BlogBack: "Suicide Artist" on Political Art
"Suicide Artist," who says that "anonymity is fundamental to my work," responds to Political Art at Harvard: Wake-Up Call for Artists?:
Artists are responding to the war. The problem is that curators and galleries refuse to exhibit the work. Since 2004, when I began making "detonations" in response to the war in Iraq, only two curators have had the nerve to handle my work:
Marion Callis, director emerita of the Akus Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University, has facilitated numerous "dets" and planned another at Akus, until college administrators balked. Students then took the "det" and installed it at the entrance to a conference on the war.
The other brave curator is Dana Dale Lee, who included "I Love Haditha in the Fall" in "Risky Business" at PPOW in Chelsea last summer. My profits, had there been any, from "Haditha" at PPOW, the only commercial gallery where I have had a "det," would have been donated to war victims. My CalArts "det" was installed by students.
Political art is a tough sell, regardless of the merits of the cause. However, my experience is that fear of content, not concern for profits, is what keeps work that responds to current events out of sight, out of mind.
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LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I've been a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and the annual conference of the Museum Association of New York, and on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University. more
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