HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-07-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2012. PAGE 5.
There has been a marked uptick in the
number of celebrity nudes in the news.
And not in a good way, either.
South African president Jacob Zuma, who, I
venture to guess, is hardly anyone’s idea of a
fun one-night stand, was recently depicted as a
full-frontal nude, dangly bits and all, in a
painting that appeared in a Johannesburg art
gallery.
President Zuma did not pose for the portrait,
nor was he amused at its public unveiling. In
fact, his party, the African National Congress,
condemned the work as ‘indecent’. Lawsuits
have been launched against the artist, a
Johannesburg newspaper that showed a photo
of the painting and the gallery that displayed
it.
A similar story is evolving closer to home,
where Kingston, Ontario artist, Margaret
Sutherland has given us a large oil-on-canvas
portrait of a pudgy chap reclining on a chaise
lounge with a dog at his feet.
Next to the subject, a woman is proffering
a silver platter holding what looks like a
Tim Hortons double-double to go. The
server is wearing a woman’s business suit.
The fellow on the couch? He’s wearing a
smile.
Just…a smile. And here’s the riveting part
(you might want to bundle the kids off to the
rec room before I go on…).
The chubby with the stubby on the sofa is
Stephen Harper.
Want a peek? Of course you don’t – who
would? It’s too late anyway. The painting,
which was briefly on display in a gallery in
Toronto, has already been snapped up for
$5,000.
No word on who the buyer was but I’m
guessing it wasn’t Cosmopolitan magazine in
search of next month’s centrefold.
I don’t know South Africa’s president Zuma
well enough to reliably gauge his
physiological hotness, but I’ve seen plenty
of the Canadian PM. And I have to wonder:
what on earth would possess an artist –
any artist – to bend his or her artistic
talents toward a depiction of a naked Stephen
Harper?
Perhaps it’s the sheer unlikelihood of it all.
Stephen Harper starkers is like Mona Lisa
with a nose ring, or Sidney Crosby on a pogo
stick.
Speaking of artistic unlikelihood’s, you
know that famous painting The Scream? The
one that shows a cartoon figure shrieking on a
bridge against a blood-red sunset?
It was painted by Edvard Munsch, a
Norwegian artist, 117 years ago and it just
sold at a private auction for – maybe you’d
like to join the kids in the rec room before I go
on. Take along a damp washcloth for your
forehead…$120 million.
Is The Scream – is any painting – worth
$120 million? I guess it is if you can find
somebody willing to pay that kind of dough,
and somebody did.
Art critic Felix Salmon would disagree. He
says that what the unknown buyer paid for
wasn’t art, but “a century’s worth of marketing
and hype.”
Perhaps so, but it gives a new resonance to
the term ‘obscene art’.
Now if it were possible for some art gallery
to corral all three paintings and turn them into
a triptych that shows the subject in The
Scream reacting to the paintings of President
Zuma and Prime Minister Harper….
It still wouldn’t be worth $120 million
but it would be a tribute to truth in
advertising.
Arthur
Black
Other Views ‘Obscene art’ hits Canada
Canada Day is one of my favourite days
of the year. It means a lot to me. I love
this country very much, so that’s why it
bothered me so much when Francisco Cordero
ruined its special day.
We’ve all had our birthdays ruined once or
twice over the years. Last year my birthday
was a fair distance south of great, for reasons I
won’t get into, but this year I had a great
birthday. It was more important that this year’s
was good anyway, as I was celebrating the
second anniversary of my 29th birthday. That
needed to be a good day, in order to keep my
mind off of my aging.
Anyway, enough about me (for now). July 1
was Canada’s 145th birthday and I went to see
the Toronto Blue Jays do battle with the L.A.
Angels. The crowd was deflated pretty early
due to a grouping of early runs by the Angels
and shut-down pitching which made it look
like the Blue Jays would never find their way
back into the game.
Soon enough though, the Jays were hitting
again. There was an exciting collision at the
plate involving Canadian phenom Brett
Lawrie, then a home run by catcher J.P.
Arencibia and then... it happened: the Blue
Jays went to the bullpen to retrieve pitcher
Francisco Cordero.
The crowd was buzzing, everyone was re-
energized and Cordero faced four batters. He
gave up a solo home run, a single, a two-run
home run and a double before manager John
Farrell appeared out of the dugout to put
Cordero out of his misery.
Cordero has been doing this all season. No
lead is safe in his incompetent hands, so it was
no surprise that fans who have followed the
team all season booed Cordero on his long
walk from the mound to the dugout.
Leading the charge, of course, was me.
So sure Cordero ruined my Canada Day, and
the Canada Day of tens of thousands of other
people as well, but that was almost a whole two
weeks ago. What am I still doing talking about
this you may ask? I was reminded of my
gloriously-belligerent booing display that day
with an e-mail this week from the Blue Jays.
I received an e-mail from the Blue Jays
thanking me for my patronage and it featured a
link to something called a Tagoramic. I clicked
on the link and it’s a brilliant panoramic
picture of the entire stadium during a pitch
from the Jays’ Scott Richmond to Angel Albert
Pujols. The picture is of such high quality that
you can zoom all the way in to see the facial
expression on every single fan in the Rogers
Centre.
So I spent a few minutes searching for my
seats and then, there I was. I’m wearing my
Canada Day Blue Jays jersey and I have my
hand cupped around my mouth and I’m yelling
at the top of my lungs. What a lovely memory
to take home from the game.
It’s a perfect time capsule of what happened
that day and a great reminder of why I was so
hoarse that I could barely talk the next day.
