Arts and Exhibitions

[jm]

The history of law - you could have scenes of police brutality in ghettos, or workers being led out of factories in chains and shackles by immigration authorities, or scenes of prison chain gangs.  You could scenes of civil disobedience arrests at demonstrations.  People marching for changes in the law - women's right to vote, for example.  The role of religion in law?  Well, you could also have scenes from the Inquisition.  How about a scene with the Constitution being written?  The First Amendment in particular?  Instead of a big slab of stone about what a burning bush said, how about a copy of the Bill of Rights?

[jm]

The history of law - you could have scenes of police brutality in ghettos, or workers being led out of factories in chains and shackles by immigration authorities, or scenes of prison chain gangs.  You could scenes of civil disobedience arrests at demonstrations.  People marching for changes in the law - women's right to vote, for example.  The role of religion in law?  Well, you could also have scenes from the Inquisition.  How about a scene with the Constitution being written?  The First Amendment in particular?  Instead of a big slab of stone about what a burning bush said, how about a copy of the Bill of Rights?

Bill of Rights at a Federal Courthouse and Post Office



As just a statement before entering, and not a piece of art, that makes a lot more sense than the 10 Commandments, presented in the previous photo as essentially the same sort of thing.

Here is an artistic rendition of the Bill of Rights, entitled "Bill of Rights," at a Kansas City, Missouri Courthouse;  artist, Xin Kun Wu.



Close up of one portion.



Back further.

[Lhoffman]

I've seen that KC monument in person...my son-in-law conducts one of the philharmonics there.   There photo really doesn't do it justice.

We've also driven out to see his Children of the Trails sculptures which is about 20 or so miles from KC in Johnson County Kansas.   Pioneer children...also quite beautiful.

Kun Xu has an interesting story, having come from China as a student of the China's National Sculptor to immigration and naturalization as a US citizen.  He and his family had quite a struggle when they first came to America, but he built a living out of pure talent.

[Lhoffman]

KC Missouri is an interesting place to visit if you are into art.  Very eclectic.   Here's another sculpture I saw there.    

[jm]

I'm going to have to get to Kansas City some day.  

Here is a good article on the Beck & Co. politics behind the Maine mural controversy;  it includes a link to the artist's website with close-ups of the various panels.  A clip on related art history:

A similar controversy occurred over a mural by the great American painter (and former union organizer) Ralph Fasanella (1914-1997). Fasanella spent three years living in the Lawrence, Massachusetts YMCA, in order to paint scenes of New England mill towns, including his now-iconic 5-foot by 10-foot painting, "Lawrence 1912: The Great Strike" (also titled "Bread and Roses -- Lawrence, 1912"). The painting was purchased by donations from 15 unions and given to Congress, where it hung for years in the Rayburn Office Building hearing room of the House Subcommittee on Labor and Education.

Following the 1994 elections, the new Republican majority in Congress eliminated "labor" from the committee's name and evicted Fasanella's painting from the committee's hearing room. It now hangs at the Lawrence Heritage State Park, not far from the Maine border. It is unlikely that Maine Gov. LePage knows about this precedent for his own action. (You can learn more about Fasanella at this website and from this article.

The mural movement in this country was inspired in the 1930s by the great Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera, who supported the Mexican revolution and leftist causes. In 1932, Siqueiros lived for seven months in Los Angeles, where he painted the incendiary mural "América Tropical," that was so controversial it was painted over soon after he finished it. Rivera's mural, "Man at the Crossroads," commissioned for Rockefeller Center in 1933, was destroyed in the middle of the night because of its depiction of revolutionary figures and events. Not surprisingly, right-wing broadcaster Beck has devoted several shows to attacking progressive murals on New York buildings, including Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads".

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/31-13

[madupont]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/03/23/maine-republican-governor-erasing-history-of-working-people/

I was appalled by this story, first hearing about it at commondreams.org where they have a clip of Colbert doing a piece on this.  Can they do this?  Just imagine if these Republicans could get their paws on Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals.  Yet they cannot see themselves as the leading antagonists in Farenheit 451.

Believe me, that's the first thing that I thought of also, Diego Rivera at Detroit, because Lhoffman and I discussed those murals rather fully some time ago in these fora,probably this same forum. I spend less time in the Immigration forum because it just goes around and around again over the same material like a merry-go-round similar to one that showed up in a Woody Allen movie whose title I forget but recall  he had to have it and that is why he  went there to shoot that segment of film. You get attached to certain visuals and have to put them into motion. Otherwise, he might just hang out in the Greater Metropolitan area that he prefers and which has plenty of stupendous scenic inspiration.

