Today marks the 1,502 US soldier to die in Iraq since Mr. Bush launched the war in March 2003. From the time when the Commander in Chief announced “Mission Accomplished” in May of 2003, 1,364 US soldiers have lost their lives. How are these service men and women being remembered? Perhaps America is beginning to realize that it is actually…
On February 7th anti-war artists held a protest outside of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, to voice disapproval over the museum’s exhibit, Fire and Ice: Combat Art from Afghanistan and Iraq by Staff Sergeant Michael Fay USMCR. The exhibit was made possible by the support of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and the protest took place as the…
On February 6th, the Mayor of Blacktown Australia banned anti-war street artwork by artist Zanny Begg. The artist’s works consisted of life-sized poster cut-outs of a US soldier gripping his M-16 rifle. Each wildly painted artwork incorporated the words, Checkpoint for Weapons of Mass Distraction. Hmm… whatever happened to those weapons of mass destruction we went to war over? The…
Back in December I wrote that Universal Pictures was going to produce, No True Glory: Battle for Fallujah, a pro-war film with Harrison Ford starring as Lt. Gen. James Mattis. Well the news just keeps getting stranger and stranger. At a recent forum Gen. Mattis publicly said: “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell…
When the US Army captured Iraq’s capital of Baghdad in April of 2003, people around the world were shocked by the whirlwind of looting that followed in the wake of liberation. Quick to seize and guard Iraq’s Oil Ministry, US forces left other government buildings unprotected and open to pillage by throngs of impoverished Iraqis. The country’s art and history…
In Artnet Magazine’s year end report, The 2004 Revue, editor Walter Robinson unconsciously laid bare everything that’s wrong with the art world. The first remark he made that raised my hackles was, “we don’t have art movements any more, we have market movements.” And in what part of the 20th century have artists not been buffeted and controlled by market…
Diego Rivera painted his glorious oil painting, Nude with Calla Lilies, in 1944. Rivera was known as a fiery radical and an artist who helped create a national art for his Mexican homeland… a genre of social realism that’s come to be known as the Mexican School. Rivera painted an endless number of monumental fresco murals and easel paintings that…
