“Evidence” responds to police repression of protests over the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2017. Three prints of the same plate at deepening states of aquatint, “Develop” suggests the intensification of protests against US imperialism in Yemen, 2012. The accordion book “Advance” includes a set of six etchings (each 6×4 inches) to create a narrative of the events in Tahrir Square, Egypt in January 2011.
at Bethany Arts Community
Ossining, NY
May 20 – June 30, 2022
Participating artists in this exhibition include John Ahearn, Lizzy Alejandro, Laura Alvarez, Dotty Attie, Shahaan Azeem, Aileen Bassis, Edward Bear Miller, Stacy Bogdonoff, Michele Brody, Suzanne Broughel, Aleathia Brown, Serge Bulat, Maryanne Buschini, Kevin Byrd, Brett De Palma, Nicky Enright, Patricia Espinosa, Jennifer Figueroa, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Angela Fremont, Susan Grabel, Alyssa Herrera, Susan Hoeltzel, Monique Islam-Salas, Kyung Jeon, Carla Rae Johnson, David Kalal, Anne LaFond, Elaine Luther, Katrina Majkut, Cecilia Mandrile & Lynn Bechtold, Tali Margolin, Mary McFerran, Fani Miller-Beard, Marilyn Miller, Traci Mims, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, Tomo Mori, Taeesha Muhammad, Linda Negrin, James Offenhartz, Tom Otterness, Kristi Pfister, Carol Reed, Nelson Santiago, Ilse Schreiber-Noll, Nia Simone, Arle Sklar-Weinstein, Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, Lynn Tomlinson, Keil Troisi, Karen Viola, Tammy Wofsey, Marcia G. Yerman.
Juanita Lanzo, Curator IMPACT 2022: Art that Bears Witness
The exhibition has been curated by Juanita Lanzo, a visual artist, art director, educator and independent curator working in the Bronx and living in East Harlem.
This exhibition is a part of Bethany’s Season of Justice, a series of programs that endeavor to deepen our understanding of some of today’s most pressing societal issues.
Almost all new museums opening up over the past 25 years have been privately financed and controlled, while government-funded institutions are being systematically starved of resources. US states and localities have cut or entirely eliminated cultural subsidies, while federal art programs are being decimated by sequestration. – Nancy Hanover, 01/09/2014, wsws.org
Furthermore, if one considers that if the $142.4 million recently spent by Roman Abramovich for Francis Bacon’s 1968 Triptych, were instead divided into artist grants of $50,000 each that the money locked up in one painting could instead provide support of 2840 working artists for a year. In the world of artist grants, a $50K grant would actually be HUGE. Most artist grants available today are in the range of $1000-$5000, barely enough for project expenses and in no way cover an artist’s living expenses – which in fact are even more important factor in an artist’s ability to accomplish his/her work. One of the few grants as large are 50K is the Guggenheim Fellowship, of which by comparison only 200 are awarded a year.
Not that it isn’t a great painting, but the Bacon painting being purchased for such an astronomical figure is like a giant vacuum unnecessarily sucking up resources that could be freed up for far more productive purposes. Not to mention that for insurance liability reasons it is less likely to be exhibited in Abramovich’s private St. Petersburg museum, much less travel to other venues. More and more, these new museums of the oligarchs display digital reproductions while keeping the actual artwork locked up in vaults in special art-warehouses in Switzerland, Luxemburg and soon Beijing, where they exist in essentially “offshore accounts.”
The Bacon painting is only the most expensive of scores, if not hundreds of over-valued works of contemporary art being sold each year at the auction houses. The incompatibility of capitalism with the development of art couldn’t be more clear!
Click here to read an excellent review of “Art Turning Left at the Tate Liverpool: An ambitious but problematic collection of “left-wing” art”. Rather than the usual ahistorical and eclectic approach that pervades almost every aspect of what passes for art criticism today, this review brings to bear the necessary historical and political overview of how revolutionary art develops in conjunction with the revolutionary changes in society. I particularly agree with its conclusion:
Many of the more recent works on display appear to have lost all connection to “left-wing” values, including Belgian artist Francis Alÿs’s 2002 video “When Faith Moves Mountains”, involving several hundred people attempting to shovel a huge Peruvian sand dune a few metres, or British artists Alan Kane and Jeremy Deller’s quirky Folk Art display . These works, more than anything else, underscore the immense, objective crisis in social and historical perspective that dominates the art world.
The 2008 financial crisis and the outbreak of mass struggles since 2011, in Egypt and elsewhere, have shattered claims about the final triumph of “free market” capitalism, the end of the working class and the failure of revolution. A new era of upheavals has opened up, which will change the atmosphere in art and dramatically alter the conditions under which artists will operate. The continuity with the French and Russian Revolutions of the new work that emerges will establish itself without straining or false analogies.
A unique collection of of film reviews, essays on film and interviews with directors and film critics by WSWS Art and Culture Editor David Walsh spanning the 20 years from 1992-2012.
The film reviews contained in this volume cover a wide spectrum—from James Cameron’s Titanic and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ to the award-winning A Separation by Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi and films of emerging Chinese directors. Several essays discuss the work of talented and principled artists of the 1930s and 40s who sought to bring a sense of humanity to their work. Walsh details the fate of many who fell victim to the anti-communist McCarthyite witch-hunts of the 1950s.
A recurring theme in these writings is the profound effect this historical period has had on Hollywood filmmaking in the ensuing years. Walsh consistently returns to the crisis of contemporary filmmaking and the inability, or unwillingness, of so many of today’s directors to see the world as it is and feel compelled to grapple with social reality as millions experience it.