Sylvester Stallone's union troubles.

Just another anecdote from "The Andy Warhol Diaries." This is from the entry for February 22, 1980:

Stallone is so cute, so adorable. I guess he’s lost sixty pounds. He’s sexy. All the stars usually think they should have their portraits done free, though. He’s intelligent, he’s taken over directorship of the movie and now he’s in trouble because the union has a film of him saying, “Lights, action!” It’s going before a board. Stallone was telling stories about how much trouble he’s had with the union, how there’s this little Irish guy that he just wants to beat up so badly. He said he had this one shot all set up, everybody was in costume and makeup with blood and everything for a fight scene and it was snowing, just perfectly and they said, “Okay, stop, everybody break for dinner,” and he said he practically got down on his knees pleading, “Please, just let’s get this one shot, please, I’m a fellow worker, please, I’m Rocky!” and they wouldn’t let him. They broke for dinner and then he had to start all over again.

Please, I’m Rocky! I love that. The workers should view the director as a proletarian because he played one in a movie. And meanwhile, he imagines he's so elite that the artist should provide him with portraiture gratis. But what kind of elite is that? Royalty patronizes the arts.

It wasn't a Rocky movie they were filming. Don't be confused. It was "Nighthawks."

Taking a ridiculous racial issue and making it more ridiculous.

For some reason — ratings? — Megyn Kelly was on Fox News arguing with some lady who thought Santa Claus should no longer be depicted as a white man. Sorry, I'm not going to figure out the whole context of that proposal, but at some point Kelly emitted the following quote:

"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"

Well, that's silly, perhaps, but she's got a guest on the show who needs to be prodded with questions. And the assertion that Santa is a historical figure is jocose for adults, a sop for the kids. The question is simply the usual conservative appeal to tradition: Why change anything? There's a reference to the reason for the change: It makes some people "uncomfortable." Is that a good enough reason for changing something we've done for a long time? This is the same way you could bandy about the question whether the Washington Redskins ought to change their name. It's standard fare for the Fox News crowd.

So here comes Jonathan Merritt in The Atlantic, turning that nugget o' Fox into something that Atlantic readers might find tasty. Hey, everybody, some idiot on Fox News said something stupid.

Setting aside the ridiculousness of creating rigidly racial depictions of a fictitious character that does not actually exist—sorry, kids—like Santa, Kelly has made a more serious error about Jesus. The scholarly consensus is actually that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man. If he were taking the red-eye flight from San Francisco to New York today, Jesus might be profiled for additional security screening by TSA.

Kelly didn't demand "rigidly racial depictions." She was challenging her guest's attempt to turn the usual image of Santa into a racial problem. It's the guest who's yearning to impose the racial template. What's the "serious error" about Santa that Kelly is supposed to have made? None! But she made a "more serious error about Jesus," and I guess any error is a more serious error than no error.

What's the error? Merritt informs us that Jesus, being a first-century Jew, probably had dark skin. Jews are not white? One ceases to be white if one's skin is sufficiently dark? It may be silly to use the term "white" to label people by race, but white is a big category, and it includes a pretty broad spectrum of skin colors, such as, for example, the "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman. Maybe we should call Jesus a "white Semitic" to heighten the awareness of the subcategories of whiteness. Is that what Jonathan Merritt requires to avoid falling into "serious error"? Megyn Kelly was arguing for less racialism, and Merritt is arguing for more.

Merritt also casually implies that the TSA engages in racial profiling of those who look Semitic. It's a scurrilous charge, but, hey, it's a joke.

Merritt continues:

The myth of a white Jesus is one with deep roots throughout Christian history. As early as the Middle Ages and particularly during the Renaissance, popular Western artists depicted Jesus as a white man, often with blue eyes and blondish hair. 

Yeah, but Megyn Kelly didn't say Jesus had blond hair and blue eyes. Merritt's line is more erroneous, wafting the notion that white people must have light coloring. I'd say there are a lot more white people with dark eyes and dark hair than with blue eyes and blond (or "blondish") hair. So this is a completely screwy attack on Megyn Kelly, and it's actually pretty offensive to go out of your way to say that persons of Semitic ancestry are not white. Why go where Nazis have gone? What's the attraction? Because it's just so important to portray Fox News folk as idiots?

Perhaps fueled by some Biblical verses correlating lightness with purity and righteousness and darkness with sin and evil, these images sought to craft a sterile Son of God....

