​posted by Otto Rapp

WATCH VIDEO: A Lethbridge student's art piece is being called, by some, too controversial for elementary school students. The Lethbridge Public School Board asked the Southern Alberta Art Gallery to take the piece down after a parent complained.

A piece of art created by a Lethbridge high school student has been taken down from where it was hung at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG) after someone filed a complaint about it. ..............​ Kimberly Tams from CBC has more.

My own 2 cents worth of comment:

​Is this for real? It sounds like a bad Saturday Night Live spoof about this Alberta hick town, or maybe something one would expect to happen in ISIS controlled parts of Syria. Certainly not in a modern Western Society. That the Lethbridge School District 51 would give in to a complaint by a obviously uncultured prude is astonishing; laughable if it were not such a sad reflection on what misunderstood 'political correctness' has come to dictate, forcing the moral position of one onto the general public. What next? This piece is a brillant collage by this grade 12 student, a tribute to historical art. Next would be banning any depictions of Michelangelo's work found in places such as the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Good enough for the pope, but oh, not suitable for the morals of prudish Lethbridge. And again, Southern Alberta's Lethbridge makes it self the laughing stock of Canada and the world! Way to go!

 But it appears this made the rounds already, here is a write-up in Metro News:

A student's work has been deemed too racy for a Lethbridge school board's elementary school children after parent complaints.
The classic art remix, a collage of works including the Birth of Venus, has been whisked away to a private viewing room.  
All of the schools in Lethbridge participate in an arts program to submit student work chosen by teachers to the Southern Alberta Art Galley (SAAG) – it’s called Art’s Alive.
The works range from kindergarten-aged children to students in Grade 12.
On Wednesday of last week the Lethbridge School District No. 51 took down a Grade 12 student's work after a parent, or several parents, complained “about the content of the work.”
...... read more
by  Helen Pike Metro News

UPDATE:

I had posted the original CBC article on Facebook. One comment I found particularly fitting was by a Portuguese artist friend:

Crazyness! I would call it the "Fig Leaf syndrome". I recall the Michelangelo's David episode... but that happened in the Victorian era . Nowadays, people with such psychological disorders would make better use of their time getting adequate therapy instead of spending time in galleries. Just sayin'...

Post by Otto Rapp

A expanded version from my blog essay originally published April 2011, with additional material and links.

Info about castle Hochosterwitz 

Find below the text from the original e-mail I received  in German, and to the right the translation in English

The contentious and defamatory article is on page 62 in the German magazine STERN, issue Nr. 21, 13.5.2015.
the magazine is available in news outlets throughout Europe, primarily in German-speaking countries.
 

Here are the reactions of Austrian newspapers:

Below find links to the Newspaper articles of the "Kurier", "Österreich" and the "Kronenzeitung"
Articles are in German, pdf files open in separate window

wishing everyone a happy and prosperous New Year!

Post by Otto Rapp

Video from LiveLeak: Remembering Robert Hughes 

I searched again for this video after reading a recent blog (the video doesn't work anymore on that blog), which I re-blogged on my (rarely used) Otto Rapp's Wordpress blog, titled

  The Art World Sham

I do encourage everyone to follow the link to read more on the original blog by trueoutsider (aka artist Bart Johnson). The reason I link to the re-blog is that it contains a link to a related blog of mine on Blogger that fits into this context: LAOKOON, ANTI-LAOKOON and ANTI-KOONS.   I thought the conversation between Roberto Mugrabi and Robert Hughes is priceless! I just hope this video will stay on the net, if not, I will have to search for it again, because I think it is a keeper!

I found this posting below by fellow artist Susannah Martin on Facebook. I also remember sharing the post from the Huffington Post Arts & Culture article and am equally upset by this censorship, so I decided to share this via my blog. 

The Huffington Post, Arts & Culture Section, September 26th 2014

Think about the history of nude portraiture. Which paintings come to mind? Manet's "Olympia," Goya's "Nude Maja" or perhaps Courbet's "Origin of the World" if you're getting real? Whatever impromptu string of scantily clad portraits spring to mind, odds are most were painted by men.

German-based artist Susannah Martin  is doing her best to uproot this rather uniform trajectory, painting the female body from a -- wait for it -- female point of view. Her contemporary takes on the classical nude imbues female forms with an independent spirit removed from male judgment or approval. These women aren't on display; they're simply doing their thing in the great outdoors.

