In America?

[MojoRisin]

I'm amazed that something like this can happen in our 'free' country.

Goodbye America

------------------------------------

PLEASE do NOT post links W/O content if possible!

-lebell

New York Art Shuttered After Bush Monkey Portrait

Mon Dec 13, 3:57 PM ET Entertainment - Reuters Industry


By Larry Fine

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait of President Bush (news - web sites) using monkeys to form his image led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests on Monday over freedom of expression.


"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show that was scheduled to stay up for the next month.


The show featured art from the upcoming issue of Animal Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring emerging artists.


"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."


Turco took the show down on Saturday and moved the art work to his small downtown Animal Gallery. Calls to the management of Chelsea Market for comment were not returned.


From afar, the painting offers a likeness of Bush, but when you get closer you see the image is made up of chimpanzees or monkeys swimming in a marsh.


Savido, 23, said he was surprised by the strong reaction to his painting, listed in the catalog at $3,500.


"It seems like people got a kick out of it," Savido said. "When they really see it, they almost do a double-take. I like to get a reaction from people."


The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-bred artist said he was happy for all the attention paid to his work but said the decision to shutter the exhibit was "a blatant act of censorship."


Savido plans to auction the painting and donate proceeds to an organization dedicated to freedom of expression.


"This is much deeper than art. This is fundamental American rights, freedom of speech," Savido said. "To see that something like this can happen, especially in a place like New York City is mind boggling and scary."

[the_marq]

You are upset that an artist would say something offensive about the President?

[MojoRisin]

Originally Posted by the_marq

You are upset that an artist would say something offensive about the President?

No actually, the blatent censorship, violation of the first amendment.

[shakran]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait of President Bush (news - web sites) using monkeys to form his image led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests on Monday over freedom of expression.

Photo
Reuters Photo



"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show that was scheduled to stay up for the next month.

The show featured art from the upcoming issue of Animal Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring emerging artists.

"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."

Turco took the show down on Saturday and moved the art work to his small downtown Animal Gallery. Calls to the management of Chelsea Market for comment were not returned.

From afar, the painting offers a likeness of Bush, but when you get closer you see the image is made up of chimpanzees or monkeys swimming in a marsh.

Savido, 23, said he was surprised by the strong reaction to his painting, listed in the catalog at $3,500.

"It seems like people got a kick out of it," Savido said. "When they really see it, they almost do a double-take. I like to get a reaction from people."

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-bred artist said he was happy for all the attention paid to his work but said the decision to shutter the exhibit was "a blatant act of censorship."

Savido plans to auction the painting and donate proceeds to an organization dedicated to freedom of expression.

"This is much deeper than art. This is fundamental American rights, freedom of speech," Savido said. "To see that something like this can happen, especially in a place like New York City is mind boggling and scary."

paste articles, don't just link 'em.



There's nothing wrong with this. The market managers closed it. They have every right to. Are you saying you'd be fine with the concept that you weren't allowed to remove any "free speech" from YOUR property? What about when the vandals come over and spraypaint stuff on your house?

It's only a first amendment violation if the GOVERNMENT stops you from saying it. Private property owners have the right to control what message is displayed on their property. Otherwise we could all have snuck over to Ustwo's house and put Kerry signs in his yard and he couldn't do anything about it

[Carno]

Ummm I am free to limit what is displayed on my property, why aren't the owners of the art gallery allowed to do the same?

This has little to do with freedom of speech. The painting was in a private establishment, and the owner didn't like it, so he made the painter take it down. Seems fairly straightforward to me.

[Bill O'Rights]

Originally Posted by shakran

There's nothing wrong with this. The market managers closed it. They have every right to. Are you saying you'd be fine with the concept that you weren't allowed to remove any "free speech" from YOUR property? What about when the vandals come over and spraypaint stuff on your house?

It's only a first amendment violation if the GOVERNMENT stops you from saying it. Private property owners have the right to control what message is displayed on their property. Otherwise we could all have snuck over to Ustwo's house and put Kerry signs in his yard and he couldn't do anything about it

Excellent point! Do you mind if I use that the next time I have to edit someones post?
Oh...and I really do agree with you, by the way. I'm just pointing out the irony.

