My 9-11 And Jack Whitten's

-by Sam Husseini

I'm not out to compare myself to Jack Whitten, but on this day, my mind is on his 9-11 story and my own.

I'm sure we all have lots of 9-11 stories, but I told one of mine for the first time in my new art show, "Invisibly Present/Visibly Absent" that just opened at Gallery Al-Quds at the Jerusalem Fund near the Kennedy Center.

The piece is "The Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth" (above).

On Sept. 11, 2001, my then-partner was visiting me in D.C. and was helping out a bit with my media and political work. She was set to leave town that afternoon, but of course stayed after the attacks-- the planes stopped flying and she helped me full time at my job. We worked nonstop, trying to get information out that might avert the coming further catastrophes. After about two weeks, I took her to Union Station so she could finally go back to Texas, where she was in grad school. Exhausted, I walked in the area, ending up at the Library of Congress, where they had a remarkable art exhibit about prophetic visions. Finally, I went to the main reading room, sunk in a chair to feel like I could breathe for the first time in weeks and looked up at the rotunda to see written on a plaque what appeared to be an ironic boast: "We Taste the Spices of Arabia Yet Never Feel the Scorching Sun Which Brings Them Forth." The quote appears to be from Dudley North, a wealthy British merchant and political apparachack who was treasurer of the English Levant Company.

Really dealing with 9-11 in a painting was probably inspired by Jack Witten. Below is text from a 2009 interview with the artist, who died in 2018. Everyone has heard his voice, he's the person who says "Holy shit!" in what I believe is the only video of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. He then made a great painting titled 9-11-01. He talked about both of these below with Judith Olch Richards for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.





MR. WHITTEN: Now I was in the street that day when the planes came over. There was a gas leak in the street and I went out with the firemen, which I always do. It's always a policy of mine when I hear fire trucks to go downstairs and see what's going on, especially in that area of Manhattan.

MS. RICHARDS: Especially since you had a fire.

MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, and as I'm talking to the firemen, that sound came over our head, huge, loud, tremendous sound, and all of us looked up. The young Frenchman that was doing the documentary [9/11, 2002] with the fire department swung his camera up. As he comes up, half of my body is in that shot. This is the first shot of that, what happened.

MS. RICHARDS: Would you just say that Lispenard is about a mile north of the Twin Towers?

MR. WHITTEN: About that, or less, yes, quite close.

MS. RICHARDS: Yes.

MR. WHITTEN: Lispenard is a block below Canal Street.

MS. RICHARDS: Right.

MR. WHITTEN: We looked up just in time to see this plane over our head, low, wobbling, making a beeline to the World Trade and ramming into it. On that first video when you hear somebody say, "Holy shit!" that's me. [Laughs.] That was my expression, "holy shit." That damn thing rammed in there and a big gaping hole.

MS. RICHARDS: Yes, I read you said you had no doubt that it was not an accident.

MR. WHITTEN: My gut feeling, I'm there, the [fire] captain I remember was there, my tenant downstairs was there, and I remember the captain said, it's a horrible accident. I said, "man that ain't no fucking accident." Excuse me word, but that's what I said. I said, "no, that ain't no fucking accident" and I remember my tenant, "what do you mean, you saw what I saw, you saw what happened." I said, "damn right I saw what happened but it ain't no accident, no way." That was my gut feeling. I had no logical reason or whatever to say but that was my gut feeling. It ain't no accident.

MS. RICHARDS: Yes, he could have steered slightly and missed the building. MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, I mean okay I've had a little bit of pilot training, enough to know that I can muscle the damn thing. The captain and his men jumped in the [fire truck] and just went, didn't even think twice. They took all of their equipment, men, jumped in the [fire truck] and went straight downtown.

MS. RICHARDS: Was there a gas leak on your street? MR. WHITTEN: [Yes, they] left one or two guys there still investigating. We still [had] the problem with the gas leak. Two things [are] going on in my mind, right. We're there still arguing with my tenant about whether it being an accident or not. While we're arguing, the second plane circles around to the south tower and then hit. Then I looked at him straight in the face poking him in the shoulder, I said, "you still think that's an accident" and that time he [and] people were crying, people were yelling on the street. Nobody knows what was happening. But my gut feeling proved to be correct.