Now, you are way outside of anything having to do with Megyn Kelly. This sounds like some lesson from a fourth-rate racial studies course. And by the way, Merritt, that writing is terrible. The subject of your sentence is "images," and images don't seek to do anything. Images are inanimate objects. And how do you "craft" Jesus? Human beings do the seeking and crafting. And the images are crafted. The images are of Jesus. A person might craft a sterile image of Jesus. But an image can't craft — or even seek to craft — a sterile Jesus.

And we're subjected to the usual tripe about light and darkness — which correspond so strongly to the deeply emotional experience of day and night — being about skin color. Ever consider that Jesus looks the way he does in old paintings because the painter used models in his home town? That would mean the painter wasn't focused on race at all. But why not go with the idea that all those old painters were racists who lightened Jesus up to make him look like a better class of person? What's the point? And what the hell does it have to do with Megyn Kelly?

Merritt goes on to say:

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Advice for Living” column for Ebony in 1957, the civil-rights leader was asked, “Why did God make Jesus white, when the majority of peoples in the world are non-white?” King replied, “The color of Jesus’ skin is of little or no consequence” because what made Jesus exceptional “His willingness to surrender His will to God’s will.” His point, as historian Edward Blum has noted, is that Jesus transcends race.

Yes, Martin Luther King said some great things about getting past race. So could we? Here's what Merritt says next:

Those warnings hold just as true for believers today. 

What warnings? How is Jesus transcends race a warning? One could construct a warning: We'd better transcend race or terrible things will happen. But Merritt won't transcend race:

Within the church, eschewing a Jesus who looks more like a Scandinavian supermodel than the sinless Son of God in the scriptures is critical to maintaining a faith in which all can give praise to one who became like them in an effort to save them from sins like racism and prejudice. 

Only Merritt brought up the Scandinavian supermodel version of Jesus, but, yeah, it's critical to eschew making Jesus look like this. But who does that? If it's really so important to have the right colors to encourage everyone to identify, then a dark-haired, dark-eyed Caucasian is one of the best choices. But Martin Luther King said race is of little or no consequence, and Merritt said we were supposed to heed his warnings.

It's important for Christians who want to expand the church, too, in allowing the creation of communities that are able to worship a Jesus who builds bridges rather than barriers. And it is essential to enabling those who bear the name of Christ to look forward to that day when, according to the book of Revelation, those “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” can worship God together.

Until that day arrives, though, can someone please tell Megyn Kelly that Jesus is not white?

He just cannot let it go. Megyn Kelly must be stupid. Fox News must suck. Jesus can wait and Martin Luther King's dream will need to be deferred for however long it takes to kick that right-wing news blonde around one more time over less than nothing.

The Moon Museum.

A tiny little tile that might be on the moon.

There are six artworks located on the ceramic tile, each one in black and white only... [T]he last drawing in the upper left is by Andy Warhol. He created a stylized version of his initials which, when viewed at certain angles, can appear as a rocket ship or a crudely drawn penis. "He was being the terrible bad boy." says Myers. Warhol's work is covered by a thumb in the image often associated with Moon Museum, but other images with the drawing visible can be found.

Forrest "Frosty" Myers, who came up with the idea to get six great artists together and make a tiny little museum that would be on the moon." I find it very amusing that a little tile — it's 3/4" X 1/2" of  — should be called a "museum." For some reason, for the longest time, I've had a special love of humor that plays with or flips the largeness and smallness of things.

The discovery of The Moon Museum by chance today — why hadn't I heard of it before? — got me searching for "moon" in Andy Warhol's diaries, and I found this about some party in Aspen in 1982:

Buzz Aldrin came, from the moon. The astronaut. Took a lot of photographs of him. He’s aged but he was cute and glad to meet us. We decided to start lying that night— Chris told people he had a twelve-month-old baby and that he was watching it while his wife was back in New York and they all believed him. And I told them I was a deep-sea fisherman, and this lady invited me to Boca Raton. I haven’t been drinking at all.

"The Idea of 'Art School Stole My Virginity' came around when I was Sixteen..."

"... when all my peers at school were losing their Virginity it was incredibly hard for me to ask why I was still a Virgin and why it meant so much to the people all around me."

My piece isnt a statement as much as it is a question. The whole aspect of Virginity was incredibly emotional for me and has been ever since. It became a thought process that turned into the performance piece that I wish to create for the public on January the 25th. The London Art Scene has slowed down recently and whilst London is in its prime and is constantly changing the contemporary artists are the same and they aren’t so contemporary anymore. I want my piece to inject some speed into the arts, a performance of the people if you will. I feel like now is the time for the new scene. To lose my Virginity with the new age is the Avant Garde that London has been unintentionally waiting for.