[aurigus]

He should have chosen his art gallery more carefully. Many art galleries will support freedom of expression no matter how controversial it is. Many even enjoy controversial exhibits because it gives the art gallery free advertising.

But you all are right, even though he is "censoring" his speech the manager has every right to since it's his gallery. No laws broken, even if he is a scumball.

[RolandGilead]

I think the comparison of vandalism on private property (grafitti) and the exibition of a painting in a public art exibition is a "bit" far fetched. The owner of the ex. has of course the right to put the painting down, but this is VERY narrow minded for an art-lover IMO.

Look in daily newspapers, and you`ll see far more provocing political caricartures than that one.

[Carno]

Originally Posted by aurigus

He should have chosen his art gallery more carefully. Many art galleries will support freedom of expression no matter how controversial it is. Many even enjoy controversial exhibits because it gives the art gallery free advertising.

But you all are right, even though he is "censoring" his speech the manager has every right to since it's his gallery. No laws broken, even if he is a scumball.

Why is the manager a scumball?

Just because he has different views than you does not make him a scumball.

[ARTelevision]

I support the validity of the action of the manager.
It's his territory.
And, IMO, that is in fact a good thing about being "In America"...

[jwoody]

"Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."

I think a lot of people will assume the manager has some sort of power to arrest the artist based on this paragraph.

[warrrreagl]

Originally Posted by aurigus

He should have chosen his art gallery more carefully.

I think he DID choose his art gallery very carefully. He picked one he knew would throw him out, thereby garnering lots more publicity than a sympathetic showing.

Some people are not fully functional unless they're outraged about something or other.

[OFKU0]

Originally Posted by warrrreagl

I think he DID choose his art gallery very carefully. He picked one he knew would throw him out, thereby garnering lots more publicity than a sympathetic showing.

Some people are not fully functional unless they're outraged about something or other.

Did he choose an art gallery? I'm not familiar with New York but is the '
Chelsea Market public space' a gallery? If it isn't a gallery but something on a street somewhere, then yeah, I think the guy has a valid complaint regarding freedom of expression.

[KMA-628]

Originally Posted by shakran

Otherwise we could all have snuck over to Ustwo's house and put Kerry signs in his yard and he couldn't do anything about it

Funniest thing I have read on this forum in a long, long time.

[cj22009]

That's just crazy I support bush bo no one should have there freedoom of expression taken away. It defintley wasnt handled right imo but on the other hand if it was a private gallery the manager had every right to telll him to take it down

[roachboy]

i am not sure that i see how privatized censorship is any less censorship than it would be had it been carried out by an arm of the state.
why bother with explicit acts of political censorship when you can create conditions that would prompt people do do the work on their own?
how did the seperation between types of agencies responsible for particular acts of censorship turn into a seperation between types of actions (on the one hand, censorship, on the other a private individual exercizing his regal prerogatives over his domain)?

personally, i think the gallery's decision is contemptable....weak.
a fine statement to give to young artists, who in general have trouble getting shows to begin with--be nice, be servile, or we will close you down.

[Seaver]

BUSH IS TAKING AWAY OUR FREEDOM!!! /sarcasm off

Seriously, it's his property, he posts what he feels reflects his standard of art. He can stop any presentation on it he wants.

Anyways I agree that the artist did choose his gallery carefully, to get people to notice and buy his stuff.

[roachboy]

from the article posted earlier:

"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."

it seems that he did choose the gallery quite carefully and that it might well have sold quite alot of stuff there. what he did not count on was the spinelessness of the gallery owner.

as for the sarcasm in the previous post: nice way to dodge the question.

[Carno]

So if someone came in your house and yelled and screamed about how you're a horrible person and you murder babies and eat dung and are a generally bad person, you don't think you should be able to kick them out?

Or if they brought in photos of women being raped and animals tortured and people being killed... you don't think you should be to stop them from showing that to your kids? (if you had kids or a house, hypothetical situation)

No matter the content, private property is still private property and it's a Constitutional right to control what is shown/said/done on your property.

i am not sure that i see how privatized censorship is any less censorship than it would be had it been carried out by an arm of the state.

