Full Text of Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union"

Full text of Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech delivered on March 18, 2008 at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time. This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story. I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one. Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all. Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity: "People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn't need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild." That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students. Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities. A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism. Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny. Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper. In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together. This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned. I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley." "I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. More at A More Perfect Union Full video at:barackobama.com

March 2003 - March 2008

Colors
40"x30" oil on linen

5 Years and Counting: Clinton's Vote For War in Iraq

The Dalai Lama Describes the Chinese Crackdown as Cultural Genocide

As the violent Chinese crackdown in Tibet continues, the Dalai Lama says, ""Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some cultural genocide is taking place. There is some kind of discrimination: the Tibetans in their own land quite often are treated as second-class citizens."

Lhadon is blogging from China on the protests in Tibet and the Chinese reaction. Important reading in the run up to the summer Olympics:

beijingwideopen

A Few Things

A few things in the works:

Coming out in May is Phil Cousineau's new book, Stoking the Creative Fires. My painting is illustrated on the cover and the book also contains two interviews with me about the creative process as well as two other paintings.



Cousineau's Stoking the Creative Fires

Inquiring Mind, a Berkeley based journal, will be using one of my paintings, A Balance of Shadows in their upcoming issue.



Inquiring Mind

An artist in Italy has created a project based on Raymond Carver's poem, The Painter and the Fish. If you go to the project website (link below), you'll see he includes my thoughts on Raymond Carver.

“A SORT OF ARTISTIC EPIPHANY”
Febbraio 15, 2008, 9:21 pm
Archiviato in: Contorni | Tag: epifania, epiphany, Gregg Chadwick, Raymond Carver
“While I’m working on an artwork I don’t just settle for the middle ground or main image. I work the edges and the spaces between. I am hoping to create works that breathe across the whole surface. I desire to find a point of “satori”, a place of spiritual balance within the work itself. There is a need within my painting to let go and trust the inner process. When I reach this point, time loses its power, my senses are heightened. I just paint. It could be minutes, or hours; it is the work and I. Raymond Carver in his amazing poem, The Painter and the Fish describes this sort of artistic epiphany”.

The Painter and the Fish

My exhibition in Park City went very well and now I am in the studio creating my next body of work as well as a large commission.

Smoke on the Sumida

-thanks to earthgoat

Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World

Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690-1850 opened Friday at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and runs through April 2008. The exhibition of Japanese paintings from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has traveled from Kobe, Japan to Nagoya to Tokyo to the Kimbell Museum then back to their usual home in Boston and on to Ontario and now San Francisco. The exhibition is stunning. Hokusai's ukiyo-e woodcuts may be quite familiar but the chance to see his paintings on silk was revelatory. Two paintings in particular stood out:

Hokusai's Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror (Kyômen bijin zu) is a work of extreme elegance and beauty. A woman stands before a mirror, a cherry seductively lolls in her mouth, and in her right hand she holds a letter. A poem inscribed on the scroll by the poet Shima Tokki reads:

Does that letter from
the man she waits for promise
a summer's night out?


Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese, 1760–1849
Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror
Kyômen bijin zu
鏡面美人図
91 1/8" x 31 9/16" (Image: 54 5/8" x 22 5/8") ink, color, gold, and mica on silk c.1805
detail - full image below



There is an immediacy and humor in Hokusai's work that seems to beckon us into his view of a vanished world.



Hokusai's festival banner, Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller (Shû Shôki zu nobori), was painted in liquid inks and possibly cinnabar which was thought to provide protection from disease. Zhong Kui's garments seem to rustle in winds brought forth by impending struggles. The Demon Queller is resolute, moving briskly forward, grasping his sword, ready to battle demons, disease or misfortunes that might spring forth on the road ahead.


Katsushika Hokusai 1760–1849
Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller
Shû Shôki zu nobori
朱鍾馗図幟
92 15/16" x 37" painted banner; color with ink on cotton c. 1805
Images of Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller, were hung in Japan on Boy's Day held on May 5th. In China woodcuts of the Demon Queller were also hung on May 5th during the Dragon Boat Festival.



Another important aspect of the exhibition Drama and Desire is the inclusion of erotic paintings known as shunga which are rarely exhibited. Until recently the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston stored and catalogued these paintings away from the main collection. Eishi's handscroll contains twelve erotic scenes under the title - The Elephant's Leash. The title refers to a Buddhist sutra that describes how a woman's hair could capture even a wild elephant.
Eishi's vivid images imagine how this force could entwine an amorous couple.


