!!@@!! Giuliani Art Decency Commission Exposed
ARTISTpres
by Robert Lederman
"Robert Lederman, a Manhattan man who began sketching political art of the
mayor with a Hitler mustache after the city's arrests of sidewalk art vendors,
called the art panel "ludicrous." "If it wasn't so ludicrous, it would be just
comical-but unfortunately we've known from watching Giuliani for nearly eight
years that he's not kidding," Lederman said."
-NY Newsday 3/30/2001 City's Gatekeepers of Decency?
Rudy supporters may police tax-funded museums
From his first days in office in 1994 New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has
been preoccupied with restricting artists’ freedom of expression. Before
ordering his crackdowns on squeegee guys, hookers, marijuana smokers, community
gardens, art museums or the homeless, his 40,000 strong army of police was
ordered to arrest the City’s street artists.
Before the First Amendment battles in which Giuliani tried to close down the
peepshows and topless bars of Times Square to make way for Disney; before he
banned press conferences by political opponents on the steps of City Hall;
before he tried to enforce obscure prohibition era laws that made dancing in
bars illegal, Giuliani was in Federal court trying to eliminate all First
Amendment protection for visual art.
Legal briefs Giuliani’s lawyers filed in 1994 in response to the A.R.T.I.S.T.
group’s lawsuit claimed that visual art was unworthy of First Amendment
protection because it didn’t express ideas and was therefore not
communicative. His lawyers and spokespersons maintained this bizarre position
all the way to their failed appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"An exhibition of paintings is not as communicative as speech, literature or
live entertainment, and the artists' constitutional interest is thus minimal."
-Giuliani appeal brief against street artists having First Amendment
protection, Giuliani v Lederman et al and Giuliani v Bery et al. See
http://laws.findlaw.com/2nd/9590890.html
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
"Elizabeth Freedman, an attorney speaking on behalf of the N.Y.C. Corporation
Counsel's office [Mayor Giuliani’s lawyers], explained the City's anti-art
position. "Visual art...does not express ideas", Ms. Friedman said, "and as
such is not entitled to First Amendment protection." 2/24/97 radio interview
WNYC's syndicated business news show, "Marketplace"
Today Giuliani admits that it is in fact ideas, objectionable ideas, which
motivate his attack on artistic freedom. The reality is that censorship of
ideas was always the purpose behind Giuliani persecuting artists.
Having me falsely arrested 41 times for painting him as a Hitler-like dictator
was about the ideas in my art. Similarly, Giuliani’s attacks on the Brooklyn
Museum are about censoring the ideas expressed in Chris Olfilli’s and Renee
Cox’s art.
The arrests he ordered of public-space photographer Spencer Tunick, of more
than 700 different street artists and of fellow artists and Giuliani-critics
Knut Masco, Jack Nesbitt, Wei Zhang, Christopher Brodeur and Stephen Powers
show that the Mayor’s efforts to censor art he dislikes has nothing to do
with the use of taxes and everything to do with repression of artistic
expression conveying a controversial political message.
Repression and forced conformity have been the underlying themes of the entire
Giuliani administration. As outlined in his most famous quote, Giuliani
believes in exerting maximum control over people.
"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be
anything they can be. Freedom is about authority." Mayor Giuliani, New York
Times, March 17, 1994
Ironically, the conformity that Giuliani hopes to enforce through his Art
Decency Commission is the opposite of what is most respected and admired in
artists - their originality and refusal to conform to orthodoxy.
[-Merriam Webster dictionary definition of Decency
Fitness, orderliness, conformity to standards of taste, propriety, or quality.]
On Tuesday April 3, 2001 at a 10:45 AM press conference in NY City Hall
Giuliani will formally announce the creation of his Art Decency Commission.
Made up solely of his own appointees all of whom are his personal friends and
cronies, the panel will be charged with determining which works of fine art can
be exhibited in the City’s world famous art museums.