Technically, it's not. But nobody has a right to do whatever they want on someone else's property.

why bother with explicit acts of political censorship when you can create conditions that would prompt people do do the work on their own?
how did the seperation between types of agencies responsible for particular acts of censorship turn into a seperation between types of actions (on the one hand, censorship, on the other a private individual exercizing his regal prerogatives over his domain)?

personally, i think the gallery's decision is contemptable....weak.
a fine statement to give to young artists, who in general have trouble getting shows to begin with--be nice, be servile, or we will close you down.

To be honest, I find this article hardly worth reading. This is not a precedent at all. Art galleries have been limiting what kind of art they show for years.. It's nothing. Should an art gallery allow a sculptor to show his statues when the gallery is more geared towards watercolors? No, they can put in their gallery whatever they want. The sculptor has no right to say that his statues MUST be displayed, simply on the basis that he's an artist and it's an art gallery..

Frankly, I find your opinion kind of alarming.. There is no way in hell I will ever allow someone to show or do something on my property that I don't want them to say/do. They have no Constitutional right to anything when they are on private property.

[roachboy]

you assume that there was no prior showing of either the piece of a slide of the piece during the planning phases of the show.
and that the gallery owner did not see the show after it was hung, before the opening.
according to your scenario, carn, everything was a surprise to the owner, who then reacted to the affront of the piece

when if you actually read the article, it looks like what was the affront was the size of the crowd drawn by the show...

the owner obviously knew what was going up on the walls in his space. the owner was fine with it.... until alot of people turned up for the opening, at which point something changed. i think the guy was fine with everything until it came to the point where he might end up being too publicly associated with the piece. the decision to show it in the first place appears to have been based on a calculation he made about a certian level of publicity being attracted to the gallery----but not too much. once the boundary was exceeded, he--the owner---flipped out.

that is one reason i find the decision to be beneath contempt.

none of this has anything to do with any idea that he was required to show a given piece simply because it existed. that is ridiculous as an argument both in itself and with reference to this situation.

and if you correlate the relative lack of both public funding for the arts and spaces for showing art in the states, it looks like you are arguing that censorship does not exist in the states at all. what a bad person might do is confuse weak, absurd exercize of the perogatives of property ownership with censorship. but that would only be a bad person who would think this way. obviously in a situation where private property is absolutely sacrosanct, there can be no censorship.

and given that there can be no censorship, it should follow that the message to younger artists that they should be servile, be nice, is only a problem because some gauche individuals force the righteous owners of property into the breach of decorum of having to say what should, by rights, go without saying.

[Cynthetiq]

Originally Posted by roachboy

i am not sure that i see how privatized censorship is any less censorship than it would be had it been carried out by an arm of the state.
why bother with explicit acts of political censorship when you can create conditions that would prompt people do do the work on their own?
how did the seperation between types of agencies responsible for particular acts of censorship turn into a seperation between types of actions (on the one hand, censorship, on the other a private individual exercizing his regal prerogatives over his domain)?

personally, i think the gallery's decision is contemptable....weak.
a fine statement to give to young artists, who in general have trouble getting shows to begin with--be nice, be servile, or we will close you down.

so you're saying that I should have the right to go to your house and display things on your lawn that you find objectionable?

[roachboy]

i answered this in the intervening post, cynthetiq: again, the gallery onwer obviously knew what was going to be hung in the show up front and obviously did not object to the object--he seems to have objected to the response it generated.

if he had objected to the object, i doubt seriously that it would have been up in the first place.

so because there is nothing in this about going around selection criterion (that is around the prerogatives of private property ownership), i do not see your point.

[lurkette]

I don't see what all the fuss is about. It's not a violation of freedom of speech. The guy could take his painting to another gallery, hang it in a restaurant, display it on the street if he felt like it. What happened is one PRIVATE BUSINESS decided that it was not in its best interest to have a particular painting hanging in its establishment. They could decide this for political reasons, for aesthetic reasons, for financial reasons, whatever. Now, if the police (a PUBLIC agency) had come in and demanded that it be taken down and confiscated the painting, THAT would have been censorship.

When you enter into an agreement with a private entity, you agree to abide by certain established rules. Some restaurants outlaw the use of cell phones. That's not a first amendment violation of speech, it's a restaurant owner doing what they feel is in the best interests of their business. If you don't like it, you are perfectly free to go somewhere else.