My point? Nowadays, the majority of Republicans wouldn't allow Diego and Frida to visit Michigan. Communist, you know.  It is like those Michele Bachman appearances in the park  when the rally gets around to pronouncing "Liberal" so it grates on your ears.

[madupont]

jm
Re: #207 on: March 29, 2011, 10:03:14 PM »
dunking women for confessions

By the way, that's a Germanic contribution to history and the establishment of Law, they continued doing that but,no, I didn't find it in the works of Gunter Grass, who in his inimitable humorous style did a history of women from a German point of view ( I mean, each culture manipulates the myth to reflect things naturally part of their own culture).

Where I did run across it was in something titled,"The Martyrs' Mirror", which is the history of the Mennonites in Europe (or, why they came here, instead).

It happens just when you think you are dealing with highly intelligent Europeans who have developed a high cultural level, and then you learn that they dunked women in order to establish if they were guilty of certain things that were against the current laws.  If they floated they were guilty. If they drowned, they were innocent. But, of course, if you were guilty, then you  went to a horrible prison to await your execution; because they believed in the trial by water.

[madupont]

Common Dreams

Re: #214
 this poignant letter-to-the-editor to a Maine newspaper, linking the mural flap to the recent 100th anniversary of the tragic Triangle Fire.

You can see the most dramatically informative documentary on HBO,Triangle.

I saw it last Friday night, and where the heck I saw the map of the location (probably at HBO web-site on-line)?, it also has little dots at that map to indicate where each of the girls(they were very young) and women came from in the various neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and only one girl from Hoboken,New Jersey.  I immediately sent that girl's data to a friend of mine whose father was a fireman in Hoboken. Although he had a home, and a wife and four daughters in Brick,New Jersey, he used to stay at his mother's in Hoboken in order to qualify for the job at the Hoboken firehouse, and then come home (at the moment, I am listening to Bill Maher with an entire male panel for the first time I've noticed: Bernie Sanders among them , who mentions more work  hours than ever at present in America, for less pay, and no vacation while Europeans have 5 to 6 weeks of vacation time per year and rent vacation houses in other parts of Europe!).


My friend from New Jersey, who can now keep an apartment in Chelsea as well as having a home at the Jersey Shore,and regularly spends time living in Italy where she began her career as a sculptor at Carrara, of course has many women in her mother's family (born on Mulberry Street in the City)who were feminists and worked in the mills of Patterson, New Jersey.

A couple more "by the ways":
The little girls in the Labor Mural are carrying lunch pails which were a working class contribution from England.  I saw one recently, in passing as I went from my house past a few Amish farms on my way to Smoketown and spotted one of the farmers walking along the road carrying that kind of lunch pail which I imagine he must have bought at a yard sale. Half the population here, the half that seldom farms, are Scots-Irish and they prefer to live in the forest and like to hunt, etc. but for their work,  when they originally came here to Penn's Woods, would have had those lunch pails that interlock one pan on top of the other that keeps the food warm.
 
Common Dreams  is my second "by the way". We used to read that a lot at nytimes.com Western Europe forum, and the National Security forum before efe attracted us,back in 2007. I recently had occasion to contact one of their best known writers. Attorney Paul Bigioni whom I noticed was a member of Facebook (He has since left there as he was on the verge of discontinuing at the point where I contacted him for some advice, succinctly because in less than one month, in a matter of three weeks, I was contacted by three people whom I knew nothing about but that they wanted to friend me from Nova Scotia, the Dominican Republic, and I think the last one was Brazil who wanted to know what the current weather was like because he was on his way. That's when I caught on.

Paul Bigioni told me that he was no longer doing Immigration Law from his office in Ontario but he gave me the name of a fiery Italian lawyer who is working out of Toronto.

The high school teen-ager from Canada, who was supposed to be back in the British Isles,told me that she would understand if I didn't respond because she was issued a certificate of Security (which led me to have to contact a friend to find out what that was? My friend can't get back into her own house that she bought in Ontario because she demonstrated against W.Bush too often by always dutifully attending the rallies.  Can you imagine if Obama turned around and did that to the T-Party rallies?) So, yes, something has changed; on the one hand. On the other, these three requests  close in our hemispheric proximity indicate the poverty level increasing.

