My EYES!
George W. Bush unveils paintings of world leaders on 'Today' show
The paintings will be part of the former president's first solo art exhibition, "The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy," opening this month at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas. SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
Giggling mass murderers, no matter how untalented, should not be lauded in the nation's press. Their examples should serve as warnings to prevent treason, warmongering, war profiteering and other assorted crimes.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It only requires Justice.
...making little rocks out of big rocks and he still would be getting off easy.
Some revealing art by the late Mark Lombardi.
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Through his art, Colombian painter Fernando Botero breathes a new reality into the war in Iraq.
This exhibition opened a ways back at UC Berkeley. Details on the show and artist:
The art of Abu Ghraib
Louis Freedberg
Monday, January 22, 2007
SF Chronicle
AT LEAST two questions hang over the exhibit of Fernando Botero's paintings and drawings on the shameful abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that will open at the main library at UC Berkeley a week from today.
The first is what drove Botero, who typically draws whimsical, oversized pneumatic figures that have enormous popular appeal, to undertake these paintings in the first place.
The second is why they'll be displayed in a Berkeley library, rather than in the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim in New York, or SFMOMA.
SNIP…
He said he wasn't intending to “shock people or to accuse anyone” with his Abu Ghraib depictions. He didn't do them for commercial reasons (they're not for sale). “You do it because it is in your gut, you are upset, you are furious, you have to get it out of your system.”
Nonetheless, he hopes that as Abu Ghraib fades from memory -- the prison is slated for demolition -- the paintings will be a reminder of what happened there. “People would forget about Guernica were it not for Picasso's masterpiece,” he said. “Art is a permanent accusation.”
CONTINUED…
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CALIFORNIA-CULTURES-The-art-of-Abu-Ghraib-2622260.php
In the process of interpreting his reactions to what he learned about the secret torture prison in Iraq, the artist has revealed Bush and his cronies to be sadistic, brutal, criminal, undemocratic and most NAZI like. That’s what the craziest emperors of Rome and the Fuehrer of the Third Reich and the kleptocratiest Mafiya boss do. May history record the policies and behavior of Bush and his cronies to be what it is, most un-American.
Of course, the actions of the Bush Empire gives rise to the question:
Will there be an Amerikan Gulag?
Perhaps not, if enough Americans see these pictures and understand the stories they tell.
As it was, the warmongering psychopath did not like the idea of Stalin getting hold of his sorry ass.
Dali captured the man's, uh, essence.
...protecting the fascists and plutocrats above all.
Absolutely, Crabby Appleton. These are things Hitler was not able to achieve.
How they worked it.
Nothing he can do in this world will lift it.
George W. Bush's Story About Vladimir Putin's Dog Explains So Much
BRETT LOGIURATO
Business Insider, APR. 4, 2014, 10:48 AM
Former president turned painter George W. Bush's haunting portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin came with an interesting story that Bush said served as the basis for the portrait.
As Bush told it, during one encounter between him and Putin, the Russian president "dissed" Bush's Scottish terrier, Barney.
"As you know, our dear dog, Barney, who had a special place in my heart — Putin dissed him and said, ‘You call it a dog?'" Bush told his daughter, Jenna Bush Hager, in an interview Friday on the "Today" show.
A year later, Bush said he and former First Lady Barbara Bush went on a trip to Russia.
"Vladimir says, 'Would you like to meet my dog?' Out bounds this huge hound, obviously much bigger than a Scottish terrier, and Putin looks at me and says, 'Bigger, stronger, and faster than Barney.'"
Bush thought that anecdote revealed a lot about Putin's character, and he said he tried to reflect it in the portrait — one of a hollow, stone-faced Putin.
CONTINUED...
http://www.businessinsider.com/george-bush-vladimir-putin-dog-2014-4
Then, the true picture emerged. And we all knew the little turd from Crawford was all that.
The Odd Hypocrite: The NAZI Bush Celebrates the NAZI Defeat
Hitler.
No sense of color, line, or humanity in either man's work -- just evil.
Know your BFEE: Like a NAZI
what has been seen...cannot be unseen !!!
not only do my eyes burn now...my brain is trying to escape !!!
by Gahan Wilson
PHIL: This first slide here shows Madge and Bill standing right there in front of the New York Space Authority building, ready to start our trip. You can tell it was a pretty nice day on account they're not wearing any protective clothing except for goggles and a mask. The old guy got hit by our taxi–that was some wild driver we had–and the kid's playing a trick on him. Cute, hah?
MADGE: If he hadn't of done it someone else would of. CLICK.