Would you have the same problem if the picture was removed because it was just butt-ugly and wasn't selling? Or because it wasn't aesthetically consonant with the rest of the gallery's works? The owner has the right to change his mind, unless there's some kind of contract, for whatever reason they want.

[Cynthetiq]

Originally Posted by roachboy

i answered this in the intervening post, cynthetiq: again, the gallery onwer obviously knew what was going to be hung in the show up front and obviously did not object to the object--he seems to have objected to the response it generated.

if he had objected to the object, i doubt seriously that it would have been up in the first place.

so because there is nothing in this about going around selection criterion (that is around the prerogatives of private property ownership), i do not see your point.

my point is simple. If you say,"sure cynthetiq, (based on all the previous interactions we've had) go ahead and stand on my lawn and shout out what you like."

and I start shouting out things... somethings you are fine with.. soon other neighbors gather and say,"Hey what he's shouting is wrong and unacceptable."

You may find that uncomfortable to you, because you have to live next to your neighbors and I do not.

---

The manager has a business to run, that's first and foremost to the Chelsea Market, while I've not seen that particular space, I have seen many of the others. While it's not a perfect world where there could just be space for artists, they have to live with what they make. My mother in law is an artist and struggles on a daily basis to balance making money and her "art". She chooses her art, and good on her for her choice, but when it comes to some things, she has to live with the choices she made, such as housing, computer, etc.

[warrrreagl]

Originally Posted by lurkette

Would you have the same problem if the picture was removed because it was just butt-ugly and wasn't selling? Or because it wasn't aesthetically consonant with the rest of the gallery's works?

Ah, lurkette has quickly cut to the heart of the poor artist's lament: if your stuff is not any good, then blame it either on the disfunctional lack of understanding among the general public, or censorship.

This whine works for musicians, painters, writers, etc.

I always have a hard time getting my students to understand that Mozart was one of the single most commercial and public-whoring composers ever. He only had time to write whatever was selling big right at that particular moment. If your stuff is good, it will stand the test of time no matter what circumstances led to its creation and premiere.

[tropple]

Originally Posted by roachboy

i am not sure that i see how privatized censorship is any less censorship than it would be had it been carried out by an arm of the state.
why bother with explicit acts of political censorship when you can create conditions that would prompt people do do the work on their own?
how did the seperation between types of agencies responsible for particular acts of censorship turn into a seperation between types of actions (on the one hand, censorship, on the other a private individual exercizing his regal prerogatives over his domain)?

personally, i think the gallery's decision is contemptable....weak.
a fine statement to give to young artists, who in general have trouble getting shows to begin with--be nice, be servile, or we will close you down.

Weak? Spineless? Seems as though the owner of the gallery had enough balls to toss out someone whose political expression in art he didn't care for.

The youngster's first amendment rights were not abridged. He was there on the sufferance of the gallery owner, with the express purpose of displaying art, not to make political protests.

The lesson here is to please the audience and the sponsor. The youngster didn't please the gallery owner. Unless a person is self-sufficient or has a trust fund from their family, the only way they're gonna eat is to please the public. There are no young, controverisal figures who have to work for a living. It's a fact of life. Here, France, Italy, any place you want to name. If you are making trouble for the establishment, you are either poor, rich, or whoring yourself to a rich sponsor. You don't "have permission" to be controversial until you've earned enough of a reputation to warrant people putting up with your attitude.

Here's another lesson: If you want to fly in the face of the popular market, make sure you don't need them to pay for your groceries.

[aurigus]

Originally Posted by warrrreagl

I think he DID choose his art gallery very carefully. He picked one he knew would throw him out, thereby garnering lots more publicity than a sympathetic showing.

Some people are not fully functional unless they're outraged about something or other.

Or Maybe it's a ploy on both sites to get more attention, it's hard to tell from the article

Originally Posted by Carn

Why is the manager a scumball?

Just because he has different views than you does not make him a scumball.

I guess I should take that back. After reading the article a bit more thoroughly and researching the Chelsea Market building, I see that this is not an art gallery, but more like a big shopping mall. Apparently the artist rented out an area to display his work; and when a manager of the building saw it kicked him out.

Although I wouldn't agree with his decision, I still say that nothing illegal happened and no rights are being violated here. So whatever thoughts I have on the building manager's ideas and views on free speech are moot.

