Art in the News

Dangerous Arts  - by Salman Rushdie - op-ed New York Times, April 20,2011

Governments of the free world must make sure artists, like Ai Weiwei, who courageously stand up against authoritarianism are safe.

China’s most famous and politically outspoken artist, Ai Weiwei, has filled the back half of London’s cavernous Turbine Hall with what appears, from a distance, to be a mass of small grey pebbles. In fact these are 100 million tiny sculptures of sunflower seeds, made out of porcelain and hand-painted by skilled artisans in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Rest of the review in The Independent here.

 Detained artist offered Berlin university post

What I've discovered about modern and contemporary art installations is that there is often more to them than meets the eye.  It's easy to stroll by or read about a particular installation and write it off as junk, label it strange or just not think about it at all. This is one such case. If you happened to be in London, at The Tate's ginormous Turbine Hall and came upon a floor covered with tiny porcelain sunflowers that you could walk upon, what would you be thinking? if you had no knowledge of the artist or his motives, would you dismiss it as ridiculous? And if you were enlightened, would that change your mind about the relevance of such an installation?

I say it all the time - no matter how strange and incomprehensible, I admire an artist's drive to create. The ability to pull off something controversial or weird or unpalatable is artistic in and of itself.  When one risks persecution and censorship at the hands of one's government and yet their vision and need to create is still unbound. That is a courageous thing. 

I am in love with Ai Weiwei's sunflowers as much as I am in love with Charles Ledray's miniature garments. And for the same reason - the unstoppable need to put their work out there for us to guess at and a lot of times, to criticize. In the case of Ai Weisei, the need to create and express has turned his government against him; their most celebrated artist. Artists risk much for many things, not the least of which is the freedom to create. I for one, am grateful for this.

In Other Art News

 A Nun Defends Serrano's 'Piss Christ', Which Was Attacked on Sunday

Artists and activists carry portraits of detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, urging for his release, outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong April 17, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tyrone Siu

Artists and activists carry portraits of detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, urging for his release, outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong April 17, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tyrone Siu

Blogging 'Round the Globe

 Dennis the Menace blog from Kent, England gave me the heads-up on this event at Trafalgar Square today. I'm not sure which is worse - terrorism itself of the fear of it.  What else are free-minded people expected to do but take it to the streets?

 Mass Gathering in defence of street photography

I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! invite all Photographers to a mass photo gathering in defence of street photography.
Following a series of high profile detentions under s44 of the terrorism act including 7 armed police detaining an award winning architectural photographer in the City of London, the arrest of a press photographer covering campaigning santas at City Airport and the stop and search of a BBC photographer at St Pauls Cathedral and many others. PHNAT feels now is the time for a mass turnout of Photographers, professional and amateur to defend our rights and stop the abuse of the terror laws.

Read the whole thing at:

I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist.org

College Town Protest in New Hampshire

Though not exactly breaking news, yet I hope you'll find these photos and captions interesting. I had a blast taking them, talking to people and otherwise cavorting with college students on Central Square in Keene, where a sizable group of people showed up to protest current marijuana laws and calling for legalization and protection from a police state. 

Early arrivals

An anarchis arrived to much cheering and greeting from the band

Ms. Anarchist?
(I'm not sure but she and I had a bit of a chat. She asked if I was protesting the protesters. Which I found terribly offensive ;-)  Me, protest a demonstration? I don't know what she was thinking, except that she probably thinks she and her friends invented this sort of thing just last year! ;-)  She was very sweet.

They may have something there, huh?

This fellow rapidly posed for me. I don't know the character. Do you?

This is a little more American over here.

There were many people lighting up and a few were trying to pass pipes and joints around. Most people I heard declined, but there were little clusters of youngsters smoking and laughing and chatting. One scene in this street performance involved two men who were lighting up pipes and a cop that stood very close to them, staring them down. Yet, they weren't arrested.

Wholesome looking boy, I thought to myself.

Legalize Freedom 
(it's kind of hard to make it out)

This man, I was told, is one of the main organizers of these daily protests...

Yes, must be!

 If you read the little newsclip I've linked to from last Thursday, there had not yet been any arrests. I'm interested to see how this all turns out. One of the themes that was coming through the megaphone was hassling law-abiding, peaceful people.

If you take into account the penalties for possession of marijuana in New Hampshire, you might agree these people have a point. The state recently rejected legislation aimed at decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, similar to what we now have in Massachusetts.

Pot Party Ratches up on Square

Free Keene

Peaceful Evolution

Support Freedom in Iran & Gene Sharp

Green is the symbolic color of Islam and the color that the pro-
Mousavi movement has adopted

A fellow blogger from Portugal who runs the blog Oeiras and Environs Daily and occasionally comments here, alerted me to a blog movement tomorrow on behalf of the people of Iran whose struggle for freedom has caught the world's attention. It seems that a member of the international blogging community is missing and many are concerned about this individual's whereabouts and safety. Here is the URL for that blog: http://tehranlive.org/, which JM has recently left in blog comments.

In solidarity with the people of Iran: I support you in your fight for democracy, freedom and human rights. Fight on.

Here you can read an article about a man named Gene Sharp, whom you may never have heard of, but whose book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" is rumored to have helped topple several dictatorships, including that of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, through its almost 200 hundred non-violent strategies; some of which have already been adopted by the student movement in Iran. If you're interested in non-violent protest, you'll really like reading this article.

There is some lively political discussion of the situation in Iran at the site of my Iranian blog bud Homeyra. You can read her at Forever Under Construction.

Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr.

If you've never heard the song Black Man by Stevie Wonder, you really should click on the jukebox. It says a lot.

We've come a long way, certainly, but we live in a nation where facade is everything in politics and it hides the work that still needs to be done before all people are treated with justice and dignity.

A Sad Day for Marriage Equality

I am, of course, deeply saddened by the probable defeat of marriage equality in California. Not only am I personally affected by this because my daughter was married in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, but also for all GLBT people who have married or wish to marry.

The fact that the religious community, predominantly the Catholic and Mormon Churches saw fit to pump so much cash into an effort to take away the civil rights of others only makes me more certain how bigoted and anti-humanity they really are.

These are the same people who want to take away our reproductive rights and re-write the science curricula in our schools to exclude evolution as well as deny our young people the information and resources they need to make decisions about their sexuality.


But Equality California is not ready to concede defeat:


“Roughly 400,000 votes separate yes from no on Prop 8 – out of 10 million votes tallied.Based on turnout estimates reported yesterday, we expect that there are more than 3 million and possibly as many as 4 million absentee and provisional ballots yet to be counted.Given that fundamental rights are at stake, we must wait to hear from the Secretary of State tomorrow about how many votes are yet to be counted as well as where they are from.It is clearly a very close election and we monitored the results all evening and this morning.As of this point, the election is too close to call.Because Prop 8 involves the sensitive matter of individual rights, we believe it is important to wait until we receive further information about the outcome.”

Further, there is a lawsuit in the works:

Legal Groups File Lawsuit Challenging Proposition 8, Should It Pass

I'm still holding out hope that Prop 8 will be defeated once all the votes are counted but it's doubful. I'd also love to hope that the lawsuit described in the article link above results in fairness for the GLBT community but the massive amounts of money put into the Prop 8 effort will likely also be pumped into contesting any lawsuit that comes along as well.

We're terribly dispondent in the Pagan Sphinx family right now. While we celebrate the monumental victory of Barack Obama, there is also this sadness which reflects our awareness of just far we have to go before all people are treated equally and given the same civil rights.