Chôbunsai Eishi, 1756–1829
The Elephant’s Lure
13 3/8" x 222 15/16" handscroll: ink, color, gold, and mica on silk 1804–1818
detail

Support for Obama Grows in Texas and Ohio

From the Los Angeles Times:
I see more of myself in Barack than I do in Hillary," said Sergio Zarate, 46, who owns a chain of dry cleaning stores in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. "He's not just going to crack a glass ceiling. He can really kick the door off its hinges, and clear the way for all of us, even Hispanics."

Yes, We Can - The Barack Obama Movement at Pauley Pavilion

"Before the Obama rally at UCLA got into full swing, giant screens showed a video by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. A visually diverse lineup of stars — the actresses Scarlett Johansson and Amber Valletta; the rapper Common; the singer John Legend; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — recited and sang along with a film of Mr. Obama’s speech the night he lost the New Hampshire primary."

Andrew Rosenthal in the New York Times writes "before the closest thing America has ever had to a national primary, four extraordinary women - Michelle Obama, Caroline Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey and Maria Shriver - put on the best campaign rally I’ve seen in 20 years of covering presidential politics."

"The pitch-perfect event in U.C.L.A.’s Pauley Pavilion started like every other Barack Obama event — chants of “yes we can” and signs pitching the power of hope. Certainly, in that moment at the rally, the Obama campaign seemed to have a monopoly on what is hip, young and glamorous in California."

I was at the event and it was a remarkable vision of the not too distant future. The crowd was diverse and committed and passionate. We sat and discussed reasons why we believe Barack Obama needs to be our next President:

This is not about gender or skin color; this is about the right person for the job. Barack Obama is brilliant as Oprah Winfrey asserted at the rally and he is talented and importantly - Obama is a 21st century man. He has a global sensibility while being grounded as an American. His mother was a white woman from Kansas, his father was Kenyan, and his step father was Indonesian. Obama has experienced the challenges of being a son of an immigrant. Born in Hawaii, Obama went on to attend an Indonesian-speaking elementary school in Jakarta, then back to Hawaii to attend the prestigious Punahou School from 5th grade through High School. He attended Occidental College, Columbia University, and graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. He became president of the Harvard Review and could have gone on to take any top paying job in the nation. Instead he chose to be a community organizer and civil rights attorney in Chicago.

This man cares deeply and knows deeply what he stands for. He has been in the trenches and, this, combined with his brilliance probably made him one of the best lecturers at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught for 11 years before being elected to the senate. Obama has what it takes to be a leader.



Also, as sad as it is, we need to admit that a powerful and sizable section of our country HATES Hillary Clinton, they LOATHE her. They will do anything to keep her out of office. The mother of a friend of mine was a Clinton appointee in his last administration. Their family is close and very supportive to the Clintons. Her daughter recently said to me on the phone that, from her vantage point, these ‘anyone-but-Hillary folks’ are plentiful and they “hate Hillary, more than the devil himself!”

We need to admit this and not pretend it will go away. It won’t. Hillary is seen by many as divisive. Our country needs to be reunited, not further divided. Obama is not just brilliant, he is able to unite. He is strong, smart, and he is inspiring. He will surround himself with the best, the most experienced, and the brightest to serve our nation.

I agree with the political commentators recently featured on Charlie Rose: “this isn’t about a campaign, this is about a movement”.

Yesterday at Pauley Pavilion the movement was in full swing. The crowd screamed with shocked delight when Maria Shriver, wife of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, walked onstage and into the Barack Obama campaign.


During the rally at UCLA, Caroline Kennedy urged the crowd and voters across the country to “step out of your lives and into this moment in history.” This moment in history is our country embracing the candidacy of Barack Obama. This is our country walking forward together inspired by the words and sacrifices of Rosa Parks, JFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yes, We Can!

MoveOn Endorses Obama

Poster designed by Shepard Fairey

Dear MoveOn member,
With hundreds of thousands of ballots cast across the country, for the first time in MoveOn's history, we've voted together to endorse a presidential candidate in the primary. That candidate is Barack Obama.

Something big is clearly happening. A few weeks ago, MoveOn members we surveyed were split. But with John Edwards bowing out, progressives are coming together. Obama won over 70% of the vote yesterday, and he's moving up in polls nationwide.
As comments poured in from MoveOn members across the country, the sense of hope was inspiring. Here's how Christine Y. in New Jersey put it:

"I've never felt so strongly about any one candidate in my entire life. He's truly an inspiration to all of us—especially the younger generation. I will stand by him 100% for as long as he's willing to stand up and fight for this country!"