I got there via a Time Magazine blog post by Laura Stampler that has the subtitle "So cliché!" Stampler links to a HuffPo piece titled "Student... To Lose Virginity In Live Gay Sex Show For Art Project," which includes a poll with 3 options: 1. "It's art," 2. "It cheapens sex," and 3. "I'm undecided." I know from my experience composing polls here on this blog that people are always going to say "You left out the option I wanted," but they obviously left out a few options.

What's the most important option HuffPo omitted from its poll?
	It cheapens art.
	It's exactly what it is: a sex show presented as an art performance.
	It's art if it's done artistically and the participants are good performers.
	It's art of the low kind, which only uneducated people exclude from the category "art."
	It's art if there is artifice, which I think there is if he's not really a virgin (or Virgin).
pollcode.com free polls

"The whole thing boils down to class warfare... People all over the world are wondering why they did that to 5Pointz. My answer is, why not?"

"Do we really think some landlord is going to give a damn about the culture of the working class? This was an art form invented by the children of the working class, not children with last names like Trump or Rockefeller."

"There are hardly any spots left in the city for graffiti writers... It’s going to mean that everybody’s going to be fighting for space. And you know what happens if they don’t have space to express themselves."

"For Women, a New Look Down Under."

Having just completed a blog post about an article written by an Australian woman, I clicked on that title thinking it's one of those blog-has-a-theme-today days. But "down under" does not refer to a place on the globe. It refers to a place on the anatomy. And the "new look" is flocculent.

Even young porn stars are “bringing the ’80s back,” says Nina Hartley, a doyenne of the scene. Stoya, one of the highest-profile porn actresses of the moment, has also posed for the fashion photographer Steven Klein with grown-out pelvis and armpits. “I’ve had all sorts of pubic hair,” she says. “I’ve been completely bald, I’ve had my entire natural bush grown out, and I usually have an arrangement somewhere in between.”... [T]here’s something refreshingly retro, delightfully expressive and confidently grown-up in getting back to nature. And Courbet’s “L’Origine du Monde”? It now resides at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where — judging by the sale of postcards — it is one of the most popular paintings of all.

The article — in the NYT — does not provide a link to the Courbet painting, perhaps because it's not fit to print "NSFW" in front of links. So let me point you toward this high-class piece of artwork: here.  The title means — I know it's obvious — "The Origin of the World."

Putting the "gum" in "argument."

If you want to write things in gum, go here.

Signed, Your Friend,

Things to do with an abandoned shack in the middle of the desert.

Nice!

Pop...

... makeup. More here. And here.

ALSO: Cubism, done in makeup form. And Lucian Freud style.

Artist seems to think he invented the image of a woman with snakes for hair, accuses Damien Hirst of plagiarism for depicting Rihanna as Medusa.

"It's always fun to take a pop at Hirst, but... the charge against Hirst is not plagiarism – it is sheer artistic ordinariness."

Neither he nor [Jim] Starr have added anything original to the image of Medusa. The GQ cover is as insipid as some late Victorian mythic erotica. Compared with the great Medusas of the classical and baroque ages, Rihanna with snaky hair is just plain dull.

Based on these 45 self-portraits...

... and only these self-portraits, which drug would you pick if:

1. You wanted to produce the best artwork?

2. You had to take the drug all the time and would always feel the way it makes you feel?

3. You could take the drug sometimes, when you were in the mood for it, as a variation on normal, undrugged life?

Don't worry about the illegality of some of the drugs. The question is only about the drug experience as understood through the artist's depiction. Don't factor in other things you may know about the drugs. Restrict yourself to the evidence in the self-portraits. Pick ONE drug per question.

I won't ask which is the last drug you'd take on this list of 45, because more than half of them seem like an obviously very bad idea.

I'll give my answers later because I don't want you to be under the influence... of Althouse.

"Of course all this dorky revolutionary-aesthete chatter about tearing down barriers and storming citadels is meant to get museum-goers’ pulses racing."

"After which everybody will be too revved up to notice that Art Spiegelman is constitutionally incapable of making a single mark with any power."

TNR's Jed Perl is very jazzed up about trashing Art Spiegelman.

"Who paints like that?"

Says Meade, critiquing my step stool.



I defend myself: "It's Pollockesque. I don't know that I did that painting walls. That maybe happened down in the studio. That might be gesso."

What paper are you using for your drawings these days?

For example, Ben Blake draws on coffee filters.

