un altfel de picasso. versiune moderna Botero cu Abu Ghraib prison:
"Almost 70 years ago, Picasso was in his studio painting a canvas 3,5 high and 8 metres long. “Guernica”, this was the title chosen by Picasso, representing the bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica from German aviation during the Spanish Civil War. Today, Guernica is still one of the strongest symbols of the horrors caused by every war.
Now, one could think that contemporary art, so vane and hedonistic, is no longer able to play a primary role in condemning atrocities perpetrated by politics and armies of the whole world. But this would mean a simplification of the art scene. Indeed, the worldwide famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero recently dedicated a series of his paintings to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. And after having shown it in many European museums, suddenly he had trouble exhibiting his work in the US, where the Abu Ghraib topic seems to embarrass not just the politicians but also the most open-minded gallery owners of New York.
In his paintings, Botero has taken his sharpest departure yet from his normally placid scenes, which have hung in such places as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In one of the paintings, three naked, bound and hooded Iraqis are shown, stacked in a human pyramid behind prison bars. The only color in the sketch is red blood pouring from one of the detainees. Another painting shows an American soldier swinging a bloody club at the head of a half-naked, helpless man. Many of the characters have the puffiness normally seen in Botero's works, but some have the physique of beefy body builders. The 73-year-old Botero said his paintings are inspired more by written descriptions of the abuse than by the photographs and that he couldn’t help paint them, since he was so shocked by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
After being refused by many museums, finally the exhibition found a home at the Marlborough Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, where it opened last week and will remain on display until November 18. Even though, American gallery owners behaviour is frightening, as it shows how, in the country known as the most liberal in the world, an implicit censorship still exists, based on some kind of fear and on a blind sense of protection of the native land. Furthermore, in this case the silent censorship worked independently from the fact that a top artist, such as Botero, would have brought visitors and money to every gallery which would have shown his paintings. And when someone in the u.s. refuses to make money, then there’s something to worry about."