What does MoveOn's endorsement mean? People-power. Together, we are 3.2 million Americans who care about our country and want change. Half of us live in states with primaries or caucuses this coming "Super Tuesday."

We know how to roll up our sleeves and win elections, and if we all pitch in together between now and Tuesday, we can help Sen. Obama win the biggest primary day in American history. Think about it: volunteering during the next four days could mean four years of a progressive president. Can you sign up right now to volunteer for Obama's campaign? Click here:
MoveOn Endorses Obama

El cambio..... es fundamental

Paintings at Night

Chadwick's "Passports From the Realm" at Julie Nester Gallery

Gregg Chadwick
The Road to Mandalay
40"x30" oil on linen 2007


Gregg Chadwick's new exhibit "Passports From the Realm" opens January 4, 2008 at the Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, Utah.

"In old Arabic poetry love, song, blood and travel appear as four basic desires of the human heart and the only effective means against our fear of death. Thus travel is elevated to the dignity of the elementary needs of humankind." - Czeslaw Milosz on the poetry of travel

Movement, travel and pilgrimage are themes of the 21st Century that often appear in my paintings. Travel can involve a physical relocation or it can exist in the realm of the senses. Recently I attended "A Gathering of Hearts Illuminating Compassion," an interfaith meeting in San Francisco. The Dalai Lama was the keynote speaker at the event. He entered the packed hall, briskly moved up the center aisle, but stopped briefly to greet an elderly Tibetan woman a few feet from where I was seated. Then the Dalai Lama suddenly spun around and, with a beatific smile, gazed deeply and directly into my eyes.

I was transfixed. The moment was short but to me it felt as if all time collapsed within that point. For that moment, it seemed as if the Dalai Lama yearned to see with my eyes as I, in turn, learned to see through his.

These new paintings travel like the visual notes of a modern Marco Polo. They move from Venice, to India, to Tibet, to China, to Burma, to Thailand, to Japan, to New York to New Orleans, sometimes through my eyes and sometimes through the eyes of others.


Gregg Chadwick
Passports From the Realm 36"x48" oil on linen 2007


"Passports from the Realm," an exhibition of new paintings by Gregg Chadwick, opens Friday with an artist's reception from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at Julie Nester Gallery, 1755 B Bonanza Drive, Park City.
For more information or to see more images of Chadwick's work, call 435-649-7855 or visit julienestergallery

More at:
chadwick at nester gallery

Gregg Chadwick's Homepage:
gregg chadwick

The Salt Lake Tribune:
passports from the realm

Joyeux Noël

12/17 Paris, Palais Omnisports De Bercy

Getty Museum: 10 Years on the Hill (Dec. 16, 1997 - Dec. 16, 2007)

Today marks the ten year anniversary of architect Richard Meier's Getty campus perched on the hills of Brentwood.
Christopher Hawthorne in the Los Angeles Times explains:

"The design seemed reflective of Los Angeles architecture in another, almost paradoxical way. If the whole idea of L.A. art and architecture was to ignore the idea of fitting in, to reject slavish conformism, then wasn't the Getty a supreme example of precisely that attitude? Turning its back on the notion that it needed to match the spirit of Los Angeles in some prescribed way -- didn't that make it somehow truer to the city than a row of palm trees or a red-tile roof?"

"Perhaps more to the point, the Getty joined a long line of L.A. landmarks that sit at a dramatic remove from the city around them -- most notably Griffith Observatory and Dodger Stadium and houses by John Lautner, Pierre Koenig, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, and many others."



The Getty has not been immune to poor leadership and questionable acquisition policies, but the combination of Richard Meier's buildings and Robert Irwin's garden has created a cultural venue that at times, when the light is just right, reminds me of the Taj Mahal.

LA Times on the Getty

Marquis C.'s South Central Days

Online Videos by Veoh.com Marquis C.'s SOUTH CENTRAL DAYS.

The Los Angeles Times has a powerful article on the power of art to speak of troubled streets and difficult choices. Budding filmmaker Marquis Calhoun found his passion for film at Camp David, the youth detention center not the presidential compound,during a filmmaking class taught by the award winning filmmaker Alex Muñoz.

John L. Mitchell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer writes,"Every year for the last five years, the class of teenagers has produced a number of dramatic scripts and, eventually, short films about the precarious twists and turns of a harsh life on the streets."

"But this year, one student's story was different: Marquise Calhoun's screenplay focused on death -- his own."

Watch the film. Read the article. And visit the website for Films by Youth Inside. Powerful stuff.

