Off the Wall: White House Changes Mind About Painting (FReeper Victory!)

The New York Times ^ | Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | Randy Kennedy

[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.

[a fool in paradise]

If I recall, I think I read that he moved into collage (at a time that color collage was NOT a grade school endeavor) when his eyesight started failing him.

[a fool in paradise]

The art world is a joke. And the prices realized are artificial. Millions of play dollars. Sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down. And sometimes you wind up with a butchered cow swimming in formaldehyde.

[GeronL]

My computer has paintbrush and my eyesight is failing, let me try some art.

[a fool in paradise]

It worked for Shepard Fairey.

[Indy Pendance]

I didn’t bother reading the crap they printed. Perhaps I should submit my daughter’s green bedroom walls since green was suspiciously missing.

[Indy Pendance]

Are you in Brown Deer, WI? If so, hi neighbor, I’m in West Bend.

[Indy Pendance]

LOL!

[eureka!]

Yep. All class. Just like Obama.

[a fool in paradise]

Communist propagranda too. He did rip off at least one Nazi SS design for a t-shirt once.

[Brown Deer]

Yes, I am. :-)

[Blood of Tyrants]

It’s ugly, too.

[rdl6989]

It looks like stuff I did in 2nd grade with construction paper and paste.

[a fool in paradise]

I wonder if the curators are willing to acknowledge that Red Yellow Blue (or whatever it was called) becomes a “different” work depending on whether it is exhibited on white, offwhite, black, etc walls with bright lighting, dim lighting, or natural lighting.

Because the way the viewer takes in the whole thing, all 3 canvases PLUS the wall behind it, makes the piece (or kills it).

[a fool in paradise]

Are you suggesting that this artist ate paste?

[SueRae]

:-)

How anyone could call that art...well, there’s no accounting for taste from the snappy dresser, Michelle.

[txroadkill]

That's art hung in a museum?!?!? Hot damn, I got about 15 cans of old spray paint and some old plywood in the garage, I'm ganna be rich by the weekend!!!

[Drango]

Ward Churchill is outraged.

[Indy Pendance]

I was an engineer working with color, I know a LOT about it. You are correct.

[Indy Pendance]

I am not lying, I personally saw it. It was extremely stupid.

[a fool in paradise]

Maybe Obama could commission an NEA bust of Ward Churchill that he could then send to England as a gift.