Thursday, April 09, 2009

I'm offended.

Oh, no, the artist was so bold, turning Mary into a Hooters waitress delivering the wings to a bunch of happy and hungry wise dudes.

Sweet Jesus (no relation), but I found this while looking for offensive art. Come on people. This isn't anywhere close to being offensive. Stupid, yes. A waste of the artist's talent, no doubt. But offensive, hell, this person is about as offensive as a baby's fart.

I went looking for offensive art because of the story of Red Grooms' sculpture. That's the sculpture I posted a few days ago. When I looked up why it was no longer at the Cincinnati Art Museum I found out that it was originally commissioned by the Northern Kentucky University to honor a Kentuckian of merit. Grooms chose DW Griffith, a man who revolutionized motion pictures.


Trouble with DW, he was a racist, no question. His Birth of a Nation glorifies the Klan and portrays black men as barely human, lusting after our pure white women.

But the dude revolutionized motion pictures. He was The Father of the Feature.

Not good enough for the students at NKU, apparently. According to NKU's web site, Grooms' sculpture was dismantled in 2004 and is now in storage. Not because Red Grooms is a racist. No. But because his subject, a guy who started making movies sometime around 1915, was a racist.

Goddamn. That's like burning Picasso's paintings because he was an asshole with women. And let's not even talk about Chaplin and his penchant for young girls.

Some who read this blog might be surprised to find I'm not a big fan of political correctness. I believe in manners, yes. I don't go out of my way to offend people. I mean, what's the point?

But Red Grooms is offensive art? To paraphrase Tom Waits, buddy, you don't know the meaning of offensive. Here's some fucking offensive art.

My father's brother was killed on Iwo Jima and in my family, Joe Rosenthal's picture is about as close to a holy relic as we get. To use it to make a point about America's invasion of Iraq offends me. It's right on, but it still offends me.

Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian scarf is pretty nasty, too. I'm offended.

But for real visceral offense, you have to go right to the gut. Check this out.

This artist wanted to protest the killing of a burglar by a couple of guard dogs so he found this dog on the street, chained him up in a gallery to make it all arty and shit, and then starved the dog to death.

Right here is my line. If you've ever wondered after reading this blog for three years, "Gee, I wonder what I would have to do to get under Dave's skin?" this is it.

I wonder if I shot this asshole in the leg with my .45 and called it art he'd understand.

OK, one more example of offensive art and then it's time for me to rest.

Thomas Kinkade is not an artist, he's a marketer. And this stuff stinks almost as bad as the dead dog. It doesn't offend me on the same level as the dead dog, but it offends me, just the same.

We all have a line somewhere. Mine, I admit, is more distant than most. So tell me, what really offends you? I mean, what gets so deeply into your gut as wrong that it spurs you to want it banned, burned, expunged from the earth?

Talk to me.

Update: According to our good friend Dusty Rhoades, the dead dog art was a hoax. If it was, it was a good one. It got me.

I checked with Snopes and as of last year, they couldn't decide if it was a hoax or not. FactCheck has no articles I could find. But I'm inclined to believe it was a hoax. No one could be this insensitive, could they?

Well, yeah, of course they could.

6 comments:

JD Rhoades said...

Actually David, the dead dog thing turned out to be a hoax by the artist. A brilliant hoax, as it turned out.

Stephen Blackmoore said...

Kincaid wins hands down. Look at those lights in the windows.

There's a fucking four alarm fire going in every single one of those houses. How many little old ladies living on shady country lanes has that brutal bastard killed?

He's not a painter, he's an arsonist. Painting's just an excuse for him to run around with a bottle of turpentine.

David Terrenoire said...

Dusty,

I guess it's a good thing I didn't shoot the guy in the leg.

I'd need a good lawyer.

Beneath the Carolina Moon said...

A friend once cuddled a dead cat in his arms on a park bench for two days, gathering oooh and aaahs from a number of chicks, then screams when they found out it was dead. That was art. The girl that pressed her breasts against the restaurant plate glass window and left their print, was an artist. Every time I tell about it, the art is repeated in a new format. And, I like to tell about it alot. Not much art offends me, but some of it is just plain stupid, like Kincade's fairy godfather paintings.

Dread

charlie stella said...

The Dog would do it for me ... if it's real, then send the artist my way. I don't mind some time off for bad behavior. If it's not real, I don't like it anyway. I prefer animals to most people any day.

The hooters thing gave me a laugh (and I sure hope my mommy doesn't read this, Davey 3x's, because then MY ass is grass ... "On Easter Sunday, sonny boy? You Stroonz!"), but the Hooters pic pissed off my wife. Not that she'd throw a Giuliani type hissy fit and make the artist famous for it, but she's religious, so ...

Gerard Saylor said...

Even worse: a biopic of Thomas Kinkade entitled Home for Christmas.

"A look at the inspiration behind Thomas Kinkade's painting The Christmas Cottage, and how the artist was motivated to begin his career after discovering his mother was in danger of losing their family home."

Even more horrible: Chris Elliott debasing himself by appearing in such dreck.