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Off the Wall: White House Changes Mind About Painting (FReeper Victory!)
The New York Times ^ | Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | Randy Kennedy

Posted on 11/04/2009 3:20:11 PM PST by kristinn

.SNIP

ARTnews has reported that the White House has quietly de-listed a painting by Alma W. Thomas that it chose last month, among some 45 pieces borrowed from several Washington museums, to decorate the private White House residence and the West and East Wings.

Titled, “Watusi (Hard Edge)” from 1963, the work takes a Matisse collage and, as Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times, praising the selection, “shifts the pieces around, cools the colors down, and adds a title that refers to a Chubby Checker song.”

“But through copying Matisse,” Mr. Cotter added, “she began to work out a format she would use again and again.”

Some conservative Web sites, like Freerepublic.com, had criticized the painting as a fraud, calling it a “re-colored reprint” and questioning the wisdom of hanging it in the White House. By late October, the painting, which had been destined for the East Wing, had been removed from the list of works bound for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, ARTnews reported, though a second Thomas painting from 1973 remains on the list. The Hirshhorn Museum, which owns the painting, confirmed that the 1963 work had been sent back, but no one involved with the White House loans at the museum would say why, the publication said.

Semonti Stephens, the deputy press secretary for Mrs. Obama, said that the painting had been intended to go in the first lady’s office and that the the decision not to put it there was made only because its dimensions did not work in the space in which it was to hang.

(Excerpt) Read more at artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Culture/Society; Free Republic; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: affirmativactionart; almawthomas; art; cheaters; cultureofcorrution; fraud; frinthenews; likelystories; matisse; noclass; obama; painting; pajamapeoplerule; plagiarism; underthebus; watusi; youlie
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To: ichabod1; secret garden; neverdem

Art.


121 posted on 11/05/2009 5:45:20 AM PST by Robert A Cook PE (I can only donate monthly, but socialists' ABBCNNBCBS continue to lie every day!)
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To: ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1630734/posts

Long ago (2006) Freeper Republicanprofessor (http://www.freerepublic.com/~republicanprofessor/ )did a series of art lectures here on FR.

I finally found the above thread (after a few hours of looking. Stupid me didn’t bookmark them back then).

Her profile page links to the entire series.

Go look at some real art.


122 posted on 11/05/2009 5:46:55 AM PST by John O (God Save America (Please))
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To: Rennes Templar
I did one like that in third grade but threw it away, darn it.

That just proves you have good taste--better than some.

123 posted on 11/05/2009 5:53:02 AM PST by MissNomer
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To: Flint; Beelzebubba; GOP_Lady
I may be rich. My wife saved a whole drawer full of pictures like that my two sons did in elementary school.

It seems that Mrs. Obama has the fashion instincts of a middle-schooler and the artistic sensibility of a kindergartener.

124 posted on 11/05/2009 6:45:20 AM PST by Albion Wilde (Obama makes Bush his blame czar. --Mark Steyn)
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To: Beelzebubba
I shall never forget my small part in embarrassing the Obama administration!

You go, 'Bubba!

125 posted on 11/05/2009 6:46:29 AM PST by Albion Wilde (Obama makes Bush his blame czar. --Mark Steyn)
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To: Domandred

Wholey crap, I would get kicked out of university for doing something like that. Thats plagiarism 100%.


126 posted on 11/05/2009 6:51:01 AM PST by Danae (No political party should pick candidates. That's the voters job.)
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To: Tunehead54
I now understand that if its termed "appropriation" instead of "plagiarism" then its ok. ;-)

And when the Congress does it, it's "appropriation", not "stealing."

127 posted on 11/05/2009 6:52:40 AM PST by Albion Wilde (Obama makes Bush his blame czar. --Mark Steyn)
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To: SunkenCiv
Semonti Stephens, the deputy press secretary for Mrs. Obama, said.... that the the decision not to [use it was] only because its dimensions did not work in the space in which it was to hang.

Parent: "Did you have your hand in the cookie jar?"

Child: "No."

128 posted on 11/05/2009 6:56:51 AM PST by Albion Wilde (Obama makes Bush his blame czar. --Mark Steyn)
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To: rabidralph
FR: On the leading edge of Art... Letters... and Science....

Just like Benjamin Franklin!

129 posted on 11/05/2009 6:58:37 AM PST by Albion Wilde (Obama makes Bush his blame czar. --Mark Steyn)
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To: rcrngroup
Looks like nothing more than just a hodge podge of jumbled colors, similar to what ...michelle... wears every day... It looks like her wardrobe.


130 posted on 11/05/2009 7:08:17 AM PST by Albion Wilde (Obama makes Bush his blame czar. --Mark Steyn)
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To: kristinn

If we’d have tried that in kindergarten using construction paper, we’d have been given an F..

What the heck is so special about that?


131 posted on 11/05/2009 7:37:19 AM PST by GeorgiaDawg32 (I'm a Patriot Guard Rider..www.patriotguard.org for info..)
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To: kristinn

Reminds me of this old Dave Barry article:

DAVE BARRY: Normal folks know modern art stinks
October 6, 2002
BY DAVE BARRY FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Today we have an important art news update from England, or Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or whatever they’re calling it these days.

As you may recall, the last time we checked in on the British art community, it had awarded a major art prize, plus 20,000 pounds (about $30,000) to an artist named Martin Creed, for a work titled “The Lights Going On and Off.” It consisted of a vacant room in which the lights went on and off.