Films by Youth Inside
Scripting what he knows

The 19th Century European Galleries Reopen at the Metropolitan Museum in New York

Henry Lerolle
“The Organ Rehearsal” 1885

New space has been found at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The 19th century galleries have reopened with a slight expansion and newly exhibited works. Henry Lerolle's "The Organ Rehearsal" was found buried in the museum's stacks, dusted off and now hangs next to more familiar French masterworks.

Sea of Stories

Gregg Chadwick
"Sea of Stories"
40"x30" oil on linen 2007

The Saffron Road

Gregg Chadwick
"The Saffron Road"
40"x90" oil on linen 2007

Free Burma

march, paint, write, meditate, work, pray, hope, and create a free Burma.



Saffron Revolution

Happy Halloween

RB Kitaj Exits

RB Kitaj has died at his home in Los Angeles.


Gregg Chadwick
"School of L.A. (RB Kitaj - Westwood 3/08/07)"
40"x30" oil on linen 2007
Courtesy: Lisa Coscino Gallery

RB Kitaj has been a major influence on my artwork and my artistic life since my early years at UCLA. It is with great sadness that I must now write of his exit. I was fortunate to meet RB Kitaj a few months ago as he spoke at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. He seemed full of life as he began to lecture to an audience that he assumed would be mostly young art students. Instead the audience was a cross-section of L.A.' s art world - a smattering of current art students, as well as some former students come to pay homage to a revered master, a group of mid-career painters, art dealers, curators, museum directors, family members, and an adoring public. But the crowd could never be enough. RB Kitaj's sadness at the loss of his wife Sandra Fisher hung in his voice as he spoke of their love beneath projected images of his paintings that reflected the beauty of RB's and Sandra's time together. His loneliness was evident as he gazed up at my wife and me as we spoke with him after the lecture.

But the evening was not a swan song. RB Kitaj spoke with resonance and power. His white bearded face could have been that of a biblical prophet. He spoke his own truth and dared the artists in the crowd to follow. He chastised his critics. And he boldly praised his own artistic powers.

Most of all, RB Kitaj cared about his vision of an artistic future that continues to deal with the human condition. He made time for all of us who might share some of this vision. As I spoke with Kitaj, he glanced at a gallery invite card in my hand, picturing my painting - "A Walk With Ganesh" - and Kitaj asked, "May I have that card? Is this for me? I would like to take this home."

As I painted in my studio during the next few months, I often imagined my image tacked up on Kitaj's studio wall. I picture that card hanging now in a quiet studio.


Kitaj's Studio, Westwood 2005
photo by Phil Savenick

Following RB Kitaj's wishes, there will not be a funeral.


RB Kitaj at the Hammer Museum 3/08/07

More from the Telegraph:

"RB Kitaj, who died on Sunday aged 74, was an American painter domiciled for 40 years in England and became a leading member of the group of artists known (in his own phrase) as The School of London; alongside such contemporaries as Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud he raised the stature of English painting to one of international significance."


RB Kitaj
"Marynka Smoking"
pastel and charcoal on paper
collection: estate of the artist
Kitaj argued that painting should be a vehicle for intellectual and sensual communication.

"Kitaj, who saw himself as a "wandering Jew", emotionally and culturally displaced from his homeland, suffused himself in European literary and artistic traditions. His writing complemented — and, many argued, enriched — his painting, enabling the viewer to unravel the often complex web of pictorial symbols and associations."

"If he was criticised for being a "difficult" painter, this was largely because his subject matter was no less than the human condition, in all its inhumanity and imperfection, and upon this canvas he directed the full force of his painterly and intellectual ambition."

Springsteen and Arcade Fire: State Trooper

Bruce Stringsteen and Arcade Fire - State trooper
Uploaded by trendwhore

Ottawa - 10/ 14/ 07 Win and Regine from Arcade Fire joined Springsteen on stage to play Bruce's “State Trooper” and Arcade Fire's “Keep The Car Running”
More from brock and ryan at trendwhore

Thich Nhat Hanh at UCLA

Los Angeles - October 6, 2007- the renowned peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh led a silent procession through the UCLA campus in honor of the monks in Myanmar and their current struggle with the military junta. Thich Nhat Hahn was on the UCLA campus today to present the keynote speech No Death, No Fear at UCLA's Mindfulness and Psychotherapy: Cultivating Well-being in the Present Moment Conference. With each step conference attendees were encouraged to think "I am here".

One Word Project at Washington DC's Arts Club

The One Word Project, curated by JT Kirkland, opens at the Arts Club of Washington in the District of Columbia on August 28th. The genesis of the project was a call by Kirkland in 2004 from his blog, Thinking About Art.

