Hundreds of Vietnamese Americans demonstrated Saturday outside a provocative art exhibit in Santa Ana that had featured Communist symbols that protesters claimed mocked their painful experiences as political refugees. [More]I so love hip, artsy Southern California libs.
I remember years back, the modern art museum held an Andy Warhol exhibit, and had plastered banners of his Mao portrait all over town, even hanging from street lamps, which means they had local government endorsement. The section I was driving through was known for its large Jewish community. Matter of fact, the reason we were there was to go to my favorite deli.
I remember at the time wondering if it would have been so enthusiastically supported/ passively accepted had the banners featured Hitler's portrait. Or are some genocidal monsters more acceptable in enlightened society than others?
My favorite interaction with modern artists--and in the interests of full disclosure I deem most of them ridiculous frauds-- is when we took the kids to the LaBrea Tar Pits museum and decided to have lunch at (the now-closed) Johnnie's a block or so down...
In order to get there, we had to pass the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and they were having some kind of local artists' sidewalk exhibit--my wife pushed the stroller with youngest feral son Qusay peacefully slumbering, and I held hands and walked behind with eldest feral son Uday, probably four at the time...
To make a long story short, the kid has always been precocious, to my continued amazement and joy. Anyway, as we walked past the various exhibitors, he decided on his own to size up their work and give on-the-spot critiques.
The wife, who is more sensitive (and an all-around nicer human being) than I am, was properly mortified. Me, I could barely suppress the laughter seeing the reactions as we passed each canvas, the danged munchkin pointing and pronouncing "Good...good...crap...crap...crap..."
Isn't that what art is supposed to do? Give us new ways of exploring truth...?