Nude And Descending Staircase

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Among the lost art (See Rotten Apple Explainedup there in the right hand column) was an image I created during a visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. But today I wondered how that image would look as my own artistic take on the art that we (American taxpayers) own. So I wondered reeeeeeely hard and ----- POOF! Lookit this! Now I'm not wondering.

Handy

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The hands of Abe. I guess you could say this is, um, hand painted?

Foreclosure

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Sold In The USA

Deep beneath the Jefferson Memorial is a gift shop. Inside they sell, like, trash. Trash pens, trash, tee shirts, trash, mugs, trash, busts. For example, here are two... see my point?

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On the left there's a cheepie statue of the Great Man himself (1.) and on the right you can see a representative cup (2.). And now... lettuce turn them over, OK?


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Here's the bottom of the cup sold by the United States Park Service from the Jefferson Memorial gift store (#2).. And its label? See anything, um. odd? Okay.. now let's turn Jefferson over (#1)...


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Sigh... in the entirety of America there was only one place they could find a bust maker. Um, well, a bust importer. The bust maker apparently lives pretty far to the west of Washington, huh? by the way, the folks who knit most of the store's shirts and "Washington D.C." golf caps weren't from Washington's west. Nope... Honduras - sort of to the south, right?

Yep, this is the Uited States government, using US. taxpayer taxes to buy the inventory for the store of the Jefferson Memorial. I didn't see that coming. Did you?

Tyranny

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In his temple, President Jefferson is stood to stare at his motivation... at the concept which ignited him to explode through history with a republic answer to the arbitrary collection of power into few hands. And now as it's being recollected at the direction of the legislature and executive offices his pen imagined... recollected into the pens of nine court justices, one wonders at the irony of Jefferson's enforced gaze. Or how his legacy has come loose from his idea.

Societies are made up of people. People age and die. Why not their cultures? I wonder if Jefferson's temple will survive his ideas? By how long? In Rome I saw churches and buildings built from stone that was quarried from the marble of the ancients' buildings. How do you think they will repurpose Jefferson's stones after they realize that his image and that word are no longer joined, even in memory?

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In the 1960s I remember that black and white was considered to be the most faithful way to present reality. And that was accepted even though black and white is inherently abstract, stealing away as it does an entire dimension of reality. Then came the 90s and the color dams exploded allowing the deeply felt component of its hues to add an emotional dimension to photographed reality that b&W just couldn't tap.

And now the digital artist can drop away the reaity almost entirely to distill out the underlying layer of feeling itself. It is a wonderful time to have photographic skills.