The guy from Santo Domingo doesn't speak English but he has a household that is a bevy of girls who speak enough of it to immediately  take after me and all individually(and angrily)ask to "friend me"
Here's the contrast: my son who invited me to "like" Facebook likewise has about the same amount of girls hanging out at his place but they speak better English, are a lot better looking (which stands to reason because he is their personal trainer,since they all want to further their career in Los Angeles and he runs a nice studio  to keep them well sculpted plus we have good connections because my niece  on the other side of the family  works for an agent in Hawaii who comes from New Orleans and since my son's father's family were New Orleans inhabitants these two guys have a lot to chat about in talent grooming,management and movie industry auditions. At least, Bigioni was nice enough to get back to me and clear my mind that I wasn't taking any illegal risks in conversing with  other Americans who don't happen to live in the U.S. but would seem to want that. Gad zooks, I don't even have a passport.

[jm]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/03/23/maine-republican-governor-erasing-history-of-working-people/

I was appalled by this story, first hearing about it at commondreams.org where they have a clip of Colbert doing a piece on this.  Can they do this?  Just imagine if these Republicans could get their paws on Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals.  Yet they cannot see themselves as the leading antagonists in Farenheit 451.

Believe me, that's the first thing that I thought of also, Diego Rivera at Detroit, because Lhoffman and I discussed those murals rather fully some time ago in these fora,probably this same forum. I spend less time in the Immigration forum because it just goes around and around again over the same material like a merry-go-round similar to one that showed up in a Woody Allen movie whose title I forget but recall  he had to have it and that is why he  went there to shoot that segment of film. You get attached to certain visuals and have to put them into motion. Otherwise, he might just hang out in the Greater Metropolitan area that he prefers and which has plenty of stupendous scenic inspiration.

My point? Nowadays, the majority of Republicans wouldn't allow Diego and Frida to visit Michigan. Communist, you know.  It is like those Michele Bachman appearances in the park  when the rally gets around to pronouncing "Liberal" so it grates on your ears.

I know what you mean.  I feel like the United States has developed a severe case of split personality.  It's like, what kind of world are these people living in?  How did America form two such distinctly divorced perspectives?  And while living in the same environment (which is supposed to be similarly shaping you)?  With neither fathoming or remembering the other.

From what I read, the IF is a good place to see the arguments which run their course fairly fast.  I think it might be more interesting if it were framed in the bigger picture of human migration and the cultural sharing that happens.  I have noticed there, and in other forums, a growing inclination for some to more blatantly express fascist desires.  With Hitler longing;  i.e. *he missed a few points, but we get it right this time*.  It is creepy and I am not sure what this is attributable to, since the economy has sucked for a while.  Libya?  Another lovely war freaking people out?  A CD poster said that she thinks many Americans are going to be up to Germany's speed (back when) in another few years.  Regarding immigrants, that is.

[jm]

jm
Re: #207 on: March 29, 2011, 10:03:14 PM »
dunking women for confessions

By the way, that's a Germanic contribution to history and the establishment of Law, they continued doing that but,no, I didn't find it in the works of Gunter Grass, who in his inimitable humorous style did a history of women from a German point of view ( I mean, each culture manipulates the myth to reflect things naturally part of their own culture).

Where I did run across it was in something titled,"The Martyrs' Mirror", which is the history of the Mennonites in Europe (or, why they came here, instead).

It happens just when you think you are dealing with highly intelligent Europeans who have developed a high cultural level, and then you learn that they dunked women in order to establish if they were guilty of certain things that were against the current laws.  If they floated they were guilty. If they drowned, they were innocent. But, of course, if you were guilty, then you  went to a horrible prison to await your execution; because they believed in the trial by water.

And of course they didn't have to worry if they drowned innocent, because they'd go to heaven, where their executioners were heading later.  So they told them. 

I heard that many of these women were unconventional in some regard;  did something that challenged the established order.  Some were midwives or herbalists -- doctors of sort who practiced a more rational form of medicine than what was usual for that day.  There was a French film (I forget which - it's been too many years) that dealt with this subject, but in France.  You've probably seen it.  The main character, a female physician living outside a village in the woods who runs into difficulties with the church authorities.