MS. RICHARDS: True.

MR. WHITTEN: Nobody could question my gut feeling at that point and then of course the flames. I hate to admit it but I often tell the story about when that plane hit, that was a clear day in Manhattan. The sky was filled with this fantastic chandelier of glass, fantastic. It was totally sublime, glittering.

Before you saw the smoke, before you saw the flames jutting out, you could still see the plane of this thing tucked into the hole. [The tail.] But the breaking of the glass just formed this big chandelier.

I assume[d] that the firemen that went down were just automatically killed. That's what I assume but I was in my local bar like a few days afterwards and I was telling the story of what I saw and I thought these guys were dead and somebody came in the bar and said, "I remember you were telling that story. He says, those guys are not dead. They lived." I felt such relief. [Laughs.] I remember I just broke-- I couldn't control my tears because I was talking to them, you know, and they just took off. I just assumed they all died. This person came and says, "no, those guys did live. They're alive man." It was such a relief. Now we were moving out. I had to clear the whole building out, four floors I had to clear out...

But I made a vow when that happened in the street that when I got another studio, I made a vow. The first painting I will do will be a memorial to 9/11. That was my vow and I stuck by that vow...

MS. RICHARDS: How did you arrive at the form, at the image of the painting?

MR. WHITTEN: From the dollar bill. I'm sitting in the bar one night drinking, thinking about this painting, knowing that I had to have something to start with conceptually. I'm paying my bar bill and I happen to look down at the dollar and I'm thinking, my god, petroleum, oil, money, not a bad place to start, not a bad place to start.

MS. RICHARDS: The image of the pyramid on the dollar bill?

MR. WHITTEN: Yeah, came off the dollar bill, notion of power, symbol.

MS. RICHARDS: And the blackness?

MR. WHITTEN: Right, petroleum, a lot of blood in that painting, gallons of blood. MS. RICHARDS: Yeah, I've read that. What kind of blood did you use?

MR. WHITTEN: Out here where I live with the Spanish, they make blood sausages. It's pig's blood. So I can buy it directly from the butcher shops. They sell it frozen. I had already done experimentation with blood in acrylic. It holds.

MS. RICHARDS: Had you?

MR. WHITTEN: Oh yeah.

MS. RICHARDS: For what work? When was that?

MR. WHITTEN: For paintings that I was done during a lot of experimentation and I had to use blood just to see what would happen. So I had paintings already that I had made with blood in it. It's an amazing color, by the way. You're talking pure iron oxide. It doesn't fade or nothing. Acrylic sets it. I had already done some experimentation with blood but when I came up with the theme that was the guiding conceptual principle for the painting, blood, petroleum, money, which I think are the three components that caused 9/11, the politics of that.

Not Normal: Art in the Age of Trump-- Changing the World through Art!

Our friend Nancy Ohanian sent me the video up top to share. Not Normal: Art in the Age of Trump is a visual protest of the Trump Regime, a kind of a document of our time featuring 147 artists with over 350 works brought together in a book by curator Karen Gutfreund. Artists around the United States are raging against Donald Trump in visual protest. Not Normal documents this artistic movement. Their outrage is evidenced in full color on subjects ranging from racism, the Covid pandemic, xenophobia, immigration, promotion of hatred and violence, mistrust of science and facts, misogyny and of course, a narcissism that puts our entire country and world at great risk.

And while the subject matter is serious-- dead serious-- the art is alive with color, detail, and multi-layered messages, and is delivered with an irreverent sense of humor. Protest is Patriotic! And you won't find any of that phony-baloney bourgeois "both sides" bullshit here. Artists detest Trump for what he's done to our country and their work isn't hiding it. Much more here.

