The National Guard Association of the United States commissioned a life-sized portrait bust of President Bush from famed artist, Charles Parks, who for the last 50 years has created over 500 sculptures in the realist tradition.

In a special February 9th ceremony at the National Guard Building in Washington DC, Park’s bronze statue memorializing Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard was presented to the Commander in Chief. However, the president made no comment about the bust at all, other than to say that the artist “caught me before my hair went gray.” I wouldn’t expect Mr. Bush to have anything intelligent to say about the piece of art - which portrays him in a flight suite - but the president also seemed reticent to discuss the military service he was being lauded for. Quoting the Washington Post, “Bush’s service may still be a bit of a sore subject for him, though. He seemed no more eager to talk about it yesterday then he did in his 2004 reelection campaign, when critics questioned whether he manipulated his guard service to avoid having to serve in Vietnam.”

The truly fascinating thing about this story concerns the pedestal the president’s portrait bust sits on. Since Bush’s presidency ends in 2009, the inscription on the base should read “2001 - 2009.” Interestingly enough however, the engraved date actually reads, “2001 - .” Apparently the ending year of the administration was left off the artwork’s base by those who commissioned the bust - since no one knows the exact date when the free falling president will be impeached and convicted.

“If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution“ is a quote long attributed to anarcho-communist activist, Emma Goldman. Taken up by some on the modern U.S. left as a catchphrase against artless bureaucratic organizing, the slogan has also been the organized American left’s feint at indicating concern for cultural matters. In point of fact, the saying brings to attention the organized U.S. left’s impoverishment when it comes to cultural output and appreciation for the arts.

On January 9th, 2005, I wrote a web log post titled The Gates: Good For Nothing, in which I castigated the works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude and ridiculed their Gates project as nothing more than a multi-million dollar art boondoggle. I was careful to quote the two con-artists, believing that their own words would expose them: “We do not create messages. We do not create symbols. We create works of art. All works of art are good for nothing.” That statement is unquestionably hostile to the artists who have over the years made contributions to the process of social change, so it might come as a surprise to some that one radical left organization, the maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), published a tract praising The Gates and the pair who created them. Artist Dred Scott wrote the article, Remembering The Gates, for the May 1st 2005 edition of the RCP’s newspaper. In his article, Scott said the following:

“Christo and Jeanne-Claude have confidence in ordinary people’s ability to grasp and enjoy contemporary art - at least the kind of work that they make. And their confidence is well founded. A million people saw ‘The Gates’ and clearly the overwhelming majority who saw it enjoyed the work and grasped the essence of it.”

Since the artists themselves made it clear that “all works of art are good for nothing” and that The Gates have no meaning - just what is this “essence” Scott thinks people have grasped? Again, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were quoted as saying, “The Gates, we don’t do it for the people, we do it for us.” Scott went on to write, that:

“Art like ‘The Gates’ is a harbinger of what is possible when artists dare to dream the impossible and then make their dreams real. Christo and Jeanne-Claude are artists with real heart. They push the envelope, even their own envelope, of what art can be. ‘The Gates’ expanded new ground for art.”

That’s quite a statement coming from a party that has long upheld Chairman Mao’s “correct line” pertaining to culture and art. In his Selected Works, Vol. III - Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, Mao wrote the following:

“In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.”

Scott and the RCP can try to reconcile Mao’s views with Christo’s publicity stunt, but the attempt smacks of opportunism to me. In a quest to become culturally relevant, the RCP set out to do what every elite art magazine, fawning postmodernist dilettante and corporate news commentator has already done - give a stamp of approval to The Gates.

And just who is this Dread Scott? His claim to fame was a 1989 installation piece titled What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?, created while he was a student at the Chicago Art Institute. The school publicly exhibited the installation which consisted of nothing more than an American flag placed on the ground in front of a ledger - with viewers encouraged to step on the flag in order to write their comments in the book. I didn’t like the piece then and I like it even less today - since I’ve developed an extremely low tolerance for postmodern antics designed to generate publicity for careerist artists.

