Continue reading “hues .3”
Category: art
Self-possessed: Mona Frida Warhol
There’s a simple term for the look in Frida Kahlo’s eyes: self-possession.
The gaze is not that of the (putatively male, white) viewer looking inwards. It is her own. She’s the one who does the looking. Her preternaturally long neck holds her head completely still and completely erect so that the eyes are front and centre.
But it’s important to remember that Kahlo didn’t become iconic. She created herself, quite literally, as an icon. The process is one she controlled. Though it’s not a comparison I’ve encountered in art history, Kahlo seems to me to be, among other things, a precursor of Warhol. Her images seem to be made for mass reproduction.
HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE ? — Joffre Stewart
HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE? vers. 2024
a posthumous collab with Joffre Stewart, most respectfully & reverently
Which party would be better for Israel?
Red or Blue?
Trick Question!
Both, that’s who!
Which party would be better for The People?
Red or Blue?
Trick Question!
Both, hate you!
Did CRAZY HORSE vote his Lakota People out of Dispossession and Genocide?
Did BLACK PEOPLE vote themselves out of Enslavement and American Apartheid?
Did WOMEN vote themselves IRREVOCABLE Equal and Reproductive Rights?
Have the SOLUTIONS to human dispossession, oppression ever been secured at the polls
with votes of RED or BLUE?
LISTEN:
REVOLUTION has been the ONLY DURABLE AMERICAN SOLUTION.
Yet, childlike, playing at history,
& with the future
You color some ovals, You check a box,
And, deny this
TRUTH.
Continue reading “HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE ? — Joffre Stewart”Shepard Fairey is back on his bullshit
“Question Everything,”
then Obey!
This past Spring, I saw a Shepard Fairey exhibit at the local art museum: Shepard Fairey: Facing The Giant: 3 Decades Of Dissent.
I didn’t pay to enter the exhibit.
Shepard Fairey no doubt has a seminal presence in street art — that is, art in public space — in sticker culture, in wheatpaste postering and in muralism. But, he’s also problematic as fuck — problematic to “fair use”, to social movements — and to art itself. I want to be more precise and say: he has an ejaculative presence in art in public space: his stuff is ubiquitously and frequently splattered — and sticky in the public consciousness — like a true Mad Men, note Ad men and marketers and PR consultants are not artists: they are not even tricksters — they are influencers, marketeers, cons, liars and grifters.
Fairey perhaps most famously helped to elevate Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign with his iconographic HOPE image — Fairey, (perhaps) like tens of millions of us, including myself, bought into Obama’s community organizer/activist history and “hope and change” schtick back in 2008. The shame and pain of decades of systemic, racialized disenfranchisement and inequity were transformed into an incredible electoral energy that was earnestly and hopefully deposited into Obama’s candidacy and presidency; it was then almost immediately disregarded and wasted — and ultimately, profoundly regretted by progressives. Only after his first term was nearly complete did “we” learn and process that Obama was a neo-liberal capitalist centrist cloaked in folksy voice and progressive-populist clothing — we witnessed him betray us again and again — and become a prolific drone-strike-executioner-in-chief as well as Wall Street’s and Rahm Emanuel’s punk-ass bitch.
I want to be more precise and say: he has an ejaculative presence in art in public space: his stuff is ubiquitously and frequently splattered — and sticky in the public consciousness.
The Obama HOPE image stands as a reminder and a joke of hope placed in any Democrat or Republican politician — any. Thank you for that, truly, Shepard Fairey.
But, some among us may still not know — that Fairey had misappropriated the photograph on which the iconic Obama HOPE poster was based, without credit or compensation to the copyright holder — falsely citing “fair use” — Fairey subsequently destroyed evidence about the actual unfairness of his use which amounted to theft, fraud and obstruction. Fairey settled with the copyright owner and also plead guilty for contempt of court.
Fairey has also reproduced and exhibited images of actual, bonafide Black power and liberation icons (Angela Davis notwithstanding) — and has been rightly interrogated about his cultural appropriation. On the surface, his work may pass as homage to great People and powerful movements, but it can also be interpreted as an artistic “black face” — and as an attempt to co-opt that which is not his in order to elevate his own vanilla, half-woke vibe — and of course, to cash-in. He remains defiant in his approach to cultural appropriation.
Continue reading “Shepard Fairey is back on his bullshit”
July is for remembering Frida Kahlo
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón
born 6th of July 1907
died 13th of July 1954
Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
“PALESTINE IS THE WORLD IN ITS FUTURE TENSE”
as distributed and posted at the April 2024
Venice Biennale
to protest the inclusion of and to demand the boycott of the Israeli Pavilion
aka The Genocide Pavilion
NO BUSINESS AS USUAL
DURING GENOCIDE
THE PALESTINIAN PAVILION
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF ART?
A manifesto against the state of the world.
In a world where genocide unfolds before our very eyes, shielded by nation-state rhetoric and bolstered by the imperial powers of our times, we bear witness to unspeakable horrors. This witnessing is not metaphorical – it is stark reality. To witness now is to be complicit; ignorance is no excuse, and inaction is cowardice.
What is it that cannot be stopped?
The global state structure, which dominated the 20th century, not only allows but actively enables genocide in Gaza and elsewhere in this world. Every genocide is perpetuated by a state. This machinery of destruction, guided by settler colonialism, fueled by capitalism, empowered by technological might, and covered by complicit media giants, must be dismantled. We are confronted with ongoing efforts to alienate us from our political agency and the ability to strive towards a moral and just world for all. We ask: If this level of atrocity is now acceptable, then what is deemed unacceptable? We must reconsider what structures national identities have produced and restore our severed connection to the land as a source of our identity and political existence.