Yes, Francisco Cordero ruined Canada Day,
and many other days this season (Jess begs me
to change the channel when he comes in to
pitch, knowing that my attitude will deteriorate
for the rest of the night if I watch him lose yet
another game for the Blue Jays this season) as
his earned run average of 6.00 might indicate,
but next year Canada will have another
birthday and hopefully he won’t be on the team
to ruin it in 2013.
The funniest part of the photo though, is Jess
sitting beside me... yawning. It’s clear she was
not impressed by my heckling and she had
seen that movie before.
Picture perfect
Just a little while back, before Blockbuster
in Goderich closed, Ashleigh and I had
heard that they were buying all sorts of
used movies up.
Ashleigh and I, upon hearing about the
opportunity, glanced over at our media
cabinets.
Between the two of us we had nearly four
cabinets full of different electronic media.
There were shelves upon shelves of CDs,
digital versatile discs DVDs, video games and,
yes, even cassettes. As a matter of fact, we had
three four foot tall media shelves, completely
full.
So when we glanced over, we didn’t see the
numerous DVDs we had acquired, her through
painstakingly choosing films she thought were
good or pretty much anything equestrian and
me choosing any film that made me laugh that
I could find in a bargain bin, we saw shelves
and shelves of dollar signs.
We quickly started bagging up our collection
of seldom-to-never watched DVDs and even
found a few that were still in their original
plastic (sorry Live Free or Die Hard, you just
weren’t as good as your predecessors in
providing thrilling, edge-of-your-seat
adventure and epic one-liners like “Yippie-
Kay-Ya...” well, you get the idea).
We got to Blockbuster, despite the fact that
our retinas had been permanently replaced
with dollar signs and that our minds were
focused on what fun new things we could find
to fill our now drastically more-empty media
shelves.
We started handing over our two reusable
shopping bags full of DVDs to have them
checked when the unthinkable happened.
A movie that had been missing from our
collection turned up in the wrong case.
Now, of course, I was upset that we couldn’t
trade in the movie that wasn’t in the case, but
I was more upset because a friend of mine was
working behind the counter and, having been
caught off-guard, I didn’t even attempt to hide
my happiness at finding my copy of Rent.
I guess the cat was out of the bag at that
point: I’m not averse to musicals and
broadway productions.
I blame my mother for taking me to see The
Phantom of the Opera in my youth.
The entire situation kind of faded to black
after I took the improperly-cased DVD and
quietly made my way out of the store.
Recently, however, I got to thinking about it
after Ashleigh received the news of her new
job in Mississauga and started talking about
living life in the Greater Toronto Area.
With a smile I popped in the DVD and
warned her that, if things didn’t work out, she
might end up living the bohemian life depicted
throughout the Tony-award-winning play
turned movie.
I suppose that, given that so much of my job
centres around the arts given our proximity to
the Blyth Centre for (said) Arts, my enjoyment
of Rent, The Phantom of the Opera and several
other productions (of which Hairspray, either
the John Travolta debacle or the original
broadway play, is not a part of) isn’t something
I have to hide. Unfortunately, the lessons of
youth, be they intended or not, do follow us.
I suppose that’s why I’m writing this; in
some way this is my attempt to dissuade
people from treating great artistic endeavours,
like musical theatre, with the stigmas that
seem to haunt them. In another way, I’m
hoping that, if someone sees that kind of
activity they will stop it.
So many decisions can be made for a person
due to the actions of those around them.
Imagine if, for example, someone had told
Justin Bieber that becoming a pop star wasn’t
cool and convinced him to not try and spread
his talent on the internet.
Sure, a lot of people might appreciate music
akin to his not coming on their radios, but the
simple fact is he’s obviously got some talent
and someone recognized that.
If Adam Pascal, or Roger as he’s known in
Rent, had been dissuaded from his path, who
knows whether the play, the movie and the
music would be the same?
What if Kurt Cobain had been convinced to
shave, get a hair cut and become an
accountant? Sure, not have committed suicide
at the age of 27, but the world would have been
much poorer for it.
What if Elvis had never dabbled in music
and instead went into the army and stayed
there? What would the world have lost?
Kids are told, nowadays, that they may not
be able to do a lot of things and some of it may
be true.
I’m not going to say that every kid should be
treated like they’re the next Einstein because,
as George Carlin reminds us, everyone needs
to be made aware of their limitations.
I am going to say, however, that those
limitations have to be the limitations of that
individual and not the limitations of the people
telling them.
Just because one person isn’t living their
dream, it doesn’t mean they have a right to
take it away from someone else. Just because
one student can’t sing, they shouldn’t be
allowed to sour the experience for another
person.
As far back as I can remember, I knew what
I wanted to do for a living: I wanted to write.
I wanted to write about the triumphs of
society, the failures of nations, the victories of
the individuals and the fables of the world. I
was never told I couldn’t. I wonder if I would
have been met with the same reception had I
said I want to become the next great rock star
or said I wanted to become a broadway actor.
Would people have tried to dissuade me
from that path by saying only a few reach
those accolades or would I be told to practise
and focus on that goal?
I think the former would likely be true.
So remember, when someone says they want
to sing for a living, feel free to tell them it will
be a rough journey, feel free to tell them it
could end in heartache when they have to
choose between their music and everything
else, feel free to encourage them but never feel
you have the right to convince them it’s a bad
idea.
Everyone eventually begins to weigh their
dreams against reality and leaving their
ambitions behind should be their choice, not
someone else’s.
Just like me liking musicals; that’s my
choice, not someone else’s to make by telling
me they aren’t cool.
Also, remember La Vie Bohème.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
My secret shame; I like musicals