Like Art? Hate Trump? Check Out The Dynamic, Inspiring "Enough Of Trump Campaign"

Working with a stellar group of top shelf American artists, People for the American Way just launched a new program, "Enough of Trump," based on a simple concept: artists using art to convey what they have had “enough” of in the Trump era and to inspire the public to vote in November. The issues driving artists’ response to Trump include his inflaming of racial tensions, encouraging violent and deadly policing, and his failure to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan is to put up billboards 3 swing states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, like this Shepard Fairey piece, Enough Monarchy, We Need Democracy! 2020

The launch includes works by Carrie Mae Weems, whose concept was key to the project, Shepard Fairey, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jeffrey Gibson, Mark Thomas Gibson, Deborah Kass, Christine Sun Kim, Takaaki Matsumoto, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Beverly McIver, Sam Messer, Ed Ruscha, Alyson Shotz, Hank Willis Thomas, and Cayetano Valenzuela.

by LaToya Ruby Frazier

Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way told the media that "This project couldn’t be more timely. Our country is in crisis over the racial injustice, economic disaster and public health emergency that have all been amplified and exacerbated by Donald Trump.  The 'Enough of Trump' campaign captures this moment through art in a way that is both unique and complementary to the activism going on in the streets."

PFAW explained that. "The campaign aims to motivate people across the country, especially in the key Electoral College swing states, to share and create 'Enough'-themed art and to get involved in advocacy and electoral organizing that will ultimately lead to defeating Trump in November. As it unfolds, it will include creative opportunities for the public to engage in creating their own works to deliver the messages of 'Enough' and 'Vote.' Plans include displaying the messages on union halls, at protests, on face masks, on billboards, and on store windows shuttered by COVID. The campaign website, which features a gallery of downloadable images of the artworks, links to volunteer and activism opportunities across the country, resources for getting registered to vote, and a portal to purchase artworks, can be found here. In the coming months, in-person and digital engagement opportunities will include exhibits, webinars, opportunities to join artists online as they engage in the creative process, participatory public events to transform outdoor spaces with the 'Enough of Trump' theme, community-building activities on social media, distribution of 'Enough' themed merchandise and more."

by Ed Ruscha

Carrie Mae Weems: "Artists have played a leading role in social change movements for centuries. In creating art that expresses what we have had ‘enough’ of in the Trump era, we can address the corruption, ignorance, and racism that are so devastating to so many of us. I add my voice alongside many other artists to say definitively that we reject Trump and all that he stands for. Enough is ENOUGH." 

by Carrie Mae Weens

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

President Horseshit:

They say (or should I say "people are saying") that periods of great stress cause an increase in great artistic works. Artists get a little extra inspired by what they see. They need only to choose how they are going to make an artistic statement.

In the world of sculpture, artists use a lot of different mediums for their work. Some use clay. Some use marble. Some use various resins. But to use horseshit, now that is commendable! Just the smell and the "messiness" would be a non-starter or at least daunting to anyone but the most dedicated and inspired artist. However, the artist who who created the work you see today was truly inspired! Bigly, tremendously inspired! This artist has made a very powerful statement; that I can tell you. Believe me.

How often do you see a finished sculpture made out of a medium that so completely matches its subject? To use President Horseshit's own words, you might say the artist who created this sculpture should get a "Noble Prize" for art! Not a Nobel or, more appropriately, a Pulitzer, but a... well, you know the story by now. The man is not only a pile of horseshit, he's illiterate.

We all know that President Horseshit wants to be remembered with a memorial in Washington. He even has the unmitigated gall and delusion to continually compare himself to Abraham Lincoln. He even likes to go to the Lincoln Memorial to do it. How long before he tries to have Lincoln replaced in that big chair with himself? He's that far gone. But, I have a better suggestion. Let's just place the President Horseshit sculpture somewhere on the Washington Mall where it will be in full view of his fellow politicians who voted to keep him in office. We need only to decide whether to spray it with some sort of hardening preservative or just let the Washington rain slowly distort it. Better yet, I would love to see a time-lapse movie of insects slowly eating their way to it's destruction. That's a more apt metaphor for what President Horseshit's supporters have done to this country.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

When artist Maurizio Cattelan sold a banana duct taped to a Miami gallery wall for $120,000 last week, it not only made a lot of news, it has apparently inspired a lot of similar ideas. Hers's mine. Duct tape has many useful purposes!