Yes. He got thirty grand for that. Why? Because “The Lights” “Going On and Off” possesses the quality that your sophisticated art snot looks for above all else in a work of art, namely: no normal human would ever mistake it for art. Normal humans, confronted with a room containing only blinking lights, would say: “Where’s the art? And what’s wrong with these lights?”

The public prefers the old-fashioned style of art, where you have some clue as to what the art is supposed to represent. This is why the Sistine Chapel frescoes painted by the great Italian artist Mike L. Angelo are so popular. The public is impressed because (1) the people in the frescoes actually look like people, and (2) Mike painted them on the ceiling. The public has painted its share of ceilings, and it always winds up with most of the paint in its hair. So the public considers the Sistine Chapel to be a major artistic achievement, and will spend several minutes gazing at it in awe and wonder (”Do you think he used a roller?”) before moving on to the next thing on the tour, which ideally will be lunch.

The public has, over the years, learned to tolerate modern art, but only to the degree that it has nice colors that would go with the public’s home decor. When examining a modern painting, the public invariably pictures it hanging over the public’s living-room sofa. As far as the public is concerned, museums should put sofas in front of all the paintings, to make it easier to judge them.

This kind of thing drives your professional art snots CRAZY. They cannot stand the thought that they would like the same art as the stupid old moron public. And so, as the public has become more accepting of modern art, the art snots have made it their business to like only those works of “art” that are so spectacularly inartistic that the public could not possibly like them, such as “The Lights Going On and Off.”

Which leads us to the latest development in the British art world. You are going to think I made this development up. Even I sometimes wonder if I made it up, although I know for a fact that I did not, because I am looking at a story about it from the London Telegraph. Here is the key sentence:

“The Tate Gallery has paid 22,300 pounds of public money for a work that is, quite literally, a load of excrement.”

Yes. The Tate Gallery, which is a prestigious British art museum, spent 22,300 pounds — or roughly $35,000 — of British taxpayers’ money to purchase a can containing approximately one ounce of an artist’s very own personal . . . OK, let’s call it his artistic vision. The artist is an Italian named Piero Manzoni, who died in 1963, but not before filling 90 cans with his vision. According to the Telegraph, “The cans were sealed according to industrial standards and then circulated to museums around the world.”

Now if somebody were to send YOU a can of vision, even sealed according to industrial standards, your response would be to report that person to the police. This is why you are a normal human, as opposed to an art professional. The art museums BOUGHT it. The Telegraph states that, in addition to the Tate, both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pompidou Museum in Paris have paid actual money for cans of Manzoni’s vision. (Notice that I am tastefully refraining from making a joke involving “Pompidou.”)

Anyway, here’s what I’m picturing. I’m picturing a British citizen, a regular working guy who’s struggling to get by on what money he has left after taxes. He wakes up one morning, grabs his newspaper and goes into the bathroom. While he’s in there, he reads about how art snots have spent tax money — more money than he makes in a year — on this “art.” The guy becomes angry, VERY angry. He’s about to hurl the paper down in fury, but then, suddenly, while sitting there . . .

. . . he has a vision. And as he does, it dawns on him that he has a golden opportunity here, a chance to make, at last, some serious money.

I’m talking, of course, about art forgery.


132 posted on 11/05/2009 7:40:03 AM PST by RepublitarianRoger2
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To: Brown Deer
the decision not to put it there was made only because its dimensions did not work in the space in which it was to hang.

I'd be curious to know the dimensions of the painting and the dimensions of its replacement.

How dare you question the honesty of the First Lady's deputy press secretary.

You must be some kind of troublemaker...

If you're not careful, you're gonna end up on a 'list'...

:-)

133 posted on 11/05/2009 8:19:38 AM PST by Zeppo (Save the cheerleader, save the world...)
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To: kristinn

Looks like all they did was turn the image to the left and change the colors.

Why is this not an infringement upon the original?


134 posted on 11/05/2009 8:32:36 AM PST by ET(end tyranny)
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To: Indy Pendance

Hey, I’m a neighbor too!


135 posted on 11/05/2009 11:56:50 AM PST by ozaukeemom (Is it 2012 yet?)
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To: ozaukeemom; Brown Deer

I sent you and Brown Deer a freepmail, let’s meet up!


136 posted on 11/05/2009 4:37:44 PM PST by Indy Pendance (Conservatives: we are their worst nightmare)
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To: Beelzebubba

Sometimes artists themselves paint the paper they use in the collage.

Don’t know if these pieces of paper were picked up at Office Depot, but I doubt it. whatever, it is unbelievable to think that this is 10 foot tall.

Rather like The Boating Party, which we took time to go see when we were in Washington for President Bush’s 2001 Inauguration.


137 posted on 11/08/2009 12:56:18 AM PST by patriciaruth (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1993905/posts)
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To: kristinn
There may be a simpler explanation. Watusi (selected, no doubt, in part because of its title) was ditched as soon as the Matisse link came to light, because to the black supremacist cabal currently squatting in Our House, any connection of any kind to a Dead White European Male artist is like holy water to a vampire.
138 posted on 11/08/2009 4:50:06 PM PST by Tenniel2 (Memo to politicians: Don't worry about "shovel-ready." Worry about "pitchfork-ready.")
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