The Palestinian struggle and resistance comes to remind us of what should not be forgotten: the people and the land embody each other, in time and place. It is within this unbreakable bond that we envision the future, it is within this bond that we learn from the past, and through it we engage with our present. We refuse the state of the world: the brutality of maintaining the hegemony of the powerful and the complicity of those who turn a blind eye to injustice.
What role can art and POETRY play in a future built on genocide?
The Zionist state’s atrocities permeate every level of existence. It devours all human knowledge and science by utilizing technology and social engineering to produce killing target and destruction lists. Within these new artificial intelligence technologies, every total meaning can be devoured, every total meaning can kill.
Now is the time for art and poetry. For art
that rejects the logic of prevailing power. For poetry that resists the totalizing narratives that fuel the killing machines of the perpetrator. Art is inherently political-in its message, production, and presentation. It engages with society, assuming a role either in complicity or resistance.
We must defend our agency as political beings,
stateless as humanity itself, collective as what
our societies are, we are bound to organize an
resist on multiple fronts to halt the genocide
and prevent it as a future.
Art and poetry represent our liberated knowledge, freed from the belly of the beast. This moment demands that we reclaim our political agency; in its clarity, it empowers us to turn imagination into affirmative actions, forging poetic structures of collectivity-a return to the essence of our humanity. We belong to the world, to the earth, to the land, and through this agency, we move, act, and refuse to be silent accomplices to the state’s atrocities. We cannot ignore the oppressive conditions under which creativity thrives. Faced with censorship co-option, we must resist glorifying the regime or fading into obscurity.
Continue reading ““PALESTINE IS THE WORLD IN ITS FUTURE TENSE””F R e E P a L e sT I nE
Truly, one of the greatest evocative and provocative living contemporary artists, Survivance/resistance/futurist writers, and performance poets,
Diné artist Demian DinéYazhi’ ingeniously embedded “Free Palestine” in the flickering letters of their powerful, poemic-neon artwork at the Whitney Museum’s Whitney Biennial
we must stop imagining destruction + extraction + deforestation + cages + torture + displacement + surveillance + genocide!
we must stop predicting apocalypses + fascist governments + capitalist hierarchies!
we must pursue + predict + imagine routes toward liberation!
~ Demian DinéYazhi’
poemic-neon artwork: “we must stop imagining apocalypse/genocide + we must imagine liberation.”
photo by: Nora Gomez-Strauss
photo by: Nick Mathews
photo by: Field Kallop
the institution & curators were unaware;
yet “Free Palestine”
was intermittently revealed for those with the patience to observe the piece
the entire artwork faces out toward the Hudson River for all to see:
Continue reading “F R e E P a L e sT I nE”a mantra, a prayer — and a message
for all the demons, monsters and liars,
today and always, everywhere:
in every form known to man.
now and in the future.
artist: Ernesto Yerena Montenajo
limited edition hand-pulled screen print
Free Palestine
reimagined/colorized for the horrific and ruthless bombing of Gaza and the genocide of
of the Palestinian People
by the State of Israel, armed and supported by the United States
& Western World
derivative work, artist unknown
art appreciation: thresholds
first in a series
The Entrance Gate on the far bank of The River Tuoni according to the Kalevala and as depicted by Finnish artist Hugo Simberg
oil on canvas
Hugo Simberg, 1873-1917
Finland
In this piece, which is an interpretation of one of many universal myths which impart the water crossing and trek we all are to embark upon after death,
most of the departed climb up the steep, barren embankment and enter the tunnel individually, while a child and a dog are tenderly escorted — led by the hand or carried by chthonic monks into the tunnel leading to the
Underworld
the tunnel appears under geological strata — presumably the surface of Earth, with blue sky and forest in background above it
interestingly, the artist’s limited use of perspective also allows the sky and forest to be viewed potentially as the Great Beyond itself — as a Northern or Alpine “paradise,” a Valhalla, beyond the sojourn in and through the tunnel
a high, solid, wooden fence bisects the river, embankment and tunnel and prevents arrivals from observing the exiting monks — only one-way vision and traffic for the dead
and while the monks do not cast shadows, the human figures continue to be accompanied by their shadows; for those who subscribe to Jungian analytical psychology or gnostic texts, the physical shadow depicted may be interpreted symbolically as the anima/animus of the person — which would ultimately disappear during the tunnel upon the full reintegration of the Self/Soul/Spirit
through re-unification with one’s divine twin (which is sometimes also called the cosmic/celestial twin or daimon) after having been separated during human incarnation and birth.
author’s note:
i often and prefer to call the underworld aka afterlife “The Great Wide Open of the All” — which in my liminal gleanings is a supremely contented blackness of universal consciousness, devoid of thought or sensation — a perfected existence in the dark cosmic fabric of nothingness,
there may be levels in the afterlife which may manifest our own personal imaginal constructs of paradise — far beyond what our limited sensory perception and experiences of life on Earth are - such as, an Alpine Paradise upon emerging from the tunnel -
i know full well the breathtaking beauty and feeling upon exiting a scary and lengthy mountain tunnel where my heart and eyes are stunned by a grand vista of forest, peaks and sky — from my many road trips in the Western U.S.
yet, i truly prefer the former — when i die, i want to rest for all eternity — although with just one desire, one sensation: warmth.
Continue reading “art appreciation: thresholds”
ai | crone | collaboration 3.0 : 228 slaps “i brake/break 4 BUTTERFLIES”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 