The Arts Club of Washington summarizes the project:
" The One Word Project is a deliberate enactment of the 'conversation' between artist and viewer. Interested in seeking new ways to capture pure creative response, curator J.T. Kirkland distilled the traditional artist interview to its most basic element: a single word. After digesting the work of a self-selecting group of artists, Kirkland prompted each with a word of his choosing, to which each artist was asked to respond in approximately100–500 words. The resulting statements—which vary in length, approach, and relevance to the original word—offer a written correlative that informs and enhances the viewer's appreciation of the artist's work."

JT Kirkland's site Thinking About Art and his curatorial work in the Washington DC area have opened up the visual arts in exciting ways.
JT smartly paired artists with words of his choosing for the project. My word was responsibility. I wrote the following, which was posted on Thinking About Art on November 17, 2004:

Gregg Chadwick: Responsibility

When J.T. Kirkland asked me to write on “responsibility” the first words that came to mind were duty, engagement and trust. As a contemporary painter my first obligation is to the work. My art demands an engagement with the physicality of canvas and paint as well as the duty to really see the world. My current paintings are filtered through my experience of September 11th, 2001. I was visiting my father in Thailand and had spent the morning following the saffron robed monks on their small morning pilgrimages. I hopped a flight for Bangkok and while waiting for a connecting flight to San Francisco I watched in horror as the planes hit the World Trade Center. On my return to the U.S. later that week I began to paint Buddhist monks, privately at first - as a form of meditation. Only later did I grasp the dharmic sense of responsibility inherit in this new body of work. I needed to paint these paintings. And I found that the audience I had developed over the years felt the need to see them also. They have given me their trust that I will create paintings that speak of our times but also provide clues to a future path away from the darkness.

Gregg Chadwick
Arlington
48"x36" oil on linen 2004
Collection: National Museum of the Marine Corps

My painting, Arlington, will be in the exhibition at the Arts Club of Washington.

Notes on Arlington

The painting, Arlington, was inspired by the funeral of Chanawongse Kemaphoom 22, of Waterford, Connecticut. Chanawongse Kemaphoom was a United States Marine who was killed in action during operations on the outskirts of An Nasiriyah, Iraq on March 23, 2003. Chanawongse was assigned to 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Chanawongse Kemaphoom was a Thai-American Buddhist, so his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery included saffron robed Buddhist monks as well as US Marines in their dress blues.
The painting began as an image of a US Marine in Iraq silhouetted against a gunpowdered sky at dusk. That painting was subsequently worked into and eventually over-painted with the present image when the reports and images in the New York Times of Chanawongse Kemaphoom’s funeral brought back childhood memories of watching “taps” played at dusk during the Evening Parade at the Marine Corps Barracks in Washington DC.
- Gregg Chadwick

The One Word Project runs from August 28th through September 29th, 2007.
There will be an opening reception for the artists and public at the Arts Club of Washington on Friday, September 7th from 6:30 until 9:00 PM. I will be flying out from California and will be attending the opening. Hope to see you there.

The Arts Club is located at 2017 I Street NW, Washington DC
Their contact number is 202 331 7282

The exhibition features work by James W. Bailey (VA), Rachael Baldanza (NY), Joseph Barbaccia (VA), Gregg Chadwick (CA), J. Coleman (DC), Anna Conti (CA), Warren Craghead III (VA), Rosetta DeBerardinis (MD), Greg Ferrand (DC), D. Keith Furon (CA), Matt Hollis (DC), Candace Keegan (MD), Angela Kleis (DC), Tara Krause (CA), Andrew Krieger (DC), Prescott Moore Lassman (DC), James Leonard (NY), Nathan Manuel (DC), Jennifer McMackon (Ontario, Canada), Jennifer Miller (DC), A.B. Miner (DC), Charles Neenan (VA), Peter Reginato (NY), Jose Ruiz (NY), Wayne Schoenfeld (CA), Kathleen Shafer (DC), Alexandra Silverthorne (DC), Marsha Stein (MD), Trish Tillman (NY), Kelly Towles (DC), Bryan Whitson (DC), and Jamie Wimberly (DC).

AT&T Censors Pearl Jam During Lollapalooza Webcast

The complete version of Pearl Jam performing "Daughter" at Lollapalooza

Eddie Vedder and the band have posted the following on their website:
LOLLAPALOOZA WEBCAST: SPONSORED/CENSORED BY AT&T?
08.08.07

"After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the "Blue Room" Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast:

- "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and

- "George Bush find yourself another home."

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of "NetNeutrality." Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue.

Most telecommunications companies oppose "net neutrality" and argue that the public can trust them not to censor..