Feel free to add your comments to this blogpost:

....... such as the once infamous World Art Foundation (WAF) scam. There was a website once - it started in 2008. Prominent artists from our networks were 'highjacked' without their knowledge and used as bait to draw in other artists. This scam mushroomed on facebook (it is still there in some form, but unmaintained and seemingly abandoned) - the description of this since 2013 unmaintained page - and there were a multitude of pages and groups at one time - is quite revealing.

What such a scam looks like, maybe read About the World Art Foundation on this remnant facebook page.  There were also similar pages on myspace, it then spread further throughout social networks, including Ning (now there is nothing left of it other than unpaid bills - but the link to the Ning site is still up on the last remaining facebook page). Not maintained since 2012 is this blog - WORLD ART FOUNDATION by JoJo Marengo - it has many of the unfounded and outright fraudulent claims posted, including a copy from a posting by JoJo Marengo on the now defunct 'Indian Art News' network on Ning (ABOUT, left side bar of the blog post). If you missed what once happened on facebook while some of us fought this, it is all still there, and likely forgotten by the originator of these rants, on his blog. Since Blogger on Google is free, paying bills is no issue and it will stay there forever.   

Please note: the above named WAF has nothing whatsoever to do with the World Arts Foundation Inc., a legitimate organisation that since 1978 promotes African-American contributions to the American culture. At the time the infamous WAF began to spread in 2009, it overpowered searches and hurt traffic to this legitimate site.  

1. Read this informative article: ARTISTS AND ART COMPETITIONS, CONTESTS, OPPORTUNITIES, GALLERY SHOW SCAMS, PAY TO PLAY - It will save you a lot of grief in the long run!
2. Another source of information is this blog: STOP ART SCAMS
3. A good video is in our collection: Never Pay to Show Your Art
4. A resource List of Scammer Names is found on artquest.
5. BOGUS ART FAIR is a great site to consult. 

Checking the Internet for updated information, this blog STOP ART SCAMS is current and has many recent posts. There is also a facebook page by the same name.


Please note: some of this information and the links may be outdated. This is just a general warning - new scams are appearing frequently, so please be vigilant.
 If there are any recent ones you like to flag, then please add it in the comments.

 posted by Otto Rapp initially on September 1st 2014 as a page in the VA private network

Post by Otto Rapp

I had recently posted a tongue in cheek spoof about a 'artspeak generator': 
INSTANT ARTIST STATEMENT

OK, now I am trying to get a bit more serious here - 
below is a picture and quote from the blog Translating Artspeak (who in turn took it from an article in the Arts & Culture section of the ChicagoMag (January 2014): 

The quote:
“With his keen knowledge of paint’s spatial effects, the artist exploits the transformative qualities of color applied directly to the architectural frame.”

The Translation:
 The artist painted a mural. 

Of this English upper-middle class speech we may note (a) that it is not localised in any one place, (b) that though the people who use this speech are not all acquainted with one another, they can easily recognise each other’s status by this index alone, (c) that this elite speech form tends to be imitated by those who are not of the elite, so that other dialect forms are gradually eliminated, (d) that the elite, recognising this imitation, is constantly creating new linguistic elaborations to mark itself off from the common herd.
—E. R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure, 1954
........................read MORE

but to be fair, here is the critique, if you will, of the above essay, by Ben Davis:

INTERNATIONAL ART ENGLISH
 - THE JOKE THAT FORGOT IT WAS FUNNY

“International Art English” is back. 

The essay of the same name, penned by David Levine and Alix Rule and published in the online journal Triple Canopy one year ago, touched off a minor furor with its attempt to prove scientifically that the art world was a hive of pompous windbags — that is, that the official language of art was a linguistically meaningless jumble of buzzwords written in a tortured style imported from French theory, a claim the authors said they could verify through running 13 years of press releases through a computer. 
..................read MORE

But if you prefer humorous, then by all means, check my earlier blog 
INSTANT ARTIST STATEMENT

Deterioration of Mind over Matter

Unbelievable - to be listed among some of the worlds famous artists - and for the List25 author Petr Habarta to pick my work as the title image! This work is one of my earliest, dating back to 1973 and it is from a phase that I jokingly refer to as my "Scare thy Neighbors" period.

here it is on DeviantArt - with the background story: 
http://fav.me/dser0i
acrylic on canvas, 20"x28", 1973

One painting, entitled “The Deterioration Of Mind Over Matter” is a frightening picture of a decomposing human scull firmly ensconed on some devilish birdcage in which the raw gore of mans physical being lies lifeless at the base. The parting flesh of the scull is secured by a tromp-loeil safety pin. This is truly an image that could have been utilized in the former issues of “Tales From The Crypt”, in fact it brings to mind in its own scary way the imaginations of Edgar Allan Poe. The poem, “The Conqueror Worm” comes to mind immediately:
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! - it writhes! - with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Excerpt from the critique by J. Brooks Joyner, Editor Visual Arts, The Albertan, Saturday, May 29th, 1976

Post by Otto Rapp

Thank you Scott for including one of my works and a short text contribution in your excellent article. 

