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Censored Bush Portrait

02:43 / 15.12.04

Article here.

Basically, some guy made a portrait of Bush out of images of monkeys, and the exhibit was shut down because of it. Very sad stuff. Lots of people crying foul regarding freedom of speech.

(I'm opposed to this gallery closing, but I think it is perfectly by the book. The gallery owner shut it down, not the cops. Isn't this the owner expressing control over the material in his own gallery? Legit or not, I thought people might want to see this example of sadness in New York, supposed blue state headquarters.)

11:12 / 15.12.04

I just think that it's odd that a gallery manager, who I assume approved the exhibit in the first place, would have a piece taken down at the eleventh hour. Are we sure this isn't just a publicity stunt? Or just a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:33 / 15.12.04

Whatever the rationale, it certainly got the piece some exposure- it was i the British press today, where it probably wouldn't have been otherwise.
I kinda liked it.

16:20 / 15.12.04

I love the painting, as well as the fact that it's going to be auctioned to to support free speech.

22:58 / 15.12.04

Just to clarify, Chelsea Market isn't a gallery. It's more of a small indoor shopping plaza with retail stores and the like. There are also businesses and offices on upper floors.

If there is any dispute at all (which there probably isn't), it would be a contractual one between the building management and the organization using the privately owned space to display the works.

It's hardly a free speech issue; which everyone except the artist seems to recognize.

Fuck if I'm not completely sick of hearing artists and the like complaining about their first amendment rights being violated, or their precious work being censored. It diminishes the plight of those out there who actually fight for real first amendment protections.

That said, Bush Monkeys seems to be a rather hackneyed concept for a painting, and and it really doesn't strike me as anything more than cute computer wallpaper or a piece of dorm room wall decoration.

What ever happened to the good old days of "Piss Christ" and elephant dung "Holy Virgin Mary"? That shit needed armed guards and bullet proof glass just to put it on display!

Oh well. What do I know. He'll probably get his $3,500.00 for it, and that of course means it will have been market-valued as Art.

Bully for him.

12:46 / 16.12.04

That said, Bush Monkeys seems to be a rather hackneyed concept for a painting, and and it really doesn't strike me as anything more than cute computer wallpaper or a piece of dorm room wall decoration.

I totally agree. This was the most apalling part of the news story to me - all this controversy over such a lame concept. People have been passing humorous emails of Bush-Monkey comparisons since 2000. If he were either making a statement about email memes or saying something new about Bush, I might care about the painting, but as it stands it's just an unoriginal joke about how GW looks a good deal like a chimp and psst, he's as smart as one too, haha. Yeah. We know.

12:54 / 16.12.04

Mmm. It does have all the radical freshness of some young BritArt turk portraying Blair as *gasp* a poodle...

21:57 / 16.12.04

it really doesn't strike me as anything more than cute computer wallpaper or a piece of dorm room wall decoration.

A fact which makes its removal all the more absurd. There is no overt political statement here, it's just an innocous sight gag. This was probably the painter's intention. He was bored and decided to paint something fun, all of a sudden there's this big uproar when he tries to hang it up in a public space.

We should all be so lucky.

02:42 / 17.12.04

A fact which makes its removal all the more absurd. There is no overt political statement here, it's just an innocous sight gag

Perhaps the little monkeys have enormous genitalia and bleed through stigmata?

As you suggest, it is completely absurd.

In fact it is so absurd that I've now come to believe that the Chelsea Market manager had the exhibition pulled not because he was offended by the content, but rather because he was appalled by the lack thereof.

We here in Chelsea are notoriously snobbish when it comes to exhibitions, after all.

"What is this? Simeo-Pop Rasterism? Get that abomination outta here and take it back to Brooklyn or Dumbo or wherever the devil it is you underdeveloped art-pukes are mixing paint these days. Come back when you can show me some Brut Abstract Neo-Opism. Mercy! What do I have to do to get some honest weltschmerz around here... oh, sweetie, be a dear and go get me a vodka and grapefruit."