[jm]

I love when people notice these little historical details in paintings.  Like your pail.  It is a treat.  Sometimes you get someone who knows plants and notices this plant in the painting from hundreds of years ago, and they're off on a tale about the botany in those days;  or the carpentry and craftsmanship and the type of trees being used which the painter reproduced, so you can see what was happening back when and where.  Stuff you would never otherwise know about the world but for this individual who happens to notice it in the picture.  They may not even be art authorities;  they are just viewing the picture or piece with an unpolluted originality, and bringing a skill or experience about an entirely different field into the understanding.  

I was hoping you would post, Madupont.  Your commentaries are appreciated.  

[Lhoffman]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/03/23/maine-republican-governor-erasing-history-of-working-people/

I was appalled by this story, first hearing about it at commondreams.org where they have a clip of Colbert doing a piece on this.  Can they do this?  Just imagine if these Republicans could get their paws on Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals.  Yet they cannot see themselves as the leading antagonists in Farenheit 451.

Believe me, that's the first thing that I thought of also, Diego Rivera at Detroit, because Lhoffman and I discussed those murals rather fully some time ago in these fora,probably this same forum. I spend less time in the Immigration forum because it just goes around and around again over the same material like a merry-go-round similar to one that showed up in a Woody Allen movie whose title I forget but recall  he had to have it and that is why he  went there to shoot that segment of film. You get attached to certain visuals and have to put them into motion. Otherwise, he might just hang out in the Greater Metropolitan area that he prefers and which has plenty of stupendous scenic inspiration.

My point? Nowadays, the majority of Republicans wouldn't allow Diego and Frida to visit Michigan. Communist, you know.  It is like those Michele Bachman appearances in the park  when the rally gets around to pronouncing "Liberal" so it grates on your ears.

Michigan is odd.   Most people are Democrats, Union people, working class.   I think that Republicans swept the election last fall because the Democrats didn't come out to vote.   

I think we talked about the attempt to destroy the Riviera Murals at the time of their opening.  Same old, same old....people objected because we were in the midst of the depression and why in the world would you bring in a Mexican of all things when there are perfectly good American artists etc, etc.   The Detroit News called it "un-American", the Catholic church called it blasphemous, and then there were those who took offense at nudity....

[madupont]

Notice, however, how different the style of Judy Taylor in the 1980's (Women's art reawakening during the era of Constructions)from that of Diego Rivera's style; although Taylor actually does borrow a bit of his form of composition for her far-background in miniature. She is using(in her foreground) what was then an interest in the "framed stain-glass window" revival.  There was a lot of craftsmanship being taken up by former art-students of the mid-1950s who branched out into other kinds of art-craftsmanship whereby they regain the experience that Diego Rivera's credits to the ordinary skilled worker.

What he does in the Detroit Murals is a continuance with the human and the "Machine" in which the line-man or girls in the office who work in the secretarial pool or as telephone operators are not just cogs "in the machine" but each department has a progression of specialized skills necessary to complete the production; and, as we noted in the earlier discussion linking both NPR and one more additional publication on the Kahlo genre, he includes some decor, like those doors he includes as if you could enter or exit a stage-set "Factory" in which he does painterly furbishs of what he used to paint  from the natural world because his subject in the beginning had been Man as Mexican Peasant in the era of Emiliano Zapata and the revolution of Pancho Villa.

Judy Taylor paints a subdued and limited color palette, the very opposite of what you would see in actual stained glass windows with reinforced framing of pieces. The better to suggest this is a WPA project fifty years after the fact, in which the Great Depression, for working men and women and their children:the child laborer (the child labor laws will need to be dealt with)is a dull and somber atmosphere.

I'm struck by a figure to the left  of one panel: the woman  dressed in a black coat and hat who gestures as she speaks to workers.   May I suggest this is Dorothy Day who was a contemporary of Esther Peterson's long career running FDR's Consumers' Bureau and then again  likewise  the  same for   JFK. (and Johnson,and Carter, "Consumers Union").

http://tinyurl.com/3ofaa22

[Lhoffman]

The woman in black....I think you are referring to the fifth panel?   The figure is Francis Perkins.

I wasn't making a comparison between Rivera and Taylor on any level except subject.   To compare artistry?   Subjective, I know, and I've never seen Taylor's work aside from photographs.   But it seems to me that there is a sort of flatness in her work, while in Rivera's there is vibrance and life.

[Lhoffman]

The Rivera Court and  doors in Detroit:   These were part of the structure of the DIA which Rivera had to paint around.    When you see them in person, they don't strike you as part of the art.   A curator there once told me that Rivera wanted them plastered in, but the museum wouldn't do it.