Even the ex-head of AT&T, CEO Edward Whitacre, whose company sponsored our troubled webcast, stated just last March that fears his company and other big network providers would block traffic on their networks are overblown..

"Any provider that blocks access to content is inviting customers to find another provider." (Marguerite Reardon, Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: March 21, 2006, 2:23 PM PST).

But what if there is only one provider from which to choose?

If a company that is controlling a webcast is cutting out bits of our performance -not based on laws, but on their own preferences and interpretations - fans have little choice but to watch the censored version.

What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band."

More at:
LOLLAPALOOZA WEBCAST: SPONSORED/CENSORED BY AT&T?

Getty Museum to Return Antiquities to Italy

Aphrodite
Currently at the Getty Museum, Malibu

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has crafted a deal with the Italian government to return 40 disputed antiquities to Italy.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting "that most of the artifacts will be returned within the next few months."

"The agreement includes one of the most prized works in dispute, a 5th century B.C. statue of the goddess Aphrodite, which will remain on display at the Getty until 2010, the ministry said. Italian authorities believe the 7-foot statue, bought by the Getty for $18 million in 1988, was looted from an ancient Greek settlement in Sicily."

No agreement has been reached on the ancient Greek bronze - "Statue of a Victorious Athlete" - found off the coast of Italy in what the Getty Museum describes as international waters. The Italian government disputes these claims.

The deep waters holding lost treasures of antiquity have been described as "the Blue Museum" by the writer Phil Cousineau in his most recent collection of poems. The odyssey of these ancient works of art continues. It is almost as if the statues themselves reach out of the briny depths or their earthen graves in an effort to find their way home. It is a positive step in an age of American arrogance for the Getty Museum to help these works of art make their way back to their homelands.

"Statue of a Victorious Athlete"
Getty Museum

More at: Getty Museum in the Los Angeles Times

Amadou Diallo's Memory in the New York Times

Woke up this morning to a haunting image of Mamadou Diallo and his young son walking by a mural of his deceased cousin Amadou Diallo. Amadou Diallo was mercilessly shot by the NYPD as he reached for his wallet in an attempt to placate the undercover cop's demands. More than once, because of this event, I have told my son, "If an officer stops you - Promise me, you always be polite. And that you'll never. never run away. Promise that you'll always keep your hands in sight." I stood up against the stage as Springsteen and the E-Street band sang these words in Bruce's homage to Diallo - "American Skin" - during the "Rising" tour. Clarence Clemons' face was streaked with tears as he intoned the refrain "41 shots".

Enricsalas' YouTube video is a poignant mash-up of Springsteen and the E-Street Band's brave rendition from a series of concerts in Madison Square Garden, that some members of the NYPD naively picketed, overlayed with footage of the events around the shooting. In my estimation, then NYC mayor, Rudy Giuliani destroyed any chance of a real shot at the White House with his feeble attempts to explain away the horrific event.

Today's story in the New York Times is a must read: Diallo Cousin Still Fights for a Foothold

photo by Oscar Hidalgo/The New York Times
"Mamadou Diallo, taking his son Abdul, 3, to day care, passes a mural near their Bronx home that is dedicated to the memory of their cousin Amadou Diallo."

I painted a small work in memory of the loved one's Diallo left behind: "American Beauty":


Gregg Chadwick
"American Beauty"
11"x11" oil on linen 2004

Famed Swedish Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman Dies

Ingmar Bergman
Opening Sequence of Persona

Opera Sky

The Central City Opera is featuring paintings by Gregg Chadwick as images for each of the operas in their current summer season: La Traviata, Poet Li Bai, The Saint of Bleecker Street and Cendrillon.

Details at: Central City Opera

L.A. Sushi

Gregg Chadwick
L.A. Sushi
diptych 6" x 8" oil on linen 2007

ZOOM at Arena1 - Santa Monica Airport

Images by (left to right): Christian Nold, Lordy Rodriguez, Nina Katchadourian, and Joyce Kozloff.

ARENA 1 is pleased to announce the opening of a group exhibition of work exploring space and meaning through the various devices of "mapping." Working in the USA, Britain and Australia, all 19 artists in the show employ maps as resource material, not as an exploration of actual geography or the time/space continuum but rather as a matter of charting, subverting or deconstructing the very idea of mapping as a representation of the world. The artists themselves are as varied in their approach to this process as the number of directions by which we can transverse any physical position in space. Each has plotted a uniquely personal route that is fanciful, interpretive or politically driven to re-form the map of the imagination. Like the telephoto function, ZOOM +/- references a familiar orientation, then moves quickly to a point of abstraction in the artists' paintings, photographs, collages, sculptures and computer generated mappings.