Urgent Culture For A Foot-Dragging Congress

The Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

Two Washington exhibits, terrifyingly timely for the stark options before us, demand attention from the recently returned 116th Congress. The Warmth of Other Suns, an exploration of the plight of migrants and refugees, at the Phillips Collection, departs Sept. 22nd. The David H. Koch Fossil Hall-- Deep Time, at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum is, like its fossils, here for the long haul. Connect the troubling dots between the two exhibits. Understand the coming Tsunami of climate refugees if the pressures driving it aren’t arrested.

A thirty-five million dollar contribution landed the late David Koch’s name on the Smithsonian exhibit. On the contributors’ plaque, his status is equal to the US Congress. That’s fitting. He should also be on plaques for offices of many in Washington for whom David and Charles Koch paved their way.

Snap of top of contributors' plaque for Fossil Hall

The impressive exhibit fills in parts of the last 4.6 billion years some might have missed, from mass extinctions to fossil fuel formation, to disappeared myriads of species from mankind’s sprawl.

Snap of the Young Koch Brothers Horsing Around

There’s authentic angst over scientific institutions accepting funding from controversial figures like the Kochs, given their role institutionalizing denial of mankind’s climate impacts.

But here David Koch’s funding is a teachable moment. His contribution is minuscule next to vast, often murky fortunes the Kochs spent over decades, building a seamless web of anti-regulatory strategies, organizations and well-placed minions-- twisting federal and state governments and even the judiciary-- in lockstep with denial of fossil fuels cooking us.

Some might criticize the exhibit’s message on greenhouse gases as too light, too scattered or too dwarfed among crowd pleasers like a T-Rex munching a Triceratops. In messaging, points can be shaved many ways. But take the museum at its word that donors didn’t determine content. The exhibit is an eloquent statement on mankind’s impacts.

Snap of video at Fossil Hall

Those taking time to fully absorb the exhibit should feel hair rising on the back of their necks. Of millions walking through every year, many will pause at a multimedia presentation of polar ice-core evidence. A line of atmospheric carbon dioxide rockets like a Roman candle, rising temperatures riding shotgun. Ponder mass extinctions from toxic gases belched from fissures in Siberia, or from an asteroid whack, creating new forks in the road. Sea life starts from scratch. Dinosaurs morph into birds. But absent an abracadabra asteroid, major changes follow very long time lines, as do successful adaptations of flora and fauna. Visitors realize the children many have in tow won’t speedily evolve into Aquaman.

Snap of video in the Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

For the Phillip’s The Warmth of Other Suns, the second part of the title is Stories of Global Displacement. That’s the key phrase for holding both exhibits in mind. Widely varied works from around the world convey a visceral grasp of desperate people struggling to improve family prospects, not just for bettered lives, but often for survival.

Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

People on the move emerge beyond statistics. One sees their commonality with six million African-Americans who migrated from a Jim Crow South, with midwesterners who fled the horrors of the Dust Bowl, with the multitudes moved through Ellis Island. Contemplate the many thousands recently perished, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arizona desert; the stilted, malnourished lives of children in occupied lands and internment camps.

Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

This art is important. What kind of people will we be if we’re so overwhelmed we lose our capacity for empathy, if desperate people become invisible? That, one fears, is a quicker evolution. How much precious time will be squandered on the folly of walls as people start moving in unimagined numbers because of a failure to decisively act on climate?

Snap of video from the Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

The creation of climate refugees is already underway from drought, failing crops, water shortages and punishing heat waves from India to Australia. They already include many people heading north from Central America.

The Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

How vulnerable is a human population that doubled in a mere forty-six years, nearing eight billion? No wonder that, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, in the last two decades the rate of carbon dioxide increase has been 100 times faster than prior natural increases. Vast numbers, including those in most of the world’s mega-cities, live by rising seas.

Snap of video in the Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

A heating climate isn’t an expressed theme in the Phillips exhibit, but there is an undeniable connection between diminishing resources and fewer viable human habitats to civil strife and the tensions that seed oppression and war.