[OFKU0]

If that artist was smart, he would be doing a face of Saddam with the Iraqi's he killed to make the image. That might get him back in. But a face with Osama and the images of the Trade Centers falling would get him kicked out again.

[roachboy]

cyn: if i declared my lawn an exhibition space and you submitted a recording of your "piece" which would consist of shouting offensive things in advance--and i approved it knowing full well what you were going to do--then i would see it as weak on my part were i to pull the plug on it. and i certainly would not pretend that what was at issue was the content of what you were shouting.

lurkette:

your argument would be fine if we had the contract to look at--but we dont. maybe it was stipulated that a crowd over a certian number constituted an infringement of the owner's rights--and if the artist signed it, then fine, he is bound by the terms of the agreement---but without the contract, the question is not decidable, and debate about it is just an exchange of arbitrary positions based on relative understandings of the role of private property in turning private censorship into the equivalent of mowing your lawn, or not. which maybe it is. maybe this is all that is happening in this thread.


tropple:

your position too assumes that the owner did not know beforehand what would and would not hang in the show--if the story fit with your narrative, none of this would be interesting or public because the piece would never have been hung--and if the artist had then complained, much of what you say might have been relevant.

but it is clear that the gallery owner knew what was going to hang in the show. this is not about him being ambushed by a political work that he did not approve of. if you read the article, the motivation lay elsewhere. but whatever.

more generally, it is always encouraging to read arguments that would justify younger artists (anyone really....) having to grovel before a patron, before an audience, coupled with some bland, arbitrary "test of time" argument thrown in at the end.

dont worry, do what those with cash tell you, they have cash, they know best--(on this, marx was right--cash makes the stupid wise, the ugly beautiful, the boring interesting--simple logic will let you transpose it onto this field.)

if you try to go around these strictures, no worries, really: you will probably die without making a dime, but thats fine because publishers will publish you after youre dead and no longer have to be paid and critics will pick up on it and erase the vaguaries of reception, its preconditions and management, by integrating you into the Great Conversation of bourgeois cultural continuity as proof of the largesse of the system, its underlying dynamism. all the artists like this have to do is produce stuff and die, because they are really only producers of raw material for the reproduction of critical practice. besides, they are doubtless miserable people, these artists, and so maybe dying early and broke is a gift of sorts. dysfunctionals, these artists, as over against yourself, who is obviously the inverse.

the irony is that those who submit, as you advise, in the main are not noticed by art history. those who do not are maybe intergrated by art history as a function of the requirements of social positioning in academic work, which is itself determined by shifts in the institutional ideologies that structure what art history as a discipline says and does. none of this has anything to do with any "test of time" argument. there is no "test of time".

my favorite bit however comes at the end: you advise grovelling and yours is the authentic position--anything else is obviously articulated by someone with a trust fund.

well, well....

[tropple]

Originally Posted by roachboy

/snip

my favorite bit however comes at the end: you advise grovelling and yours is the authentic position--anything else is obviously articulated by someone with a trust fund.

well, well....

Excuse me? Where did I advise groveling? Seems as though you are making up facts as you go along.

What I said is factual. Dispute it, don't make obscure arguments.

[roachboy]

tropple:
i was referring to this:

The lesson here is to please the audience and the sponsor. The youngster didn't please the gallery owner. Unless a person is self-sufficient or has a trust fund from their family, the only way they're gonna eat is to please the public. There are no young, controverisal figures who have to work for a living. It's a fact of life. Here, France, Italy, any place you want to name. If you are making trouble for the establishment, you are either poor, rich, or whoring yourself to a rich sponsor. You don't "have permission" to be controversial until you've earned enough of a reputation to warrant people putting up with your attitude.

which i simply rephrased in a polemical manner---basically where you wrote "please" or a variant, i substituted "grovel"--two perspectives on the same social situation, that's all. you could see what i said as retaining every feature of your argument above, with a code switch.