Scott and Christo are birds of a feather, they share the same artistic philosophy despite one being a communist and the other a capitalist. Both have abandoned skill, craft, and time honored techniques in favor of blatant pranksterism. In this topsy turvy world they are considered revolutionaries - while I’m chastised as a reactionary for refusing to put aside my “old fashioned” paint brushes and canvases. Be that as it may I’m not too worried, because as someone famous once said: “History will absolve me!”

An important antiwar mural painted in Mexico by famed Japanese modern artist, Taro Okamoto (1911 - 1996), has been rediscovered after thirty five years. In Spanish the work is known as Mito del Mañana (Myth of Tomorrow), and in Japanese, Ashita no Shinwa - but like all great works of art, Okamoto’s painting speaks a universal language. The gigantic mural depicts the exact moment of an atomic bomb explosion, with the focus of the work being an anonymous human reduced to skeletal form and burning under an atomic sun.

Okamoto’s mural was originally painted in the lobby of what was to be a high-rise luxury hotel in Mexico City, but the developer encountered financial troubles that prevented the building’s completion. Okamoto’s wall painting, dismantled and put into storage, eventually disappeared - and it remained missing until just recently. In 2003 the mural was found abandoned in a yard for building materials located in a suburb of Mexico City. The Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum in Japan sent a team of restorers to Mexico to evaluate the condition of the artwork, and found that it was suffering minor damage. Calling the piece “Taro’s magnum opus”, the institution obtained the rights to the mural earlier this year. The mural has been shipped to Japan where museum staff and experts began restoration work in July, 2005. Okamoto’s mural will eventually be placed on public display at the end of 2006.

The Taro Okamoto Memorial Foundation for the Promotion of Contemporary Art released a statement that in part read, “Okamoto believed that the myths of the future develop at moments of cruelty and tragedy. This mural speaks from his deepest thoughts, from his heart.” While the world’s first atomic bombing of civilian population centers occurred in August 1945 when the U.S. devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear fire… it would be a mistake to see Okamoto’s artwork as fixated on those terrible events. Rather, his striking mural is a warning to all humanity, and the message is more relevant today than ever before. That we’ve grown accustomed to living with a nuclear Sword of Damocles hanging above us all is really the core meaning of the mural’s title - and our continued apathy only assures that tomorrow is indeed a myth.

Painted between 1968 and 1969 and measuring some 18 feet high by 98 feet long, Okamoto’s artwork is a powerful indictment of war. While it may seem incongruous that such a disturbing and forceful work of art would appear in the lobby of a luxury hotel, one must remember that Mexican restaurants, hotels, commercial and government buildings have often made wall space available for the display of controversial large-scale public artworks. The Mexican Muralist Movement led by greats David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, set the standards for a progressive and internationalist school of art. The radical and populist artworks of these masters and the many others who worked shoulder to shoulder with them, enhance public space all across Mexico. There’s absolutely no doubt that Taro Okamoto was inspired and influenced by the remarkable Mexican school of socially conscious artists, and the discovery and restoration of his mural is cause for celebration.

Right-wing activists from the organization, Save Our State (SOS), have called for the removal of a public monument called Danzas Indigenas located in the Metrolink Station in Baldwin Park, California. Joseph Turner, executive director for the anti-immigrant group, plainly stated his organization’s opinion of the monument, “we will not tolerate its anti-American message. This is not art. This is not freedom of expression. This is government-sanctioned sedition.” SOS activists are calling for and organizing a noon time demonstration at the monument on Saturday, May 14th, 2005, and they are demanding that the monument be altered - if not removed.

