."

Wrote Romy Golan, a professor of art history, in an essay quoted in "Jeff Koons Killed Her Review/The decision by an arts journal to allow a famous artist to veto a historian’s essay about his work created 'a chilling effect on the critical culture,' a journalism expert said" (NYT).

In an email message, the artist’s representative, Lauran Rothstein, wrote to Golan: “You refer to Jeff’s passive gesture of offering as one of violence.” She added that Golan’s essay had aligned Koons “with extremely negative connotations.”

Golan, the author of “Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France Between the Wars,” which explored the interaction of art and ideology, said she was surprised that the Koons studio had not understood that her essay was complimentary. “What I say about Koons is actually positive,” she said.

Legal angle: To interview Koons, Golan had signed a release that gave Koons the right to “view and approve any footage, still images and/or promotional material that are proposed for use.” Would that include this essay?

Whether it does or not, it was enough to motivate the journal to require her to share her essay with Koons and to decline to publish it when Koons rejected it. It was not enough to stop the NYT from embarrassing the art journal and Koons by writing the article I've linked. 

How stupid of Koons — on so many levels.

"Each subsequent decade has gotten the hyperrealist sculpture it deserves. Right now we’re living in a moment defined by an erosion of trust in what is and isn’t real..."

"... whether that’s a former president’s election fraud claims or the proliferation of deepfakes and artificial intelligence software. The uncanny valley has transformed from a horror film trope... into a more quotidian concern, as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos propose a fleet of humanoid robots to address the U.S. labor shortage.... Over time, hyperrealism  incorporated elements of extreme exaggeration, which only seemed to heighten the shock of the uncanny. That effect is palpable in, for instance, the Australian artist Ron Mueck’s gargantuan child made of glass fiber, 'Boy' (1999)... the child is nearly 15 feet tall, even crouched in an almost fetal position, and all his details are rendered with excruciating precision. The Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan... has contributed to the hyperrealist tradition for more than 20 years. His funny and disturbing 'La Nona Ora' (1999) shows Pope John Paul II in his papal regalia, writhing in pain on the ground after being struck down by a small meteor. The pope retains an odd dignity, still clutching a staff with a crucifix on it, as if that might help him through this encounter. Two years later, Cattelan made 'Him,' a dreadfully realistic sculpture of Adolf Hitler, kneeling like an altar boy, hands clasped as if in prayer...."

From "Uncanny Art for the Post-Truth Era/As deepfakes and A.I. images proliferate, hyperrealist sculpture has taken on an eerie new relevance" (NYT).

I was looking for the "eerie new relevance," but I got caught up in things that were made 20+ years ago — before "deepfakes and A.I. images" took over. I had to re-skim the article to search for this eerie new stuff, and now I suspect that hyperrealism will become less eerie and relevant as it becomes ordinary and incapable of inspiring us to wonder how it was achieved. 

"Our laboratory experiments showed that surprisingly Sphinx-like shapes can, in fact, come from materials being eroded by fast flows."

Said Leif Ristroph, an NYU math professor, quoted in "Did Nature Have a Hand in the Formation of the Great Sphinx?" (NYU).