{"id":125,"date":"2005-05-07T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-07T22:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/?p=125"},"modified":"2022-10-04T09:46:08","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T16:46:08","slug":"atomic-artist-at-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/atomic-artist-at-un.html","title":{"rendered":"Atomic Artist at the UN"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Earth Protector Kachina.” Tony Price.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here\u2019s a novel idea\u2026 let\u2019s scrape all of the nuclear weapons in the world and turn them into works of art. Artist Tony Price (1937-2000) at least showed us this possibility by starting such an undertaking on a small scale.<\/p>\n

Price\u00a0settled in New Mexico in the late 1960\u2019s and discovered the Zia Salvage Yard at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He had the brilliant idea of turning junk from the yard into what he called Atomic Art\u2014<\/em>literally, the turning of swords into plowshares.<\/p>\n

Price\u2019s sculptures of used brass, steel, aluminum and other materials salvaged from the Los Alamos scrap yard, are terrifyingly modern and at the same time icons of an ancient past. Many of his sculptures are in the form of masks inspired by Native American peoples from America\u2019s southwest, like the Zuni, Hopi and Acoma, and carry names like Nuclear Kachina<\/em> and Earth Protector Kachina<\/em>. Other mask\/sculptures allude to the Aztec Empire, and bear titles like Atomic Aztec God<\/em>, Atomic Quetzalcoatl<\/em>, and Nuclear Aztec God Tlaloc<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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“Atomic Aztec God.” Tony Price.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Still others reference gods or figures from our collective past – Nordic and Hindu deities, even Samurai warriors. Each unique mask stares at us from a past where violence was commonplace, but where no one had the ability or desire to totally destroy the world many times over.<\/p>\n

Price\u2019s masks also carry another ominous message\u2026 that today\u2019s atomic weapons have become our new gods. We worship them, live under them, and are willing to make mass human sacrifices to them.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another novel idea, let\u2019s take Price\u2019s sculptures and put them on display before the world community at the United Nations. Sword into Plowshares, Tony Price: Atomic Art<\/em><\/a>, is an exhibit of the artist\u2019s sculptures now on display at the UN\u2019s General Assembly Visitor\u2019s Lobby. The exhibit, on view until June 10th, 2005, is being presented in conjunction with the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference and the 60th anniversary of the UN.\u00a0 View the remarkable works of Tony Price at his official website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a novel idea\u2026 let\u2019s scrape all of the nuclear weapons in the world and turn them into works of art. Artist Tony Price (1937-2000) at least showed us this possibility by starting such an undertaking on a small scale. Price\u00a0settled in New Mexico in the late 1960\u2019s and discovered the Zia Salvage Yard at the Los Alamos National Laboratory….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-of-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}