Place to Avoid If You Are Considering Becoming an Art Major

Robert Boyd

"[South Carolina state] lawmakers voted Monday against restoring $70,000 taken from the budgets of the College of Charleston and University of South Carolina-Upstate for assigning a couple of gay-themed books to freshmen.

"Now everyone gets to play.

"On Tuesday, the House will decide whether to withhold $1 million from each public college until they ban using "pornographic content" (definition TBD) in classes and requiring students to take a class that includes a nude model." ["MORNING BUZZ: S.C. House budget bull's-eye shifts to 'pornographic content,' nude modeling," Andrew Shain and Jamie Self, The State, March 11, 2014]

He's Not Sorry

Robert Boyd



Uriel Landeros speaks. Apparently, he defaced a Picasso with spray paint because he is mad about stuff.

Asshole

by Robert Boyd



This is a video of an asshole spray-painting on Woman in a Red Armchair (1929) by Pablo Picasso at the Menil. According to the YouTube video, the asshole is named Uriel Landeros. Assuming this is true (and I acknowledge that it may not be true), this may be his Facebook page. You can read more at Glasstire and click2houston. Of course, this incident recalls the episode in 1974 when Tony Shafrazi spray-painted some nonsense onto Picasso's Guernica. Shafrazi is now a highly successful art dealer. Perhaps that is Landeros' ambition as well.

Asshole

This was in the Santa Fe New Mexican a few days ago.

Peter de La Fuente, who sells his family's artworks as well as his own at the Wyeth Hurd Gallery, said he's never seen it slower.

"If you go out on Palace Avenue, you can look down and there's nobody in that portal going down to the Plaza. It's almost in a vacuum right now," he said. "There are times in the year that I feel like I've got a very nice office with very excellent art on the wall."

De La Fuente, the grandson of Peter Hurd and the great-grandson of M.C. Wyeth, was among several dealers to use the language of the Occupy movement.

"I hate to be a snob, but what we're getting now is a bunch of 99 percenters, and they're very appreciative, but they're not collectors," he said. "The people who are collectors, my clients, are the 1 percent, people who can afford art and fine art and expensive art. ...

"We [need] to get rid of Obama and let the people make money again. Profit is not a bad thing. It's what makes this country go." ("Bloom or Bust? Jury's out on state of Santa Fe art market," Tom Sharpe, The Santa Fe New Mexican, February 16, 2012)

In other news, the Dow Jones broke 13,000 today for the first time since May, 2008.

The Warhol Foundation Plays Hardball

Wow.

DECEMBER 13, 2010 Warhol Foundation Demands Reinstatement of Censored Art Work or Will Cease Funding all Smithsonian Institution Exhibitions

December 13, 2010
For Immediate Release
Contact Joel Wachs, President, 212.387.7555
The following letter was sent today by The Andy Warhol Foundation to Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution:
December 13, 2010
Mr. Wayne Clough
Smithsonian Institution
SIB Office of the Secretary
MRC 016
PO Box 37012
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
Dear Mr. Clough,
The Warhol Foundation is proud to have been a lead supporter of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, but we strongly condemn the decision to remove David Wojnarowicz’s video A Fire in My Belly from the exhibition. Such blatant censorship is unconscionable. It is inimical to everything the Smithsonian Institution should stand for, and everything the Andy Warhol Foundation does stand for.
Although we have enjoyed our growing relationship during the past three years, and have given more than $375,000 to fund several exhibitions at various Smithsonian institutions, we cannot stand by and watch the Smithsonian bow to the demands of bigots who have attacked the exhibition out of ignorance, hatred and fear.
Last week the Foundation published a statement on its website www.warholfoundation.org, condemning the National Portrait Gallery’s removal of the work and on Friday our Board of Directors met to discuss the long-term implications of the Museum’s behavior on the Foundation’s relationship with the Smithsonian Institution. After careful consideration, the Board voted unanimously to demand that you restore the censored work immediately, or the Warhol Foundation will cease funding future exhibitions at all Smithsonian institutions.
I regret that you have put us in this position, but there is no other course we can take. For the arts to flourish the arts must be free, and the decision to censor this important work is in stark opposition to our mission to defend freedom of expression wherever and whenever it is under attack.
Sincerely yours,
Joel Wachs
President
cc:   Ms. Patricia Stonesifer, Smithsonian Chairwoman of the Board
         Directors of Smithsonian Institution museums
         Board Chairs of Smithsonian Institution museums

Awesome, huh? It's nice that there is a real price to pay for the Smithsonian's cowardly caving in to far-right assholes.  I mean, it's cool that other art institutions are showing the Wojnarowicz video, but this move by the Warhol Foundation packs a real punch.

In the 50s, Abstract Art Was a Commie Plot. Today, They Go After the Gays

You thought going after gay artists or artistic themes was a relic of Jesse Helms. The resurgent right wants to rekindle the culture wars, though.

Reps. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have threatened the Smithsonian over the National Portrait Gallery’s much-praised “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” exhibition. Boehner, the presumptive House Speaker-to-be initially threatened increased oversight and then demanded that the exhibition be “canceled.” Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, demanded that the Smithsonian take down the exhibition, reports The Hill newspaper. It is not clear whether either legislator has seen the show. (Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes, November 30)

This is just the first shot over the bow. The NEA will be their target next, as well as any museum that gets any funds from the government. Get ready to fight, Pan fans.