PHIL: Now this here was some lucky shot. I was going to take a picture of Billy there, when this guy steps on the Hijacker Sentinel and pow, huh? What I mean is it really got him good. I asked why it done it and they said it was on account of he looked suspicious and if you study the expression on his face you can see how they got to wondering about him.
MADGE: It turned out he didn't have no gun or bomb or anything.
PHIL: Look, all they can do is the best they can and I'm glad they got those things up there protecting us, anyways. CLICK.
PHIL: Well then, after we got settled in our cabin and the ship took off and all, we went up to the observation lounge and I mean they had the place really fixed up swell. No less than sixteen TV sets all going at the same time, each on a different station, of course, and a bar and every kind of a slot machine and game like that you could wish for. Back there through that window you could see the universe out there if you wanted.
MADGE: I won a whole lot of credit at the Lucky Astronaut game but lost it all on the Zodiac Wheel. CLICK.
PHIL: Just a day out from Mars they announced everybody had to come and see the indoctrination lecture, and I hadn't been looking forward to that. It was something those stiffs at the United Nations had whipped up to teach you all about the Martians' customs and way of life and even their goddamn religion, for Christ's sake. But then I saw it was our social director, Earl, going to do it, and I relaxed right off.
MADGE: That Earl!
PHIL: You see, those UN creeps had given Earl a whole bunch of pictures and graphs and stuff he was supposed to teach us with, and I guess they'd bust a gut if they ever saw what he done with them. Here he is pretending to explain the sex life of a Martian; can you beat it? Only they don't have no sex life on account of they haven't had any babies in thousands of years. He sure had us all laughing. CLICK.
PHIL: Right at the space port they got these weird Martians trying to sell you pots and statues and stuff. Nothing but a lot of junk, if you ask me. Anyhow I was taking a picture of one of them when Billy did this here. It's a good thing those Martians can't talk or this one here would have really given the kid a couple of bad words I bet you.
MADGE: It's not that they can't talk, it's that they've taken an oath of silence. Don't you remember the joke Earl made on that, honey?
PHIL: Well, anyhow, the way that stuff broke up, he had a nerve trying to sell it. CLICK.
SOURCE and COMPLETE STORY:
http://www.bizbag.com/Click/click.htm
What George Bush should've painted, but didn't:
Idiocy In Art and Politics
by Abby Zimet
Common Dreams, 04.04.14 - 11:30 PM
Jesus. George Bush is painting now. Today marks the opening of an exhibit of two dozen clumsy portraits of world leaders - "Bush's little paintings" - at his presidential library in Dallas in a show dubbed "The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy." W is all excited, he told his daughter in an interview on NBC's "Today Show:" "I think they're going to be (like), 'Wow, George Bush is a painter." It's unclear which is more sickening: To read this drivel, or see the unironic, fawning coverage from the likes of CNN, which reports the paintings "reveal his softer side." Just kill us now. Thankfully, others are more astute about the "botched certainty" of these and earlier "treacly vacant scenes" and "empty-headed daubs" that reveal only a frightening "failure to grasp reality," with one critic likening it all to "being nice about the family idiot's latest art project: Aw, isn't that sweet, poor George has done paintings of world leaders. He's putting them in his little museum." He goes on, "Idiocy in art has its charms. In the man who ran the free world into bloodstained buffers, those charms quickly sour...This is the art of Forrest Gump." Best is a grimly hilarious series of faux torture portraits presented last year in Vanity Fair by Bruce Handy, and a suitably savage account in The Guardian of the paintings' "counterfeit studio banality" and the way they reflect Bush's "nightmare presidency," beginning with, "Many good artists do bad things.... So just because a painter has - for example - the blood of up to 136,012 dead Iraqis on his hands does not, in itself, prove that he lacks talent."
Thus: "Their vacancy, their stubborn refusal to offer anything beyond this: both the painting and the policy reflect a man untroubled by outside judgment, certain beyond any doubt of his rectitude and self-worth....We know how that turned out. One imagines that the excitement over Bush’s paintings forms part of a desperate national hunger for expiation from the unforgivable crime of his presidency, as if translating Bush into a sweet retiree at his easel will erase the illegal war, the obscene economic policy, the environmental spoliation, the executive power grab, the drowning of New Orleans. It is not to be. Bush’s little paintings will be forgotten, churned like a million other images through an unceasing news cycle and replaced tomorrow by a pop star’s accidental nudity or the 17 cutest animal pictures of all time. The Bush presidency, by contrast, endures all around us – and as we feel our way through the collapsing plutocracy he has bequeathed to us, we will need more than these wan portraits to ease the pain."
Truth:
I'm trying to track down the original, a marvel to behold.
In what world does anyone give the go ahead for a project like this, displaying this collection of horrendous artwork as if it is worthy of anyone's attention, beyond that of a team of psychologists and psychiatrists????