For Australian artist Louisa Bufardeci “all statistical systems, linguistic systems, information systems, all systems compel and repulse me…Their artificial relationship between form and content compels me to pull them apart, twist them around, recode them and re-present them in ways that question their original form of representation and their assumptions.” Works from her “Governing Values” series utilize statistics from the CIA, the World Bank and other official fact gathering agencies with countries taking their position and size according to x and y variables such as inflation rate and life expectancy for example, to map the world’s agriculture production.

British artist Christian Nold recently completed a project at Southern Exposure as part of his on-going “Emotion Map” series which has taken him around the globe. In it he asks volunteers to use a Bio Mapping device and go for a walk in their town. The device measures the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is an indicator of emotional arousal as well as their geographical location. The information is downloaded into his computer and re-produced as a map. “Emotion Maps” from San Francisco, Greenwich and Newham are shown here.

Nina Katchadourian works in video, sound, photography, paper and sculpture. She was born in Finland and lives most of the year in NYC. “Finland’s Longest Road”, is the entire length of highway E75 cut from an atlas coiled up and placed in a Petri dish where its diminutive size makes it look like an experiment. “Genealogy of the Supermarket” is a c-print of an installation she created of framed product labels mounted on striking red wallpaper. The chart “interrelates people who appear on common products in the grocery store and organizes them so that they appear to be members of one large family.”

Joyce Kozloff’s collages combine hand-drawn copies of historical battle maps with downsized, cut-out color photocopies of various warriors, all armed to the teeth. A feminist and activist, Kozloff “suggests Freud had it exactly wrong: what he should have asked is, what do boys want?” Her answer seems to be “the universality, across time and geography, of willed carnage. Kozloff's sources range from Goya and Manet to Tintin and Warhammer, but she relied most of all on drawings made by her son when he was a child.” (Nancy Princenthal, Art in America)

Ken Buhler, Sarah Trigg and Mary Hambleton are painters. Buhler’s focus on the minutiae of veins and highways in coral reefs results in richly painted images with allusions to maps radiant physical space and ability to hold and reveal multiple levels of information (including the non-visible). Trigg’s paintings project the spiritual and physical tensions between technologized culture and the natural landscape and Hambleton’s abstractions look like mappings of the heavens or molecules, with scale shifts from micro to macro. Also cosmic in outlook is the work of John Noestheden, whose crystal laden works on paper reference the patterns found in star formations as modeled in the charts and star maps that are constructed in an attempt to understand and make sense of the universe.

London-born Matthew Picton concentrates on the spaces between the cracks in his adopted state of Oregon. A blue spidery web of reinforced Dura-Lar hangs airily on a wall, belying its humble origins as the map of the cracks in a Medford alleyway. Robert Walden, from NYC, says his “Ontological Road Maps” are “a picture of time. Each drawing reveals the time it takes to make a road map and then each finished drawing actually represents that time. All along, there is a literal play on mapping. Each drawing represents a process (of mapmaking, of creating roads) and a place (a representation of existence that can be either real or imagined).” Lordy Rodriguez reconfigures the United States according to his personal experience and private fantasies using the formal conventions of maps to organize his bright, translucent colored work.

Several artists employ actual maps in their work. Doug Beube, Jeff Woodbury, Matthew Cusick and TOFU all have work based on cut up, cut out, sanded, and otherwise manipulated atlases, charts and other “mapping” tools.

Linda Ekstrom’s altered maps render the landscape and its locations as unidentifiable. Each ephemeral form has been created by cutting away the land masses on the map, leaving only the pathways of travel. “The Camps Against the Book” is an altered book with glass beads mapping out the Nazi internment and death camps from WW II.

Janice Caswell’s drawings and installations represent mental maps, an investigation of the mind's peculiar ways of organizing memories. She attempts “to trace the edges of recalled experience, plotting the movement of bodies and consciousness through time and space.”

David Brody and Douglas Henderson's computer animation and sound work, "Disobey This Command!" will be shown for the first time at ARENA 1 Gallery. Brody is a visual artist who makes paintings, wall drawings, and computer animations. Douglas Henderson is a composer whose current work is focused on multi-channel electroacoustic compositions, sound-producing sculptural installations, and scores for modern dance. Brody and Henderson, who met in New York, have long recognized certain affinities in their work, including an interest in "visual music." For Disobey, Henderson composed a sound score which responds to Brody's recursive, fractal-like visual structure.