Taken together, these two very different exhibits pound home the message that the unthinkable can happen. Environments can collapse and with them civilizations. Bellwethers are on the gallop: buzzsaw hurricanes, record heat, melting Arctic ice, thawing permafrost, oceanic heat waves, toxic algae blooms, dying corals, acidifying oceans. The Amazon under assault. What surprise natural phenomena is mankind lighting the fuse for that will double-team us?

These are not timid times. Timid solutions need not apply. There is no breather for political leadership to avert its gaze, to turn bold plans to mush to jockey campaign contributions. Mankind is up against it. Stop pretending otherwise.

Snap of video in the Warmth of Other Suns exhibit

Art Deserves To Be Preserved-- Lost Patti Smith Tape Surfaces... Make America Great Again

The Billboard Top 10 didn't look even vaguely familiar to me this week. "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus is #1. Post Malone has the #2 and #3 song, #3 with Swae Lee. Ariana Grande has the #4 slot with "7 Rings." Halsey's "Without Me" is #5. The Jonas Brothers was basically a commercial concoction of Disney's for little children in 2005 and are now grown adults with little children of their own-- and a big hit, "Sucker" (#6). "Dancing With A Stranger" by Sam Smith and Normani is #7; and... remember Halsey back at #5? She's featured by BTS on "Boy With Luv" at #8, new on the charts. Billie Eilish has a hit with "Bad Guy" and she's from my neighborhood and just made a big splash at Coachella so I heard her music before. And #10 is Cardi B and Bruno Mars ("Please Me") and both of their celebrity has crossed over from the music world into the greater cultural/news world, so I know who they are. I guess you could argue that they-- as well as Billie Eilish-- capture some of the spirit of rock'n'roll but the point I was trying to make was that there's no rock music on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Well, I thought, that was always more a pop chart than a rock chart anyway. So I found a rock chart and there were some real rock bands on it-- even big ones that sell out arenas, like Panic! At The Disco (with songs at #1 and #4) and Imagine Dragons (with songs at #3 and #5). Tame Impala has two songs in the Top 20 too. I guess there are fewer bands now so you can have more than one song in the charts the same week without that being that big a deal.

Fewer bands because kids don't write songs and learn how to play instruments? They just imagine being dis at Coachella making beats. OK. My friend Daisy-- who's still in the business in a way-- puts it like this-- "Rock is in an assisted living facility; it's not dead but it's not vibrant." Yeah, that's what I was thinking too: it's kind of moribund. It's not going to die, I don't think. But it's resting. On hiatus.

When it comes back I suspect it will come back the way it started-- the way it is on a small scale now-- mostly driven by expressive creative impulse. That's when it's bets anyway. Then guys figure out girls like it and they can get laid and more people start bands. OK, still OK. It's when people realize you can get rich and famous-- kind of a corollary to getting laid in a way, a sick way, really-- that it peaks and starts declining. That happens. I kind of think it'll happen again.

During the week, my old amigo, Andy Paley, e-mailed me that lost Patti Smith tape up top, from 1976, in Brussels. Andy's playing bass. I couldn't wait to hear the cover of Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again," which I don't remember having ever heard them do before. But it was at the end and I'm respectful enough and curious enough to to skip ahead. Thank God. The versions of "Gloria" and then "Land" (where she introduces Andy, probably why he sent it to me 'cause I always got such a kick out of the other time she introduced him in a song years later).

The interview parts are as good as the music parts. So listen to them hole thing and be happy you read DWT. God, she looks so young and sounds so young. She was wrong about something though; she forgot to mention jazz.

Speaking as an artist she mentioned that rock'n'roll is like, for me, the most integrated form of art because I can use my body, which is a great tool, I can use my mind, I can use my throat... all the elements that I use in separate art I'm able to use all at once in rock'n'roll... Being an American there's a lot to be ashamed of. There's lot to be proud of, but... Americans are middle class and very materialistic and all but we did do one good thing: we created rock'n'roll. It's to me the one thing that made America great... Rock'n'roll doesn't belong to America; it's belongs to the universe; it belongs to the world. Rock'n'roll is the first real American art. We did abstract expressionism. We had Jackson Pollock; Willem de Kooning but it was still a European energy. At last-- rock'n'roll; we did something. Finally we won our place in cultural history. Now it belongs to everyone."

