Levasseur at his "art exhibit" in Portland this week.
Posted on 09/16/2006 8:22:05 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
In 1975, Levasseur was arrested in Connecticut on a firearms violation. He jumped bail and began life as a fugitive.
Levasseur, Manning, their wives and children and other allies spent the next nine years moving from place to place in the Northeast. They were indicted in a bank robbery in Portland, a charge that was later folded into the sedition and racketeering prosecution. They were also blamed for numerous bombings that targeted businesses that worked with South Africa's apartheid government.
They were often rumored to return to Maine. Portland's deputy police chief, William Ridge, then a young patrolman, said the department was always on guard when they heard those reports.
"The biggest fear was that you would pull someone over for a traffic stop and get shot," Ridge said. "When we heard they were around, we didn't make a lot of traffic stops."
The search for the group intensified after the murder of New Jersey Trooper Philip Lamonaco, who was killed after pulling over a car on the New Jersey Turnpike. Manning later admitted to killing Lamonaco, but claimed it was done in self-defense.
Levasseur, his wife, Patricia Gros, and three others were arrested in Cleveland in November 1984. Manning and his wife, Carol Ann, were captured in Norfolk, Va., in April 1985.
Levasseur was sent to New York for trial in a bombing case. He and co-defendant Richard Williams were both convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Manning was convicted of felony murder for the death of Lamonaco. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison, in addition to 53 years for a separate bombing conviction.
May 1977: Raymond Levasseur's name is placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. November 1984: Seven years as a fugitive end with his arrest by the FBI in Deerfield, Ohio. March 1989: Levasseur and five other radicals are tried in U.S. District Court in New York for numerous bombings at corporate offices and military installations. Levasseur is convicted and, a month later, sentenced to 45 years in prison.
August 2004: Police say Levasseur is about to be paroled to a federal halfway house in Portland. SOME OF THE 22 bombings linked to Levasseur's groups: April 1976: Suffolk County Courthouse in Boston.n May 1976: Central Maine Power's headquarters in Augusta. July 1976: U.S. Post Office, Seabrook, N.H. May 1983: Roosevelt Army Reserve Center, Long Island and Navy Reserve Center, Queens, N.Y. September 1984: Union Carbide offices, Mt. Pleasant, N.Y.
If it's not about the children, it's all about the art.
Levasseur at his "art exhibit" in Portland this week.
Throw that SOB into solitary with bread and water.
Art Ping
If you would like on or off the ist please contact :
Sam Cree,Republicanprofessor, or myself (Woofie)
Nancy Gish and Wendy Chapkis, professors of English and sociology, respectively
Gee, there's two real productive citizens. Has sociology ever accomplished anything? Has any sociologist in any way whatsover improved the world? Anyone? Bueller?
"You have to separate the art from the artist," said Gish
How about we separate the HEAD from the artist when he's a freaking cop killer?
I mean, this is a rhetorical question, but have you ever heard of these lefties getting all pre-orgasmic over the "art" of someone who didn't "express himself" by killing cops and other random people?
[Gish] cited poets in her curriculum who were jailed in their time.
That tells us just about all we need to know about Gish's teaching, doesn't it? A lot of Amiri Baraka and Leonard Peltier, and various other quasi-literate "victims of The Man" and their juvenile maunderings.
Real artists don't go to jail because they're too busy entertaining, delighting and inspiring people.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
If you are so narrow-minded as to consider 'art' as being mere technical proficiency, you might be correct. Howerver, if one looks at the gestalt of art, particularly the modern view of art as "performance socialism", then you see the 'art' being taught today; 'art' that says peeing on a crucifix is worthy of NEA grant money. Art that says if you fling poo, you get paid for it.
The new 'art' is not about art at all; it's simply a masquerade for rebellion, for paganism, for atheism, for all that hates God; walking in lockstep with the New Socialism that would on the one hand wants to live in the basest immorality, and on the other, will be genuinely shocked should, God forbid, Islam came into power here in the USA and gave 'em a taste of what Islam has in mind; summary executions. That, citizens, is what 'art' is about.