What exactly has drawn the ire of these self-proclaimed guardians of the American way? Designed in 1993 for the MTA by famed Chicana artist Judith F. Baca, the monument bears several engraved statements upon it, one reads “It was better before they came”, and the other “This land was Mexican once, was Indian always - and is, and will be again.” SOS calls the monument “propaganda” from “radical organizations” who wish to “return the Southwestern US to Mexico.” The organization’s website declares that California’s cities have been turned into “Third World cesspools as a result of a massive invasion of illegal aliens.” SOS has threatened that if the “offensive passages” are not removed from Baca’s artwork before the American Independence weekend, they “will take additional steps to ensure that the passages are removed.” That sounds like an open appeal for vandalism and property destruction to me. For all the hot air about being patriotic defenders of freedom and the American way, the SOS organization sounds much like the fundamentalist Taliban, who because of their racial and religious prejudices blew up the magnificent 2000-year-old statues of Buddha at Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

Left-wing activists have responded with their own calls for a counter-protest. Groups like the Southern California Human Rights Network, the International Action Center and its Committee in Defense of Immigrant Workers, the International Socialist Organization and many others I’m sure, will counter-demonstrate to demand “Full Rights for Immigrants”, an “End to Racist Attacks on Immigrants and Mexicans”, and the protection of “Indigenous Heritage”. But where is the left’s defense of artistic freedom? What the left and right seem not to understand in this escalating battle over Baca’s Danzas Indigenas is that this is more a struggle over art and censorship than of the politics of race, national identity and borders. One side wants to censor or destroy an artwork for political reasons while the other side counters with its own political arguments that have nothing to do with the rights of artists - both ignore the underlying primary issue - an artist’s freedom to create and display a public work of art.

Judith F. Baca is an internationally respected artist, one of America’s acclaimed contemporary muralists, and the Founder and artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) located in Venice California. As a socially aware artist engaged in community art projects for many decades, she is a highly regarded and cherished member of the Los Angeles community. Without hesitation, I wish to express my total and unconditional solidarity with Ms. Baca, and I urge all other working artists to do the same. If reactionaries succeed in censoring one artist, then all stand in peril.

In her own defense Baca has posted an artist’s statement on the SPARC website where you can also see a photo of the monument she created. The great irony of the SOS attack on Baca’s artwork is over the passage “It was better before they came” - which SOS misinterprets as a Mexican’s racist view of Whites. However, Baca makes clear in her statement that “While this group has cast this artwork as part of a Reconquista movement it is in fact neither advocating for the return of California to the Mexican government nor saying ‘it is better before they came’. This statement was made by a white local Baldwin Park resident who was speaking about Mexicans. The ambiguity of the statement was the point. About which ‘they’ is the anonymous voice speaking? Our capacity as a democracy to disagree and to coexist is precisely the point of this work. No single statement can be seen without the whole, nor can it be removed without destroying the diversity of Baldwin Park’s voice. Silencing every voice with which we disagree is profoundly un-American.”

For those who understand artistic expression to be a sacred human right - for those who appreciate public art as part of democratic culture, for those who recognize the despoilers and abusers of art as the shocktroops of an incipient fascism - stand up to defend Danzas Indigenas and the right of artists to free and unfettered self-expression. Please attend the peaceful and legal demonstration in defense of these right to be held at the monument on Saturday May 14th, from noon until 2 pm, at the Metrolink Station, 3875 Downing Ave., Baldwin Park, California 91706. (Map)

I first heard about Hans Haacke in the early 1980’s. Born in Cologne, Germany, his conceptual art is well known for its caustic, razor sharp examinations of unchecked power and money. This month the US-based artist received a commission from the German government to produce a work of art commemorating the revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg. Berlin authorities have made 260,000 euros (345,000 dollars) available to Haacke for the design and construction of his Luxemburg monument, which is scheduled for completion sometime in late 2006.

Haacke intends to embed immense concrete blocks into the sidewalk around Berlin’s Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, with the giant slabs bearing the writings of Luxemburg. A significant figure in world history, Rosa Luxemburg broke with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1918 over its pro-war stance during the first world war. Along with Karl Liebknecht she founded the Spartacist League (which became the German Communist Party).

In January of 1919, the Spartacists attempted to initiate a revolution, but failed. In the government backlash that followed hundreds of Spartacists were murdered, including Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The two martyred leaders became heroes to many German Expressionist artists, with Käthe Kollwitz creating a magnificent woodcut of Liebknecht’s funeral. While artists here in the US wait for our government to commission official monuments dedicated to the Black Slave rebellions of America’s past, we may while away the time (and it is going to be a long time), by reading some books about Hans Haacke available on Amazon.com