This world, sadly.
"I was a big believer then, and still am, that personal diplomacy can be very useful and productive." -- George W Bush
Smiling salesmen learned on the knee, or whatever the bent is called, of a master.
Why am I not surprised.
Here for anyone else who is humor challenged.
Triumph also had several memorable segments filmed during the 2004 Presidential Campaign. During that year's Democratic National Convention in Boston, which Triumph was eventually thrown out of, he and Michael Moore attempted to crash Bill O'Reilly's set. O'Reilly, getting makeup at the time, shouted, "If I have to come out there, Insult Dog, you're gonna be talking a lot higher than you are now." Later in the campaign, after the third presidential debate, Triumph went on a memorable tour of 'Spin Alley', the traditional post-debate press briefing in which high-profile members of both parties "in the tradition of Joseph Goebbels, Baghdad Bob, and Carson Daly, ladle out poop stew", according to Triumph. During this segment Triumph insulted many famous political strategists, including Karl Rove ("You're Bush's brains, Karl. I was expecting a much smaller man"
, Paul Begala ("This guy's head was so far up Clinton's butt, they called him The Colonoscope" , and Joe Lockhart ("Can you spin a woman into thinking you don't look gross in the shower?" In an exchange with conservative commentator Ralph Reed, Triumph tried to ask a question about gay marriage, only to be rebuffed as Reed said, "I don't take questions from dogs." Triumph responded: "Oh, you'll take it, bitch!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph,_the_Insult_Comic_Dog#2004_Presidential_Campaign
Off topic, but who are you picking this weekend for the NCAA tournament, my friend?
Remember, all work and no play makes for a dull, dull boy!
I didn't realize you actually like them.
My bad.
Please carry on with your "research" into the connection between crop circles and the BFEE.
It could prove informative.
"Let's paint some happy little WMD's."
Not only does Bush seem down, he seems to be missing more and more boats in life.
While I didn't agree with his politics or style as an artist, I respected Mr. Ross.
Thanks for the kind reminder, edbermac.
George W Bush's portraits of world leaders: art that tells us nothing at all
Presidential library in Dallas exhibits two dozen paintings that are vacant, stubborn and servile – precisely what Bush intended
Jason Farago in New York
The Guardian, Friday 4 April 2014
Many good artists do bad things. Cellini and Caravaggio were both murderers; Schiele and Balthus had a thing for young girls; and more than one contemporary artist I could name has been tied up with tax evasion troubles. So just because a painter has – for example – the blood of up to 136,012 dead Iraqis on his hands does not, in itself, prove that he lacks talent.
George W Bush, whose nightmare presidency unleashed its latest aftershock this week when his dauphin John Roberts gutted our already minimal campaign finance laws, has been painting these past few years, and at his presidential library in Dallas he is exhibiting two dozen portraits of fellow world leaders. The show opens Saturday, and it has a title: The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy.
“Diplomatic” is actually not a bad word to describe the orientation of these paintings. They are not bad so much as cautious, vacant, even servile – paintings by an artist anxious, or perhaps incapable, of doing anything that might leave a mark.
A responsible art critic, I should say at the start, does not review a show without seeing it, still less solely from stills taken from a hagiographic embarrassment of a Today show interview conducted by the artist’s daughter. (That is some serious media control: interviewed by your own child in your own library on a topic of your own choosing.) But with Bush, who famously made some of the worst decisions of any president since Reconstruction based on his “gut feeling”, an exception is in order. It’s hard to imagine that his portraits, with their notably flat composition and thin brushwork, gain much from being seen in situ.
CONTINUED...
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/04/george-bush-portraits-world-leaders
PS: Thank you, Whisp. Your review of the show and analysis of the interview and its subject are spot-on. I've always felt sorry for the women in the Bush family. Their expressions often are very revealing.
Just because you hurt your eyes DOES NOT mean you can hurt everyone else's!!!!
( )
That this guy is rehabilitating his murderous self as a folksy painter and not facing the international tribunal in the hague says volumes about the mistakes of looking forward.
John Wayne Gacy was convicted of killing 33 boys and young men. George Walker Bush ordered 4,486 American men and women to unnecessary death in an illegal, immoral, unneeded and disastrous invasion on Iraq. No one knows how many innocent Iraqis died, but a good estimate is more than 130,000 people -- innocent victims of murder, killed merely for being residents of a country that had never committed a crime or act of aggression against the United States. And the people of Iraq certainly were no threat to the United States.
I know you know all that stuff, Jesus Malverde. My hands wouldn't stop typing.
Demands Justice.