While the Mayor claims his panel will only have authority over museums that
receive City funding the reality is that even the City’s wealthiest museums
use some tax dollars to meet their budget. The Brooklyn Museum, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney as well as
numerous small museums, theatre companies, City-owned public access cable
television networks, hundreds of neighborhood community cultural programs and
all NYC parks would therefore be subject to the decisions of the Art Decency
Commission.
Amusing as it may be to make jokes about the psychological quirks of the Mayor
being the source of his views on art, there is ample evidence to prove that
completely independent of his personal motivations lies a high-level and
historically-documentable agenda of censorship for the purpose of preventing
political speech by artists. Giuliani is intimately linked to this agenda.
Consider these facts* all of which are fully documented at my website
1. Giuliani proudly admits to getting the ideas for his policies from the
Manhattan Institute (MI), a right-wing think tank created in 1978 by William
Casey. To give a sense of the influence this organization has in America today,
GW Bush claims that next to the Bible the Manhattan Institute is the single
greatest influence on his own political ideas. MI is funded by the
Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan/Chase Bank), pharmaceutical
companies and ultra-conservative right wing foundations with direct ties to
eugenics and Nazism.
2. Casey was a lifelong intelligence operative involved in many of this
nation‘s most notorious covert operations from WWII until his death in 1987.
Following the war Casey headed US intelligence in Europe working closely with
Reinhard Gehlen, a CIA operative who was formerly Hitler’s chief of Soviet
intelligence. Casey then headed the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a CIA
front located in NYC. Under Casey’s leadership the IRC brought thousands of
former Nazis to the U.S. for the purposes of propaganda and social control and
for their expertise in military and eugenics-based medical research. After
manipulating the financial markets as head of the Securities and Exchange
Commission in the 1960’s Casey created the Manhattan Institute, the think
tank behind the Giuliani and GW Bush administrations. Casey played a leading
role in getting Nixon elected, was Reagan’s campaign manager and was
Reagan’s CIA director for both of his terms in office. Giuliani was the #3
official in the Reagan Justice Department.
To give some idea of how Casey and friends approached the issue of free speech,
consider this one example. After becoming angry at ABCTV’s coverage of the
Reagan administration’s foreign policy objectives, CIA director Casey tried
to get the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to terminate ABC’s
operating license. When the FCC refused, Casey’s Capital Cities, a consortium
of former CIA operatives who became wealthy by using their connections and
intelligence expertise to manipulate the stock market, bought ABCTV
specifically in order to censor their news department. Ask any NYC reporter
about Giuliani’s behind the scenes efforts to censor the news, get reporters
fired etc. He learned from a master of censorship.
ABC was later sold to Disney. Giuliani, or Disneyani as he is sometimes known,
admits that Disney has been the number one corporate force behind the cultural
sterilization of midtown Manhattan during the past eight years. We’ve had the
Disnification of Times Square, now under Giuliani we will have the
Disnification of the City’s art museums and culture.
3. In Germany during the 1930’s Adolf Hitler began dictating what kind of art
was to be allowed in a campaign strikingly similar to Mayor Giuliani’s. Using
the exact same justification as Giuliani is using in NYC and in some cases the
exact same words and arguments, Hitler declared that the avant garde art of
Germany was anti-Catholic and that tax dollars should not be used to pay for
displaying such art. He defunded museums, arrested artists and confiscated tens
of thousands of paintings and sculptures, many of which are now considered some
of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century. Hitler’s real beef
with German art was that it was critical of him and the Nazi regime. For the
quotes, see Giuliani on Art, Hitler on Art at http://baltech.org/lederman/
4. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was financed by some of William Casey’s
closest friends and associates. This clique of oil, chemical, manufacturing and
Wall Street banking executives included GW Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush,
John D. Rockefeller III, brothers John Foster and Allen Dulles and Averill
Harriman.