ARENA 1 is an exhibition space founded by Santa Monica Art Studios directors Yossi Govrin and Sherry Frumkin. Based in an historic hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, ARENA 1 invites internationally known as well as newly established curators to develop innovative and compelling exhibitions.

Jesse Malin's "Broken Radio"

The role of the artist according to Jesse Malin is to put you "right there in a time and place so you can smell it."






Ryan Adams once said of his close buddy. "He's a kick-ass storyteller," the wonder boy remarked when he had just finished producing Jesse's first album. "Jesse's songs are so good they hurt my feelings. He doesn't just sound like he's singing the songs. He sounds like he IS that person."

''To say it is an insult is absurd.''

"The idea that it is some kind of calculated insult is an absurdity. The real insult - to the intelligence and decency of 'the world's 1.5 billion Muslims', for whom people such as Mohammed Ejaz ul-Haq presume to speak - comes from the ignorance and paranoia of leaders who feel so threatened by a novelist that they'll call for him to be killed."
-Hari Kunzru (author of Transmission & The Impressionist)

The noted author of The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories,Midnight's Children and The Ground Beneath Her Feet has been knighted by the Queen of England and the newly minted Sir Salman has again become a lightning rod for criticism from extreme and irrational voices. Heinrich Heine's line from, "Almansor", is once again a call for constant vigilance:

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
("Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.")
—Heinrich Heine, from his play Almansor (1821)

As an artist, a dreamer.and a creator: I stand in solidarity with Salman Rushdie and against those who would attempt to silence any true creative voice. Salman Rushdie is a man of incredible bravery. To stand alone with a pen (or word processor)against those with guns and bombs is not foolishness but instead necessity.

Salman Rushdie and his wife Padma Lakshmi

Monet's "Waterloo Bridge, Temps Couvert" Sells at Christie's for $35.6 million

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
"Waterloo Bridge, Temps Couvert"
25½" x 39 1/8" oil on canvas 1904

"I adore London, it is a mass, an ensemble, and it is so simple. What I like most of all in London is the fog. How could English painters of the nineteenth century have painted its houses brick by brick? Those fellows painted bricks that they didn't see, that they couldn't see... I so love London! But I only like it in the winter... It is the fog that gives it its marvellous breadth. Its regular, massive blocks become grandiose in this mysterious cloak."(Monet, quoted in J. House, ""Monet's London: Artists' Reflections on the Thames" 1859-1914).

The painting is one in a series of views from the Savoy Hotel that Monet painted in London in the years before World War I.
The High Museum presented a fascinating exhibit on Monet in London almost twenty years ago. The catalogue written by Grace Seiberling is well worth finding.

Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" Graces the Getty

Édouard Manet
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (detail) 1882
Oil on canvas
37 13/16 x 51 3/16 in.
The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London

Manet's magnificent and mysterious "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" graces the Getty Museum in Brentwood until September 9th, 2007. Normally housed at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in the imposing Somerset House, we are fortunate to be able to view the painting in Los Angeles.

Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" is painted in rich buttery strokes of oil paint. The physicality of the pigment gives tangible visual weight to a scene which combines the still presence of the barmaid with the flickering mystery of the mirror behind the bar.



The Getty has placed the work in a room with a mirror on the opposite wall to help spur a dialogue between viewer and painting. We are asked a series of provacative questions on the Getty's webpage on Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" at the Getty:

• How are we to characterize the barmaid's expression?
• What is the nature of the viewer's relationship to the barmaid?
• What is happening between the barmaid and the man reflected in the mirror?
• If we see the man's reflection in the mirror, why isn't his figure also visible in front of the bar?
• Why is there no indication in the mirror of the balcony walkway on which we imagine the man, or ourselves, to be standing?
• Why are the reflections of the figures and still life objects displaced so far to the right?

The Getty has placed the work in a room with a mirror on the opposite wall to help spur a dialogue between viewer and painting.

Few paintings have influenced my artistic process more than Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère". While studying in London I spent hours in front of the work, hoping if I gazed at the painting long enough that it would divulge its secrets.

The Getty seems to sum up my own thoughts on the work:
"The more one reflects on Manet's painting, the more difficult it becomes to project a straightforward narrative onto it, and the more conscious and uncertain we become of our position as spectators. At once invoking and undermining the traditional notion of painting-as-mirror, Manet's work becomes a profound interrogation of the act of looking itself."

If you can't find me in my studio this summer, look for me at the Getty still gazing at Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" in a rich process of discovery and inspiration.

More at:
Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" at the Getty
The Courtauld Collection Audiofile on Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère"

Ganesh Study

Ganesh Study
12"x9" oil on wood 2007