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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 20684
[Art/Music/lit]
Date Posted:
5/25/2009
9:23:24 am EDT
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Views: 3,540
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Comments: 9
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Outdoor Art Exhibit Draws Ire, Compliments
Author: Bill Bowden Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Title: OUTDOOR ART EXHIBIT DRAWS IRE, COMPLIMENTS
The Eureka Springs City Council is drafting a contract to take control of an outdoor art exhibit that some people find offensive.
The Artery exhibit, which has been on display since September, contains 26 paintings, and includes the Virgin Mary and Alice in Wonderland as subjects. The exhibit's theme is icons, both religious and cultural.
Mayor Dani Joy said she's had several telephone calls from tourists complaining about The Artery, which covers a 150-footlong retaining wall along First Street.
The Virgin Mary and Alice in Wonderland paintings are among the most controversial at The Artery. The Divine Mother by Michelle Levy of Eureka Springs has been criticized because it depicts the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the baby Jesus. Above her head are the words "Does this halo make my face look fat?"
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Community Thoughts: There are 9 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Odd Little Town | May 27th. at 10:35:29 am EDT
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Ixacacau (Moore, Oklahoma) - Email Me
I've been to Euraka Springs many times for vacations and it's an odd little town.
It first became famous for "healing" waters and there are still water fountains all over the place where you can get a drink from the springs. There's no WalMart but there is a gigantic Jesus statue on one of the mountains. There's also a Holy Land tour where you get on an open air bus and are driven around to what are supposed to be different scenes from the Holy Land, with live actors. What actually happens is that at each "scene", the actors preach at you. One fellow, dressed in a bedsheet, white socks and sandals flings his cane to the ground and does a little jig, claiming that the Lord healed him of lameness...maybe you're supposed to ignore the cane.
After that rousing bit of entertainment, you can take an evening jaunt to the Crescent Hotel, an historic landmark, for the Ghost Tour. Here, supposedly, a shyster doctor named Dr Baker turned the hotel into a hospital for cancer patients, claiming he could cure cancer. Of course his patients died, despite his cure. During the tour, you get to see the basement where there is an old autopsy table and you are told that one of the rooms in the basement contained, during Dr Baker's tenure, many jars of body parts and human organs that were preserved in liquid. I didn't see any ghosts on this tour but we were all encouraged to take a lot of pictures and to examine them later for spectral evidence. Oh yeah, and the Crescent would like a copy if you get any good spook pix.
The old part of Eureka Spings is well worth seeing; the houses built into the sides of cliffs are very pretty. Some have back porches hanging out over "hollers". One house has two official addresses because it has two front doors on different streets ( I have now idea why it was determined that both doors were "front" ones) . There are some good restaurants and bars. They also used to have a Diversity Festival in the Fall to celebrate GBLT-ness. I don't know if that still happens.
Anyway, it's an odd but sometimes entertaining little place. I might take a drive up just to see this artwork.
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| ... | May 26th. at 9:31:11 am EDT
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Draken (Bronx, New York) - Email Me - Web
Do a Google image search for "derp derp derp dog" and you'll see a dog that sums up the state of affairs south of Mason-Dixon.
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| There Is A Lack Of Logic In The South... | May 25th. at 11:49:45 pm EDT
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nasionnaich (Stanchfield, Minnesota) - Email Me
The "Bible Belt" - Where You Can Drink A Cold Beer, And Even Sell Beer - But You Cannot Advertise The Selling Of Beer! Where You Can Complain About Them Goddam Hores, Dress Like A Goddam Hore, And Even ("discretely") Visit A "Den Of Iniquity" - But You Cain't Be A Goddam Hore! Where "Mother's Milk" (breastmilk, to you and me) Is What babies Are Always Nurtured On - But Breastfeeding Is Not Talked About In Public, And Even A Painting Of A Breastfeeding Mother Is "Sinful"!
I'm not at all surprised by the Suth'n Red-naick "Chriss-chunn" reactions to the artwork. Dismayed and frustrated, but not surprised.
--nasionnaich
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| As A College Professor Of Mine Said.... | May 25th. at 9:07:05 pm EDT
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Emerald Tiger (Jamestown, North Dakota) - Email Me
... one of the duties of art is to inspire conversation.
It also gets people to look at their feelings and motives.
Then there is always the trash/treasure argument.