Following the war this clique adopted the propaganda and social manipulation
techniques that the Nazis had developed in order to control American public
opinion and silence their critics. Today these techniques have been combined
with further research by Madison Ave. ad companies and behavioral scientists to
fashion almost foolproof techniques of opinion manipulation, mind control and
disinformation. Artistic freedom is a direct threat to this kind of social
control.
Using an unlimited budget supplied by the newly formed CIA (of which Allen
Dulles became the first director) they created numerous front organizations
which promoted pro-American and pro-corporate culture. The Ford and Rockefeller
foundations and the media were full-partners in these efforts, with CIA
operatives and colleagues of this elite clique heading many of the major
newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, television networks and boards of
charitable foundations.
Until the counter-culture erupted on the scene in the 1960’s and temporarily
shook the nation loose from their control, virtually every aspect of mainstream
American literature, theatre, publishing, orchestral music, film and fine art
was directly influenced if not completely controlled by this clique. While
these men claimed that defeating Communism was their purpose the reality is
that these same Wall Street banking interests and industrialists had financed
both the Russian Revolution and the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy.
Social control rather than any particular ideology left or right is all they
are loyal to. Like Rudolph Giuliani they can move freely from conservatism to
liberalism and back, as the situation requires.
Today we are ruled by a new generation of their successors, many of whom - like
GW Bush - have inherited the political positions, wealth and ideas of their
fathers. It’s not a coincidence that many of GW Bush’s top advisors are
associated with the Manhattan Institute or that they were the inventors of
compassionate conservatism, an ideology with more than a passing similarity to
Hitler‘s eugenics policies.
5. A recently published book which I highly recommend, "The Cultural Cold
War-the CIA and the world of arts and letters" by Frances Stoner Saunders
published by the New Press, provides a detailed examination of how the CIA
sponsored cultural propaganda then and continues to do so today. Particularly
relevant to the issue at hand was the sudden prominence in the 1950’s art
world of Abstract Expressionism.
While struggling abstract painters like Jackson Pollack (whose work I admire)
legitimately developed their unique styles it is a historical fact that the
abrupt universal acceptance of their art and it’s ubiquitous display in
government buildings, corporate headquarters and museums was engineered by the
CIA working directly with the Rockefeller family’s Museum of Modern Art. The
goal was to undermine the cultural popularity of art with a recognizable human
subject which, as my paintings of Giuliani and the controversial Brooklyn
Museum shows demonstrate, is perfectly suited to criticizing those in authority
be they political or religious leaders.
Wander through the immense museums run by the Rockefellers, the Whitneys, the
DuPonts, the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government. You will and see room
after room of huge paintings that in many cases are nothing more than a splash
of paint or a single color without any subject. Are we looking at the refined
taste of the corporate elite or a conspiracy to eliminate figurative expression
with a political message?
Giuliani’s censorship efforts are ultimately not about his own parochial
tastes in art but are aimed at advancing the objectives of those he works for.
The idea is to chill speech generally and specifically to intimidate
influential museums that might be tempted to show art that criticizes those in
power. Such shows could inspire a new generation of artists to use their
talents in the fight for social justice.
If you think it is far-fetched to believe that politicians fear art, consider
this. Mayor Giuliani has spent millions of tax dollars having me falsely
arrested, processing my criminal cases, confiscating my paintings and defending
his constitutionally unsound position in Federal court. The NY Post, his most
obsequious defenders in the media, have published eight editorials denouncing
my Giuliani-as-Hitler paintings. Undercover police officers posing as members
of A.R.T.I.S.T. "collected" hundreds of my paintings from protestors during the
Diallo demonstrations while the Mayor made numerous public statements demanding
that people not carry them.
From: -Newsweek 4/5/99 Rudy on the Record
Question: "Are you personally stung by those signs at the demonstrations that
say 'Adolf Giuliani'?"