((and a rather snippy tone, which i see this morning but did not see yesterday, and for which i apologize. it was not necessary.))

behind this, two general matters:

-i talk from a particular, split experience on this kind of question. on the one hand, i do not buy any argument that invokes phrases like "the test of time" or a position like yours about which kinds of artwork surface as legitimate, as if the features that motor selection of one set of artworks over another in art history (which is contemporary critical practices written back into the pat, in the main) inhere in the object itself and are not a function of particular sociological situations.

second, as a working musician operating in a kind of "experimental" form, i have been in a position of having a venue shut us down--but music is an abstract medium, and we are not making overtly political statements with the kind of sound we manipulate--even as i tend to see making things as necessarily oppositional and continuing to be engaged with a process of making things as in itself political in this environment. so we do not have the option of being advised by our agent to issue a press release that could turn being shut down into a moment of political martyrdom, which is what i suspect is at work in the article at the origin of this thread.

it should (maybe) be obvious by this point that this experience informs some of my reaction to this kind of situation. maybe less obvious is that there is a direct link between the more academic position on how cultural value is produced around works of art and the experience of working for years in an underground type of music. and between these two and a contempt for what i see as privatized bourgeois censorship.

as for the matter of "authorization" to be controversial: you are right in principle, but for all the people i know who work in various types of cultural production, the politics of their work follows from their own sense of being in the world, not from the desire to cultivate a tendency in their work that could be used as a wedge for publicity. the link between ones work and ones committments entails risks, however, and every one of us assumes that risk from the outset, and knows, one way or another, about the consequences of assuming that risk. it is an obvious fact of everyday life.

however, what you seemed to be saying was that if you were not socially authorized--if you were not already assimilated as "the person who dissents" into a normally operational cultural space--and thereby perhaps trivialized---you should make nice. that would perhaps make sense if behind all this, unspoken, worked the assumption that cultural markets are rational and that the best stuff being produced at any given time is somehow assimilated into them. but this assumption is manifestly false---just look around.

[ARTelevision]

My work has been shut down several times by ISPs and groups who have opposed our content.

I don't rant or rabble rouse about "my cause" when this happens. I move to another venue.

I also teach art. I advise students that the attitudes they bring with them regarding "free expression" are typically infantile, self-serving, disrespectful of others, antisocial, unrealistic, and not in their best interest. The reason they bring these simplistic attitudes with them into their "careers" as working artists is because of their totally egoistic understanding of the notion of "free expression" and also because the mass media teaches them that "artists" are a certain type of person and depicts them as infantile, self-serving, disrespectful of others, antisocial, and unrealistic. There's no need to teach them these ideas any further, as they are already filled with them. There is a need, as I see it, to talk to them about a more personally and socially responsible way of thinking about "free expression."

[warrrreagl]

Originally Posted by ARTelevision

My work has been shut down several times by ISPs and groups who have opposed our content.

I don't rant or rabble rouse about "my cause" when this happens. I move to another venue.

I also teach art. I advise students that the attitudes they bring with them regarding "free expression" are typically infantile, self-serving, disrespectful of others, antisocial, unrealistic, and not in their best interest. The reason they bring these simplistic attitudes with them into their "careers" as working artists is because of their totally egoistic understanding of the notion of "free expression" and also because the mass media teaches them that "artists" are a certain type of person and depicts them as infantile, self-serving, disrespectful of others, antisocial, and unrealistic. There's no need to teach them these ideas any further, as they are already filled with them. There is a need, as I see it, to talk to them about a more personally and socially responsible way of thinking about "free expression."

Once again, I will get to quote ARTelevision next semester in my music classes. Thanks for continuing to give me syllabus material, ART, and you are so right.

[roachboy]

well i teach experimental music and history courses and find the concerns i work with are quite different from those, art...even as i would agree with you in terms of what i take to be the bourgeois genius myth (the effects of which you outline to an extent)...what i object to in the ideology you describe is that it frames a way of thinking about making things that shuts out the space for development and does that on the assumption that only members of a kind of hard-wired aristocracy are authorized to make things at all. i try to emphasize the importance of a craft engagement, however that is understood (a function of the medium), the importance of continuing to work over a long time, of allowing yourself to develop, to change, to move.

i understand making things as being necessarily political--even if you work in a highly representational form, that you switch frames of reference, disrupt a relation to the world based on the assumption of immediacy or transparency, is in itself political. one consequence of this is a suspicion on the part of most regular folk of cultural workers (i like this phrase better than "artist") because they cannot be relied upon to be fully present in a given social space--they are both inside it and looking at it from the outside...proust was right about this...it is what drove his narrator in "in search of lost time" to frequent aristocratic salons--which were spaces based on teh assumption of doubleness---which was a residuum of the intertwining of the salons with court society during the late 17th-18th centuries.