No kidding. They should have "loser" tattooed on their foreheads.
...think they'll hold an art exhibit commemorating Timothy McVeigh? Or would that be "insensitive"?
Maybe the demonstrators can go all out and host an exibit of Adolf Hitler's artwork. Since they love sychopathic murderers who have artistic pretentions, old Adolf would fit right in.
More importantly, how are we going to free ourselves from the continual strife and upset every small pressure group exerts on everything anyone tries to do? And when will we outgrow our morbid fascination with the bad guys and recognize the heros in our midst, again, especially in schools?
These guys' idea of free expression is somehow coercive...they want others to be forced into financing what amounts to their politics. Not that I read through the whole thing.
Typical commies.
Limited proficiency in my view. The negro boy is somewhat handsomely painted, but the other figures look to be very amateurishly done...why the discrepancy?
In any case, I think the strife will lessen when the citizenry at large is no longer coerced into supporting art which is directed at the destruction and mockery of that same citizenry. In other words, when the art is allowed to stand on its own.
"Copied . . . from . . . photographs."
The flat perspective is a dead giveaway. He found some old copies of National Geographic in the prison library.
He has little if any proficiency. Almost anybody can copy from a photograph, given enough time (and he obviously has plenty of THAT.)
"Copied . . . from . . . photographs."
I bet you are right. I didn't think of it, but as far as that goes, where else would he get such models? What got me was that, while the negro boy's face looks OK, it is the face only - the rest of him is out of control. Now that you mention it, the face itself is distorted too, in the way that a close up photograph distorts. The Hispanic (or whatever) women look like a junior high art class effort.
I photographed some waves once, on the ocean, for a painting reference. Waited for a rough day, too. Got them developed, it didn't look rough at all. I couldn't figure it out until it was explained to me that the camera flattens values.
Thanks for pointing this out.
I'll have to agree with the woman above who said, "You have to seperate the art from the artist". Manning may indeed be a murdering scumbag, but his art obviously has merit.
I agree with your comment, but the University of Southern Maine could not find an artist of merit who was not a cop killer and serial bomber?
Within this piece you will also notice that one of the professors seems to have a fascination on the radical edge of admiration for a type of artist. I am not disputing talent, I am disputing the University's choice of artist for this gallery exhibit. These convicted criminals have taken lives, have bombed government facilities paid for with YOUR tax dollars, while families and friends mourn; and yet they are to be celebrated as "artist(s) with a message". Screw, their artistic message! Manning and his accomplice should have left us their message in the form of art with brush in hand and not taken the radical direction with exposives and guns as they did.
I applaud the Maine police officers for exercising their freedoms to react and hope certain cars may suddenly be anointed with parking tickets all over the city of Portland.
Just a small price 'to suffer for art', wouldn't you agree? ;)
Also, if you use contrasty film it increases depth.
(My husband is an avid disciple of Ansel Adams. Large format and all. And he doesn't complain about my hobbies!)
But the picture of the two Latin American (Bolivian?) women I SWEAR I saw in a NG magazine awhile back. It looks very familiar to me, and I have a pretty reliable visual memory.
This "art" has almost zero merit. It is obviously copied from photographs, which is the equivalent of using a light box or pantograph. ANYbody can copy a photograph if they are patient enough, because it does your work for you (reducing 3 dimensions to 2 dimensions - but it does it in a different way from an artist's hand, which is why it is so obvious.) And all he's done is use very flat areas of paint to copy the shadows in the photographs; where it was too detailed to copy, he's just left out the detail.
The ONLY reason this guy got any gallery time was because of his radical leanings. Murderers in prison who take up some artistic hobby or other are a dime a dozen - they tend to be numerous because they stay there for a LONG time - he's doubtless a cause celebre amongst some of the loony left, he could have thrown paint against the wall with a plastic bag and they would be swooning about the "deep meaning" and what not.
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