Botero's Abu Ghraib Torture Exhibit - NYC
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Subject: [NYTr] Botero's Abu Ghraib Torture Exhibit - NYC
Date: 17 Oct 2006 14:00:23 -0500
From: nytr
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Andy Pollack
[You may have read about these pieces in the Times. After decades of
doing wonderful but generally apolitical paintings and sculpture,
Botero turned his attention first to Colombia's woes and then to Abu
Ghraib. (Although one could argue that there was implicit politics in
his depiction of his subjects all along...) -Andy]
FERNANDO BOTERO
Selected works from the exhibition:
Abu Ghraib
October 18 - November 18, 2006
Reception: Tues. Oct 17, 6- 8 pm
See some images here:
http://www.marlboroughgallery.com/artists/botero/artwork.html
Marlborough
40 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Tel: 212-541-4900; Fax: 212-541-4948
***
New York Magazine
http://www.nymag.com
Weighty Matters
Botero's chubby Guernica hits New York.
By Alexandra Peers
Fernando Botero is a famous and successful artist, maybe in part
because he wasn't ever taken that seriously. "A convivial unthreatening
sculptor of cheerfully corpulent figures destined for major urban
intersections," says Andras Szants, co-author of a 2005 Rand Corp.
report on arts policy. The Time Warner Center has a pair of sculptures,
casino magnate Steve Wynn is a collector, and though MoMA owns four of
his pieces, neither is on display. But the 74-year-old Colombian makes
a bid for a different kind of weightiness with a show, opening this
week at the Marlborough Gallery, of paintings and drawings based on the
U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib. "Abu Ghraib was a shock to the whole world,
and I was angry," says Botero, who has dubbed the suite of works "my
Guernica," referring to the antiwar Picasso painting. The controversial
exhibition, a hit in Rome and Germany, has brought the artist his best
critical notices in years. So why is it opening at a blue-chip but
somewhat blue-haired 57th Street gallery, especially as the works
aren't even for sale? Botero says the "Abu Ghraib" series is at
Marlborough because museums won't show it. "There must be many
Republicans on the board of directors" of U.S. museums, he jokes.
(However, at least a couple of institutions that have booked the
artist's upcoming touring career retrospective, the New Orleans Museum
of Art and the San Antonio Museum of Art, say they've never been
offered the works.) The buzz has helped Botero pieces break records at
auction this year, two selling for over $2 million each. The price
climb was particularly striking because Botero had largely been left
out of the run-up in contemporary-art prices over the past decade.
Pierre Levai, president of Marlborough, says that the gallery is
showing them "without any political position." Nonetheless, he adds,
"New Yorkers will be interested." Probably so. "Money follows
headlines," says Bruce Wolmer, editorial director of Art + Auction.
"This isn't Picasso doing Guernica, this is Picasso doing the same
doves over and over again during the Cold War because it was commercial."
***
The New York Sun - Oct 17, 2006
http://www.nysun.com/article/41632
Abu Ghraib In Paint
BY CHANNING JOSEPH
Naked figures writhe in an eerie darkness. Vicious beasts bare their
teeth and snarl. The faces of lost souls cry out in unimaginable agony,
forced into strange and contorted positions reminiscent of crucifixion.
Such a vision evokes a scene of the apocalypse typical of 15th-century
Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. But no, these paintings by Colombian
artist Fernando Botero are depictions of real events. Despite their
hellish subject matter, they are all meticulously based on photographs
and press accounts of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.
It seems hard to credit, but Mr. Botero says the pictures, which many
will undoubtedly view as a scathing indictment of American foreign
policy, are not meant to convey a political message.
Although he admits that President Bush "is not my favorite president,"
Mr. Botero says art has no effect on political realities, adding that
his work is merely a relic to be looked upon by future generations as
evidence of events past.
"You just leave a testimony," he said. "It's something that comes from
the heart. It's something immortal that moves you to do your work."
Well-known for his playful and folksy style, Mr. Botero has gained
international renown for the unmistakably exaggerated roundness of his
figures and the sense of innocence and sensuality that his work conveys.
This new traveling exhibit, opening today at the Marlborough Gallery on
57th Street has made its way from Rome; K|nzelsau, a town in Germany,
and, most recently, Athens, Greece. In it, the artist's trademark style
almost cartoonish in its technique manages to make his
horror-inspiring images even more striking in their irony. What could
be playful about vicious dogs tearing flesh from helpless prisoners?
What could be innocent about American soldiers probing detainees with
broom handles?
"The truth is so powerful, so direct that you don't have to add
anything,"Mr. Botero says of his creations, though he is careful to
point out it was never his aim to make exact copies of the photographs.
"You try to be as honest as possible.You have to be very careful to
speak to what happened. I was sticking to what I read in the
newspapers.I tried not to add anything that was not in the text."
A self-proclaimed news junkie ("I read the Herald Tribune every day,
like a religion," he says), Mr. Botero says he decided to turn his
brush to the topic of Abu Ghraib when, like many people around the
globe, he was struck with disbelief at the shocking photographs and
news reports that first came to light in 2004 incredulous that
soldiers from America, which he calls a symbol of freedom, could be
implicated in such depraved acts.
Consequently, he set himself the task of learning all the terrifying
details of the events. "The more I read, the more shocked I was," he
said. "And then, I got this feeling that, as an artist, I can make
visible what is invisible. I didn't invent anything.I did what I read
was there."
Mr. Botero, who spends his winters in Paris, his summers in Italy, and
six weeks every year in New York, betrays a hint of pride at his
accomplishment. "In Europe, people told me they were more impressed
with my paintings than with the photographs," he said.
In a new book based on the exhibit, "Botero: Abu Ghraib," the associate
managing editor of Art in America magazine, David Ebony, ranks the Abu
Ghraib show among some of the bestknown visual art depicting images of war.
"Coming from an artist known for images of pleasure during a time of
war and terror," Mr. Ebony writes, "the gruesome and violent scenes he
depicts are exceptionally disturbing and moving. He joins a long line
of artists who have passionately responded to tumultuous events."
The iconic power punch of Mr. Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings is, Mr.
Ebony observes, reminiscent of Pablo Picasso's famous Cubist
re-imagining of the Spanish Civil War, "Guernica," and Francisco de
Goya's early 19thcentury etching series "The Disasters of War."
Although the inspiration is obvious, Mr. Botero says any similarity to
other painters is totally unintended.
Though the show contains about 50 major paintings and a number of
drawings, not one of the works is on sale. "These paintings are going
to be donated to a museum in America or Europe." The reason: "I don't
want to benefit from human suffering."
*
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