One man's/woman's art is anothers pornography.
A psych student in college asked me a question about this and showed me two pictures for my opinion.
One was a young woman holding a tray of apples at breast level, so that her breasts were part of the apples.
The other was an older gray haired man holding a similar tray with bananas. (Need I say where he was holding THAT tray.)
I saw the first picture and thought it was fine. It was artsy, if not quite my style. She showed me the second one and I burst out laughing. It was in the same black and white art style of the first. The first would have been considered art, the second (by some) would have been considered pornographic.
Over all it looks like a grab for power and censorship to me. What is so wrong with showing the human side of icons, religous or otherwise?
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| The Eye Of The Beholder.. | May 25th. at 6:52:54 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
If breasts are so bad, how in heck did jesus get his breakfast back then?
There is truly nothing wrong with the human body- but many have been taught to be ashamed of what we are. While certain aspects of modesty are somewhat necessary, others are in themselves obscene for what they deny.
Art in any form will always be controversial in what it shows, which is why it is so often heavily censored and why people want to try to control it.
It isn't the art, that is the problem, it's in the beholder.
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| Good Grief | May 25th. at 6:38:12 pm EDT
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Aritimi Morgana (RotterdamJct/Schdy/Scotia, New York) - Email Me
they're complaining over the breastfeeding Virgin? Um, maybe those goofballs ought to go check out the Vatican Museum if they want to see boobs. Not only do you have several paintings of the Madonna nursing Jesus, but there are naked statues from Greek and Roman times, sans clothes. Recalling my art history, the Virgin nursing the infant Jesus was an image used repeatedly by many artists (whom I can't recall off the top of my head at this moment, apologies) . I've been to the Vatican Museum and many others across Italy. If those yahoos are upset over a partially exposed Virgin here, imagine it over there, and those paintings were done hundreds of years ago. Just another example of stupid Americans.
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| Typical Southerners | May 25th. at 5:57:51 pm EDT
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Singing Sea (Fort Smith, Arkansas) - Email Me
I've lived here in Arkansas for 12 or so years now and this sort of thing sadly happens on a regular basis. Folks get their knickers in a knot over the silliest things. This is the south, the "Bible Belt" stereotype still rings true.
Like Devi pointed out in the comment below, people don't even seem to notice the other goddess references in the painting, they just zero in on the breast and start screeching blasphemy. It's ironic, really. And the artist of the Alice painting even admits that he was inspired by a story from the bible! If being gay is considered such a sin, wouldn't it make sense for their devil to be the biggest "flamer" of them all?
Then again, these -are- the sorts of people who don't understand metaphors at all and take everything literally and seriously. People need to learn to laugh a little more. It really is the best medicine.
I too enjoyed a lot of the works on the website, and would gladly buy a couple of them if I had the spare cash--and the space to hang a few 4x8 foot paintings!
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| Exposure To Art = Oh My... | May 25th. at 2:47:22 pm EDT
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Sphinxring (Olympia, Washington) - Email Me
There's loads of murals all around Olympia, some are fixtures, others come and go. The beloved ones somehow endire, and the ones that don't really connect are here today and plain paint tomorrow.
They all are ultimately up to the owners of the walls thay are on, Yeah I miss some of them that went away, but well, art it like that sometimes.
Trying to regulate art with laws, man that "works" *NOT*...
Public art is going to be contavesial, accept that. But what it isn't is just another boring blank wall.
Let the art go up, it's not really going to hurt someone.
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| I Like Them! | May 25th. at 11:22:28 am EDT
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Devi Spring (Toronto, Ontario) - Email Me
Go to the website of The Artery and look at the art. Alot of it is very clever!
I can predictably see how the 2 baphomet works would upset some people, but the Virgin Mary painting is actually fantastic! I'm suprised that no one has been upset by the fact that she's equated with many other world goddesses in the work - for people to pick out the breastfeeding (no nipple showing mind you) as a source of contention is absurd! So now Virgin's don't breastfeed now either? Where do people think Jesus got his food - there wasn't formula back then for Christ's sake! If I had an extra $1000 I would totally buy that painting.
I also really like the Saint Caffienia, and the Alice painting that's getting panties all in a bunch. I mean Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror looks more "controversial" than the man in that painting.
I think people are REALLY overreacting. I would be really dissapointed if they take that art down or start censoring it.
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