One of your lead sentences that summed it all up was:

"The idea that you might train a surgeon to be clumsy, or an engineer to build poorly, or a lawyer to ignore law, would be patently absurd. In the arts, however, you will find an occasional musician who purposely plays badly, or a writer who ignores grammar, but only in the visual arts is training in the traditional skills of the profession systematically and often institutionally denigrated."

Allow me to elaborate a little on my contribution to this article. The teacher I spoke of, lets just call him Professor B, was also a ardent follower of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the art school that was first introducing Conceptual Art into Canada, and the first to eliminate traditional art classes, almost a decade prior to my student days at the University of Lethbridge.  While studying at the UofL I also worked part time as a Gallery Assistant to Professor B, the Gallery Director, who was also my printmaking teacher. The story about his classes is retold in your article, so I won't elaborate here. I would like to state however that I found that the UofL Art Department, then chaired by Professor H who was my painting teacher, had resisted the new trend of eliminating traditional courses, and my best and most useful classes were in Figure Drawing. It was only some time after I graduated when the Conceptual trend took over and I was shocked on subsequent visits to my old Alma Mater how misused and mistreated the studios and equipment in the former Printmaking, Sculpture and Ceramic Studios were.

But lets rewind to a specific event. I believe the year was 1979 when through the visiting artists program Garry Neill Kennedy was invited for a guest lecture. These were usually combined with a exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Kennedy employed art students to apply successive layers of different colored paint onto the exhibition space, ending up with the final color rust-brown. Just prior to the opening he scraped an area off a outside corner with a knife to show the underlying layers of paint. This installation was called 'Revealing'.
A throng of admiring students gathered around him (he was by then already a celebrity) and I joined the question and answer session. At one point Kennedy stated that "in this world there are only about a half dozen people that understand my art", to which I replied "if visual art is a form of communication, and as the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, then I would think if only six people understand you, you fail to be a good communicator". After a short spell of silence he said something like that I am funny, haha; and his body language excluded me from the circle of sycophants.

A year passed, and my Professor B went on sabbatical. The Art Department squeezed by, by not replacing him but dividing his course load among the other faculty. I was Gallery Assistant at that time and for that year, entrusted with running the University Art Gallery. The department Chair, Professor H, had signing authority, but he basically handed me the keys and named me Assistant Gallery Director. This also included looking after the UofL Art Collection during that time. Ironically, the local phone extension to my little office space I was given was 666. I found this extremely funny!

One of the first things I did that year was to change the scheduled Student exhibition from the Saturday Afternoon Pop and Donuts opening to a formal Friday Evening Wine and Cheese reception, like all other shows received. I then got in touch with Prof.B at his sabbatical hide-out in sunny California and asked about the schedule for the following year, since there was none, but needed to be published. No answer. I discussed this with the Department Chair Prof.H and he said to 'go ahead and make your own'. There were some Provincial Artists I scheduled and displayed. At that time the new Fine Art Wing had been built and we moved. To celebrate the opening of the Fine Art Wing it was suggested that it should coincide with the opening of a International Exhibition. Since I scheduled travelling to Austria at that time already I suggested the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. I got in touch with Rudolf Hausner in Vienna, and he invited me to his home. Laden with information he gave me - and he also sent me more books and catalogues after - I then wrote a  essay for this proposal once I returned to Canada. Long story short, I was shot down. The 'Nova Scotia' connection had gotten stronger by then in our far flung Western Province, and to suggest pure and highly skilled painting for a exhibition that was supposed to be also the opening of the new Fine Art Wing was considered sacrilege.
And that, at least in my mind, was the beginning of the end. Cultureburg  had finally taken over the rest of Canada.

To put this into perspective, check out the background of the main-player in this development in Canada, the afore mentioned Garry Kennedy, at that time president of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design .
Tim Zuck recalled about his student years, "I didn't paint at all there. In fact, that wasn't even an option. I think if you painted in Nova Scotia at the time you would be tarred and feathered." (Abstract Painting in Canada, Roald Nasgaard, page 338)
In retrospect I now understand the question put to me by the curator of the Edmonton Art Gallery (now called the Art Gallery of Alberta) when I submitted a painting to a show called "What's New" (October 1976).  He mockingly said "What, you still paint?" (but they did take it, I might add).