Mayor Giuliani: "Five years ago I might have cried over it. And now I just feel
that this is a crazy exaggeration that we've allowed, and that our media
coverage is selective... You cover Susan Sarandon. But [the police and the rest
of the city] see the Adolf Hitler signs, the comparisons to the president of
Yugoslavia. These [demonstrators] are getting arrested, some knowingly, some
unknowingly, under that banner."
In Hitler’s time many prominent Germans from the cultural sphere were anxious
to jump on the Nazi bandwagon by denouncing aspects of German art. In 1950’s
American artists, film makers and writers succumbed to government threats and
blackmail and testified before the McCarthy hearings by denouncing their most
outspoken and progressive fellow artists as "commies" and subversives.
NYC artists, actors, lawyers or religious leaders who would willingly serve on
the Mayor’s Decency Commission are far more despicable than those who
cooperated under extreme pressure with the McCarthy hearings. They are willing
traitors to the principles of free speech. First Amendment freedom is the basis
for artistic and religious freedom and for all that is most revered about
America.
On April 3 at 10 AM join me outside NY City Hall to protest the Decency
Commission. Bring your own art or some else’s and help stand up for freedom
of speech.
*Discussed in detail with supporting references in my articles at
http://baltech.org/lederman/
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics)
ARTIS...@aol.com (718) 743-3722
BOEDICIA
>From: artis...@aol.com (ARTISTpres)
>Date: Mon, Apr 2, 2001 08:43 EDT
>Message-id: <20010402084337...@ng-mk1.aol.com>
The views of the poster "artistpres' has,
of course, nothing to do with u.k. media,
or indeed any part of the U.K. However,
let's take a look at his usual ramblings
and intense hatred of the religious Catholic N.Y. Mayor.
>Giulianis Decency Commission Exposed
>by Robert Lederman
There is nothing about "decency" that needs to be exposed. It is the filth of
the Howard Sterns, Lenny Bruces and Andrew Dice Clays (Silverstein) that
should be exposed for what it is - garbage.
>"Robert Lederman, a Manhattan man who began sketching political art of the
>mayor with a Hitler mustache after the city's arrests of sidewalk art vendors,
>called the art panel "ludicrous." "If it wasn't so ludicrous, it would be
>just comical-but unfortunately we've
>known from watching Giuliani for nearly eight years that he's not kidding,"
Lederman said."
Good. Maybe the Iraqi born jew Saatchi
will have to take his anti-Christian filth
elsewhere.
>Before ordering his crackdowns on squeegee guys, hookers, marijuana smokers,
community
>gardens, art museums or the homeless, his 40,000 strong army of police was
>ordered to arrest the Citys street artists.
Somebody had to do it or are you in favour
of allowing the dross of N.Y. to pollute
the streets?
>Before the First Amendment battles in which Giuliani tried to close down the
>peepshows and topless bars of Times Square to make way for Disney;
Why is it, you loony left lot always hide behind the 1st. Amendment? Only the
most degenerate would find socially redeeming values in peep shows and
topless bars. Try a little Wagner.
>Today Giuliani admits that it is in fact ideas, objectionable ideas, which
>motivate his attack on artistic freedom. The reality is that censorship of
>ideas was always the purpose behind Giuliani persecuting artists.
Careful, he may ask you "Are you now
or have you ever been a member of
The Guggenheim gang"?
>Having me falsely arrested 41 times for painting him as a Hitler-like
>dictator was about the ideas in my art.
Just what *are* your ideas of art? Frankly,
jewish artists are rather thin on the ground, if you discount pornography.
>Similarly, Giulianis attacks on the Brooklyn Museum are about censoring the
ideas expressed in Chris Olfillis and Renee Coxs art.
If the sight of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung is your idea of "art"
then you have a problem. On the other hand,
being what you are, you probably saw
Saatchi's exhibition 100 times and cheered loudest of all.