As you know, rug, what the panicked Ms. Gimenez did pales in comparison to treason, mass murder, and war profiteering that goes unpunished.
It's also important to note that, on any level of taste, she has a better eye than Bush.
"I was a big believer then, and still am, that personal diplomacy can be very useful and productive."
Robbie Conal is the Real Deal: an artist, a sage, a warrior, a truth teller, a good guy.
Also illuminating, "Women with Teeth."
This is the Art of Forest Gump
The comedy of a naive self-portrait apparently helped humanise the man most responsible for the 2003 invasion of Iraq
Jonathan Jones
theguardian.com, Friday 4 April 2014 14.05 EDT
George W Bush has found that magic recipe for public redemption that eludes Tony Blair. Don't waste time on globetrotting missions and elder-statesman opinions that do nothing to appease people who see you as a liar and warmonger and think you should be arrested. Take up painting instead.
That gentle, civilised art can wipe away a surprising quantity of blood.
SNIP...
It's like being nice about the family idiot's latest art project. Aw, isn't that sweet, poor George has done paintings of world leaders. He's putting them in his little museum. The soppiness is unmitigated: early online reactions blathered moist-eyed about him capturing Vladimir Putin's "soul".
His portrait of Putin actually looks like something you would find in one of America's trash-rich Salvation Army stores and buy to laugh at. It's got a classic amateur clumsiness and oddity to it. Bush has attempted to render shadow and shape in stylish blocks of fawn and woodchip and cookies 'n cream, but they don't sit right and the whole head looks mildly crazed. Perhaps this mad look is what is meant by revealing Putin's "soul", but it seems inept rather than insightful.
CONTINUED...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/04/george-bush-paintings
PS: I've seen your art via DU, SoCalDem. I'd bet at age 8 you also exhibited the talents of an artist.
much earlier in life. Would've saved the country a lot of $$$.
Poppa Bush, the war criminal's credo, after he posed his post WWII years as a leader of democracy, dovetailed so nicely into the Mission and Vision of his Carlyle Group ...
The only difference is, how one defines productive use of socialized subsidies of the war machine to specialize in private equity.
What an American icon, eh? 
Generation upon generation, knowing only service to power and property.
Kevin Phillips called them a ''multigenerational family of fibbers.''
The Barreling Bushes
Four generations of the dynasty have chased profits through cozy ties with Mideast leaders, spinning webs of conflicts of interest
by Kevin Phillips
Published on Sunday, January 11, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
EXCERPT...
During these years, Bush's four sons - George W., Jeb, Neil and Marvin - were following in the family footsteps, lining up business deals with Saudi, Kuwaiti and Bahraini moneymen and cozying up to BCCI. The Middle East was becoming a convenient family money spigot.
Eldest son George W. Bush made his first Middle East connection in the late 1970s with James Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama bin Laden relatives) - billionaire Salem bin Laden and banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put $50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership, probably using Bin Laden-Bin Mahfouz funds.
In the late 1980s, after several failed oil ventures, the future 43rd president let the ailing oil business in which he was a major stockholder and chairman be bought out by another foreign-influenced operation, Harken Energy. The Wall Street Journal commented in 1991, "The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were. But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken - all since George W. Bush came on board - likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."
Other hints of cronyism came in 1990 when inexperienced Harken got a major contract to drill in the Persian Gulf for the government of Bahrain. Time magazine reporters Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, in their book "The Outlaw Bank," concluded "that Mahfouz, or other BCCI players, must have had a hand in steering the oil-drilling contract to the president's son." The web entangling the Bush presidencies was already being spun.
CONTINUED...
http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kevin_phillips.htm
The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.
And they are the ones* screwing America now.
What's different today, is we don't have Smedley Butler or FDR to stop them.
Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush, share a moment and some information, back in the day.
* Of course, it's not just a few rich families's offspring who screw the majority today. They've hired help and built up the giant noise machine to continue their work overthrowing the progress FDR and the New Deal brought America for 80 years.
Why would the nation and world's richest people do that? Progress costs money. And they don't want to pay for it, even when they've gained more wealth than all of history put together. Instead, whey continue to work -- legally, through government and lobbyists -- to amass even more, transferring the wealth of the many to themselves.
And instead of an armed mob led by a war hero on a white horse, as planned in 1933, their weapon since Pruneface made his first payment to the Ayatollah has been "Supply Side Economics." To most Americans, that means Trickle-Down.
Rothschild and Freshfields founders’ had links to slavery, papers reveal
By Carola Hoyos
Financial Times
Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.
Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.
Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.
JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.
CONTINUED (with registration, etc) ...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html
And Americans wonder why Wall Street gets ahead.
Ahem.