Decades ago, on the theory that it's the best paper, I used to draw on money. Then I got scared that it violated a criminal statute, and I chickened out. The limitations period is long past, so don't come after me, feds.

What nonpaper are you using for your incredibly lame little confessions these days? I'm using Blogger.

"On Sunday the protest artist Petr Pavlensky sat naked on Red Square and drove a nail through his scrotum and into the pavement."

"Pavlensky had staged disturbing protests before."

In July of last year, he sewed his mouth shut and stood outside a cathedral in St. Petersburg in a show of solidarity with the jailed art collective Pussy Riot. In May he had himself wrapped, naked, in a cocoon of barbed wire and placed on the steps of the St. Petersburg legislature. He lay immobile while the police hunted for a pair of garden shears, severed the wire and then struggled to avoid being cut themselves. That time Pavlensky was protesting a series of restrictions on freedom of speech and of assembly....

Each of these actions required the police to deal with Pavlensky’s body — something Russian law enforcement officials almost never have to do, even though they routinely mangle, maim and kill protesters, convicts and perceived violators of rules and laws.

"A collection of 1,500 artworks confiscated by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s has been found in the German city of Munich..."

"Some of the works were declared as degenerate by the Nazis, while others were stolen from or forcibly sold for a pittance by Jewish art collectors."

George Bush's new art project: Portraits of 19 foreign leaders.

He's moved on from paintings of his own feet in the bathtub and dogs to the various presidents and prime ministers he encountered back in the days when he too was a world leader.

I like that he prepped for famous faces with dog heads and human feet. It suggests that his artistic vision is not about the grandeur of the world stage and the historic personages he walked amongst.

***

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.....

Ryan O’Neal, fighting for an Andy Warhol painting that Farrah Fawcett left to the University of Texas...

... submits to a deposition and has to admit that Farrah caught him in bed with another woman in the bedroom the couple shared, which explains her motivation to give the painting to Texas. But, he says, she did not take the painting when she left — because wouldn't grab ya painting worth millions if you were running out in a rage — as you might rip your treasured Farrah Fawcett poster of the wall — if it was yours? Answer: No. Moving an expensive painting is a big deal.

And in fact, a year later, the painting was moved to Fawcett's place. How does O'Neal explain that? He says it was sent away "for safe keeping because his new girlfriend did not like having the image of Farrah on the wall 'staring down at her' all the time."

If you're already out of sympathy with O'Neal, check out the photo at the link of him leaning toward a torso mannequin wearing what appears to be Farrah's iconic orange bathing suit, while, in the background the dead actress smiles in her eternally popular poster. The less-famous image of Farrah is this:



That's the Warhol that was hanging over the couple's bed. Imagine cheating on her under that. Imagine having sex with the man who got off having sex with you under that picture of her.

The picture, which Farrah left to her old school, had been missing but was found because O'Neal did a reality show in 2011, in which it could be seen hanging on the wall. At the time O'Neal murmured about how Farrah "permeated my mind and my being" and "still does" and "The things that are nice in my house are the things that she got me."

"The seriously rich wrestle with issues that most of us never have to consider."

"Problems such as..."

... shall I customise my Learjet so that I can stand upright in it? How can I make it to number one on the rich list? Do I own too many Basquiats and Koonses? Should I go public on my $2bn Gates Foundation donation?

While many deliberate over these conundrums, one overriding issue surpasses all the others: where should I stash my cash and, therefore, where should I live?

"Introducing Half-Chewed Cole Haan Wingtip by the emerging canine artist, Jack."

"This unique presentation of a meticulously destroyed dress shoe is the first of its kind by Jack."

The piece features absent toe and vamp portions of the shoe, removed through a secret chewing process, known only by the artist, with razor-like precision but requiring brute strength. The shoe has been severed painstakingly from the upper fine-grain leather through the inner lining to the bottom sole. Half-Chewed exhibits only the finest craftsmanship, as is characteristic of works by Jack. For the performance aspect of the piece, the artist ingested the dissected portion of the shoe. In a post-modern twist on interdisciplinary performance art, there was no audience for his act of passion.

The work has been interpreted by contemporary art critics as a statement on class in the wake of the American recession, a painful and complex subject for the modern American dog. Due to the nature of the artist's process, the collector who places the winning bid will no doubt hear gasps of "How in the hell?," "Oh my God," and "Was he using a chainsaw?" upon displaying the piece.

An eBay offering that sold for $378, brought to my attention by lemondog in yesterday's Blue Collar Café.