i do not see anything "infantile" about this politics---necessarily---nor do i see anything "infantile" about working in opposition to the existing order. for myself, working in opposition to this order is something of an a priori. look around and try to persuade me that this mess is the best we collectively can do. i do think that there are better and worse ways of expressing that opposition--but this is an aesthtic matter, about which folk could argue endlessly without any conclusion being possible.

what i do see as infantile is submission to that order because it is an already existing order--which you can see as deferring to the Voice of the Father, an abdication of active engagement with the world based on assumptions about the nature of power that derive from early relations with dad. on this, i suspect that we are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

[bbrown4]

This is not the America it once was. We are in a delicate transitional period politically where everything political is examined and patriotism is constantly being called into question.

People here are getting used to having caveats attached to their freedoms .

[MSD]

" 'Bush Monkeys,' a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space,"

This sounds like it was a public area, not a private establishment. Can someone clarify this for me so I know who I should be mad at?

[Charlatan]

I have no issue with the gallery owner shutting down the artist's show... All I have is disappointment that anyone would take such an action with something that is relatively benign.

It is one thing to disagree with the message, it is another to banish it.

[aurigus]

Originally Posted by MrSelfDestruct

" 'Bush Monkeys,' a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space,"

This sounds like it was a public area, not a private establishment. Can someone clarify this for me so I know who I should be mad at?

I was confused on this as well. It appears to be a shopping area, similar to a mall.

http://chelseamarket.com/

Chelsea Market’s 800-footlong concourse opened in April of ‘97, but the million square feet the market occupies has a big history that begins with the birth of the first Oreo Cookie™ and a fitting future as the home of the Food Network, NY1, Sterling Sound, Oxygen Media, and Major League Baseball Productions.

Check the calendar for events, or swing by everyday for fresh sushi and a chocolate-almond croissant. Sip a little cappuccino in a free Wi-Fi environment, decorated with stone sculptures, a new façade, copper walls, a rotating photo gallery and an indoor waterfall. Then pick up your meat, produce, wine, cheese, bread, flowers, and everything else you might need for a perfect meal.

But don't expect to look at controversial art exhibits

[Cynthetiq]

Azharen works in that building and I've been to that space.. there's many definitions of "public" space here in NYC. Most "public" space is open to be used by the public, until revoked by the property owner or their agents. So there are lots of 'private areas with open to the public spaces." As far as this is concerned there is not the same kind of public space like a park, sidewalk.

as for Art's comments, those are spot on. There's no reason to make it worse. No one's freedoms were infringed here, in fact everyone got to excercise it properly without risk to life and limb.

[roachboy]

i dunno---sometimes it seems like the logical correlate of bushworld would be a kind of socialist realism with the middle class as its object: a highly conventionalized art that would avoid controversy and instead devote itself to portraying the heroic middle class at work and at play. if that is what you want, then fine, you can have it.

that said, i do not accept the reverse, that controversy in itself legitimates a piece.

but i wonder, sometimes, if the notion of "responsible free expression" is anything more than a code for effectively telling anyone who understands what they do as working in political opposition to simply shut up, whether it does anything more than take a particular situation, framed by particular political committments, and hold it up as a model for all cultural production. if you cant determine that, then the term "responsible" becomes a problem. responsible to whom? to whom to you hand the ability to determine what is and is not "responsible"? why would you hand the ability to judge what is and is not responsible about your work to someone else? what sense would it make if you assume that markets are not rational, but only reflect existing relations of force?

it would seem to me that if you are involved with this type of work that you have to be responsible to yourself first of all, because it is *your* work, *your* process, *your* life. what others choose to assimilate of that is necessarily only the surface of that process, that way of life...you have to live with it every day, find ways to motivate yourself to keep going day in day out.....why would you give anything of that away? why you would allow anyone else to define what is and is not "responsable"? how is this not handing to people you do not know, whose only real qualification of passing judgement is the holding of capital, the core of what motors your engagement with material in the first place?

no-one derives from this position the illusion that everything they produce should be shown. no-one derives from this position that they are owed anything by the world around them...but...