BS: Abu Ghraib Photography Exhibit Opening

Subject: BS: Abu Ghraib Photography Exhibit Opening
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 09:43 AM

Don't know how many people have heard about this exhibit opening, a collaborative exhibit between the Warhol Museum and the International Center of Photography in New York City. There are the predictable military advocacy and veterans groups attempting to censor it, of course.

Museum curators explain that "the photos are part of a long tradition in which war has been examined through art. All news and all art is made about things that are extraordinary, aberrations whether they are positive or negative."

The Warhol Museum has done political art exhibits in the past, including exhibits which showed the Rodney King beating video, photographs of black lynchings (similar exhibits of these sorts of photographs have been censored because of fears over volatile reactions to the photos), and film footage of the JFK assassination.

The news of this new exhibit came to me yesterday, as I was working with a severely vision impaired 15 year old kid with an IQ of 150, on an assignment about the Picasso painting "Guernica" for his Spanish class. Once we got beyond the whining phase of him being burdened by too much homework being assigned the first week of school (it's a long week for all of us), we started talking about the painting, and he became quite uncomfortable at first, looking at the painting.

Despite the enormous interest the painting generated in his lifetime, Picasso obstinately refused to explain Guernica's imagery. Guernica has been the subject of more books than any other work in modern art and it is often described as..."the most important work of art of the twentieth century", yet its meanings have to this day eluded some of the most renowned scholars.

So we quickly went beyond the symbolism in the painting, and I mentioned the controversy surrounding the covering of the painting with a shroud (a tapestry reproduction of the painting hangs just outside the entrance to the UN Security Council meeting room) beginning January 27, 2003. It was still in place when Colin Powell gave his now infamous call to arms presentation to the Security Council. The UN claim was that it was draped in blue, suddenly, because it made for a better background for TV cameras. It just apparently hadn't been enough of a problem to move the tapestry to a different location, or cover it prior to the US militarists making appearances before the Security Council in the lead up to the Iraq war. It has often been featured in the background of photos and TV images showing diplomats speaking to reporters.

The nature of the act of censorship itself prompted protesters outside the UN to hold copies of pictures of "Guernica", and the story of the cover-up sparked an outcry from all parts of the art world.

"Guernica" was Picasso's visceral response to the destruction of the town of Guernica, Spain, which was bombed by Nazi planes April 27, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Fires in the town raged for several days, and 1,600 people either died or were injured.

The art of the "US war on terrorism" is going deeper into the psyches of Americans than anything I've witnessed in terms of art about war in my lifetime.

So the conversation with the kid and the news story about the art exhibit got me thinking.

Something very profound is going on at a very deep level, and I believe it has much to do with the twisting (as in twisting something to straighten it out) of the now distorted heroic warrior archetype in US society--an emergence of a profoundly disturbing perverted warrior archetype represented by the UN "Guernica" controversy, and the images of the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture photographs.

It occurs to me that John Kerry is trying to represent himself as rebelling against that perverted warrior archetype (his participation in Vietnam Vets against the War, the swift boat controversy which exploded in his face in the wake of him presenting himself as the heroic warrior archetype at the DNC), while also participating in it, which is why his message and policy over Iraq is so unsettling to people. He doesn't know himself where he stands in relation to his personal warrior identity, with which he, like most military veterans and soldiers, still so strongly identifies.

The most horrific aspect of this 2004 Boomer Generation election, is this refighting the 60s "war at home", while completely ignoring the fact that our military is destroying the nation of Iraq, and killing and maiming tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in the process.

And what is it we are fighting this renewed "war at home" over? Whether our US imperial warrior archetype is heroic or perverted.

The depth of the irony surrounding all this militaristic madness is...I don't know what.

Anyone else seeing these sorts of themes in all this madness?

Subject: RE: BS: Abu Ghraib Photography Exhibit Opening
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 09:58 AM

Sorry, forgot to mention the exhibit "Inconvenient Evidence: Iraqi Prisoner Photographs from Abu Ghraib," opens Sept. 17 and will include eight to 15 photos.

You can read a bit more about the exhibit at the Warhol Museum website.

As I understand the exhibit (and I'm more than a bit thick when it comes to interpreting the visual arts), it is an exploration of the photographs, generated digitally and transmitted over the internet, as a sort of sabotage of the "official" media representations of the war in Iraq broadcast and disseminated by news outlets, with access usually controlled by the US military.

Subject: RE: BS: Abu Ghraib Photography Exhibit Opening
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 02:55 PM

Very interesting opening post, GUEST.

Subject: RE: BS: Abu Ghraib Photography Exhibit Opening
From: DougR
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 07:10 PM

Just what the country needs at this time. I'll bet it's going to be a real pickerupper.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Abu Ghraib Photography Exhibit Opening
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 07:16 PM

It sounds interesting. I hope the exhibition travels.

Subject: RE: BS: Abu Ghraib Photography Exhibit Opening
From: GUEST,The 1st
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 08:33 AM

I agree Guest 7:16, it would be great to have the exhibit travel, but I don't think those museums can afford to send out travelling exhibits. All the more the shame, because I feel strongly the exhibit needs to be seen all over the country.