>The arrests he ordered of public-space photographer Spencer Tunick, of more
>than 700 different street artists and of fellow artists and Giuliani-critics
>Knut Masco, Jack Nesbitt, Wei Zhang, Christopher Brodeur and Stephen Powers
>show that the Mayors efforts to censor art he dislikes has nothing to
>do with the use of taxes and everything to do with repression of artistic
>expression conveying a controversial political message.
For the record, just what controversial
political message were you trying to display?
>[-Merriam Webster dictionary definition of Decency Fitness, orderliness,
conformity to standards of taste, propriety, or
>quality.]
I agree.
>1. Giuliani proudly admits to getting the ideas for his policies from the
>Manhattan Institute (MI), a right-wing think tank created in 1978 by William
>Casey. To give a sense of the influence this organization has in America
>today, GW Bush claims that next to the Bible the Manhattan Institute is the
>single greatest influence on his own political ideas.
Hardly surprising. He is a devout Christian
just like those who founded the U.S.A.
It is only those like yourself who would undermine everything that the
forefathers
meant when they said " One Nation under God".
>Hitler declared that the avant garde art of
>Germany was anti-Catholic and that tax dollars should not be used to pay for
>displaying such art. He defunded museums, arrested artists and confiscated
>tens sculptures, many of which are now considered some
>of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century.
I saw the "Degenerate Art" exhibition when it came to Los Angeles. Most of it
was rubbish. Just what "masterpieces" are you referring to?
>4. Adolf Hitlers rise to power was financed by some of William Caseys
>closest friends and associates. This clique of oil, chemical, manufacturing
>and Wall Street banking executives included GW Bushs grandfather Prescott
Bush, John D. Rockefeller III, brothers John Foster and Allen Dulles and
Averill
>Harriman.
And Saul Bronstein's (Trotsky) Red Army was financed by world jewry. $20
million
alone was given by Jacob Schiff, owner of the N.Y. Times in 1917.
>While these men claimed that defeating Communism was their purpose the reality
is that these same Wall Street banking interests and industrialists had
financed
>both the Russian Revolution and the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy.
Thje Russian Revolution was entirely jewish and jew financed.
>While struggling abstract painters like Jackson Pollack (whose work I admire)
Figures. What kind of talent does it take to throw a can of paint at a
canvas?
His so-called "art" looks like something my children used to bring home from
kindergarten.
>The goal was to undermine the cultural popularity of art with a recognizable
>human subject which, as my paintings of Giuliani and the controversial
Brooklyn
>Museum shows demonstrate, is perfectly suited to criticizing those in
>authority
>be they political or religious leaders.
I wonder what your reaction would have been if the Brooklyn Museum had
hosted an exhibition depicting a Rabbi sodomising his black slave in
ante-bellum
Alabama.
>Wander through the immense museums run by the Rockefellers, the Whitneys, the
>DuPonts, the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government. You will and see room
>after room of huge paintings that in many cases are nothing more than a
>splash of paint or a single color without any subject.
You mean like Pollack?
>In Hitlers time many prominent Germans from the cultural sphere were anxious
>to jump on the Nazi bandwagon by denouncing aspects of German art. In 1950s
>American artists, film makers and writers succumbed to government threats and
>blackmail and testified before the
>McCarthy hearings by denouncing their most outspoken and progressive fellow
artists as "commies" and subversives.
Which of course, they were. They also had someting else in common. Most were,
like you, jewish and revolutionaries.
As I said, your post has nothing to do with
u.k. media, so why you post in this NG
is a mystery. You are just one more
loony leftie whose on-going battle with The Mayor is more concerned with his
Christian beliefs and his desire to keep
filth of the public streets than with your freedom of whatever.
If your work is any good, which I seriously doubt, then there any number of
museums who would be pleased to exhibit it. However, as I said most of the
worlds
great artists come from Europe and are all
devoutly Christian. Othe than Chagall
who limited his work to the Shetel I can't think of even one jewish artist.