Posted on 12/07/2013 5:58:00 AM PST by bryan999
Washington (AFP) - The US State Department on Friday fended off criticism for commissioning a $1 million sculpture for its London embassy, saying it was "a good use of our limited resources."
The piece by Irish-born artist Sean Scully was purchased as part of the department's Art in Embassies program and will be reportedly installed at the new mission due to open in 2017.
"This piece was purchased under the market price after considerable negotiation with both the artist and the gallery. This is an important part of our diplomatic presence overseas," deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
Abstract artist Scully, who became an American citizen in 1983, lives in New York and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize.
The Art in Embassies program had "played a leading role in US public diplomacy" for the past 50 years, Harf said.
"Where we can promote cross-cultural understanding... we think that's a good use of our limited resources," Harf told journalists.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Googe the "Heidelberg Project" in Detroit and see what ya come up with.
This "Project" is a glorified trash dump in a run down neighborhood where some "artist" came up with the idea of turning some abandoned homes into "artwork". In recent weeks there have been two arson attempts there and while authorities are searching for the culprit(s), I suspect it's someone in the neighborhod who is fed up with looking at all the crap.
Googe the "Heidelberg Project" in Detroit and see what ya come up with.
This "Project" is a glorified trash dump in a run down neighborhood where some "artist" came up with the idea of turning some abandoned homes into "artwork". In recent weeks there have been two arson attempts there and while authorities are searching for the culprit(s), I suspect it's someone in the neighborhod who is fed up with looking at all the crap.
That’s pretty hideous.
We need to stop all this stuff until our budget is balanced and the national debt is paid off.
And detroit needs to sell it’s art, maybe not every single piece, but a great deal.
Isn’t that what an asset is for - something you can sell when you need $$?
Go to any Home Depot (brick pavers etc) and get much more than this for a fraction of the cost. Yeah government is the answer.
If they had paid market price to anybody but the U.S. gov’t there would have been a lot of change back from a million dollar bill.
1 million dollars of taxpayer money for crap,
and not 1 cent to get the Benghazi murderers.
As a friend once told me;
“JB, today Art can be a booger with a hair in it.”
Soooo It’s a terrorist block!
Hubby got it. rofl
This administration didn’t even bother to put the White House flag at half staff at the death of Margaret Thatcher, but raced to do it for Mandela. Racism is an occurring event with Barry in charge. Spending taxpayer money like it’s Greek currency is a signature Barry has no intention of ever balancing a budget.
I have one just like it behind the shed. I’m rich!
Obviously meant to represent America via the flag, the symbolism is actually interesting: a pile of worn out, broken discards thrown together as a crude block with lots of cracks and gaps. Is it a message if resilience or sort of an “e pluribus unum” of national decline, extending Khrushchev’s “we will bury you” to “you are dead but not buried”? As a bonus the form comments on the American mind and government. The artiste must have felt validated to have America pay him to laugh at us.
But a concrete bunker like that might have been useful in Benghazi.
They could have gone to the granite quarries at Marble Falls in central Texas and gotten that type of rock for free.
Hillary!—a perfect likeness.
For a dollar they could have gotten a pet rock. Complete with a leash.
Well bryan999, your post has incited me to rage and rant. It will now be entombed in the bowels of FR. A rant by a anonymous person lurking the internet though I would say this to anyone from the highest soapbox on speaker’s corner in my loudest and most politically incorrect voice. To my detractors I would say tough, I don’t care what you think either. To those willing to debate, give it your best shot.
I’m using this picture of this pile of crap for my desktop background. It is yet another symbol of government waste, fraud and abuse of the taxpayer. Another would be a picture of a crackhead with a snot nosed, wet eyed, sickly dependent kid on her hip. Poor, stupid, abused, bitter and filled with hatred. Stuck in her squalid setting while the baby daddy that knocked her up is out beating the hell out of some taxpayer. Do you or anyone else expect me to feel sorry or responsible for this? This is the new face of Amerika and it is an insult to good, hard working, responsible people. People are where they are because of the decisions they make. Hardly any of the time are they where they are because of something someone else did to them. That excuse is mostly just that, an excuse and a lie.
40% tax rates. A 60/40 split of what successful people earn. This is the “reward” for success. How many of you or anybody else would put up all the money, take all the risk and do all the work to give 40% of it to someone else so that they could use it against you, support your enemies, to foil your efforts, give to others who laugh at you, don’t work, make babies for you to support, take drugs, rob you and even kill you? Maybe, maybe half of what I pay is for things I find useful or think are necessary. The rest of what I pay is wasted and used against me.
I see very little hope for this country in what is left of my lifetime. If the country recovers it will take decades for real change. I doubt that will come though and that instead we will continue to be tossed in an avalanche to destruction or to continue to ride the roller coaster of hope and defeat we have been on for at least 50 years. This country is all but equally divided between workers and takers. All have an equal vote. That is a shame and wrong as well. That is not liberty. That is lazy and useless people waiting for an opportunity to steal from honorable working people. Unless we are willing to allow the failure to be complete are willing to live with whatever rises from the ashes the political process will not save our once great nation. The unspoken alternative is clear. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Somebody else said that once upon a time and they were all too right.
Barry Obama is on record saying it is NOT his intention to balance the budget. Seriously.
I used to have a pile of old bricks behind my garage. I didn’t realize they were art, and I got rid of them.
I could have sold them to the government for $1 million.
Dumb.
Sean Scully’s paintings are a lot better than this sculpture. The stripes are his signature; they don’t have to do with the American Flag.
The subtleties of the lines are really nice in his oil paintings, with lovely colors. This is not a good piece, in my opinion, and I don’t think that in this time of budget crisis this should have been purchased.
It does take a lot of work to understand modern and contemporary art. It is not all bad; some of it is wonderful. But I don’t have the time here to fully develop my defense of modern art....
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