The next segment... well go listen to it yourself. It's like a course you shouldn't miss. She says she doesn't think history "can deny Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison; they're not going to be able to wipe that out of peoples' memories... As long as I'm alive and as long as I'm working no one is going to be able to push rock'n'roll down into Hollywood or theater or make it, like, passé or make it like a fad or something. It's art... Art deserves to be preserved." Chubby Checker.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Could Sandro Botticelli have predicted Trump when he painted The Birth Of Venus back in the late 15th century? Possibly, but that was in the midst of the Italian Renaissance, a time of progress. Still, that time certainly had way too many nasty conservatives who found plenty of sick ways to fight everything from science to humanity itself, often in the name of sociopathic religion. Sound familiar?

When I think of classic artists who would recognize Trump and see him for exactly what he is, I first think of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (See The Triumph Of Death below) but whoever borrowed Botticelli's classic and created tonight's meme (I'll call it The Birth Of Trumpism) is certainly a modern day human who sees Trump for the sick, corrupt, fraud of a human being that he is. I'm almost willing to bet that Putin has a nice blow up print of tonight's meme, or will very soon. Maybe he's even the one who made it. We will probably never know. I would, however love a print of it. I'd find a way to get into a Trump event, maybe post-presidential book signing or, better yet, maybe if I could visit him in jail under some ego-flattering false pretense. There he would be, in his orange jump suit and shaved head. He'd be sitting on the other side of the glass but I could unroll my print, show it to him and ask him if he'd sign it; in his own blood would be best. Don't worry. I'd wear gloves.

Oh, and if you think you can't unsee this meme, wait 'til you see tomorrow's. Just sayin', but sometimes we have to go wherever history leads if we're going to uncover, depict, and comment upon the nasty truth of the real world.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

Pig Entrails As An Artform:
By Noah

Who says, Donald Jackass Trump isn't inspiring? Trump has inspired every White Nationalist in the country to come out from under their rock. Charlottesville and the increase in the painting of swastikas on buildings and in public parks alone would point to that. Same with a large percentage of White Supremacist hires for the Trump administration. There's Chief of Staff Gen. Kelly, top advisor Stephen Miller, Homeland Security advisor Ian M. Smith, Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka (now a star FOX "News" commenter), Julie Kirchner of the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services... All of these "very fine people" and no doubt many, many more have been inspired to join the Trump government in the mayhem being inflicted upon America.

But, the art world is also feeling inspired too! Warning Trump supporters: hateful repression and chaos breed artistic responses. Tonight's meme features a fine uncredited portrait of America's poorest excuse for a president ever, fittingly done in reeking, gag-inducing pig entrails. Herr Trump's mouth is appropriately depicted by the use of a pig's anus.

Green Day-@IronStache Guitar Contest Ends Tonight... But, You Know That Artwork Of Trump Shooting Himself In The Foot?

Tonight-- midnight-- we end the Green Day guitar contest. As we mentioned last weekend, Blue America has a signed Fender Squire Bullet Strat that each member of Green Day autographed for me while I was president of their label. Everyone who contributes here-- any amount-- to Randy Bryce's campaign has an equal chance to win the guitar-- pictured below with Randy holding it. We'll pick one person at random in the next couple of days. If you give $1,000 you get a chance to get the guitar. If you give $10 you get the same chance to get the guitar. As I always say when explaining these contests, we're Democrats, not Republicans; that's how we roll. In fact, if you don't have the cash to give and you want the guitar, just send a note to us at Blue America, P.O. Box 27201. Los Angeles, CA 90027 and you'll have the same chance as everyone else. But you better do that immediately because, like I said, the contest is over at midnight.

As of this morning, we had 315 contributions for a total of $7,326.58-- so an average of $23.25. One of those people-- and that's good odds-- is going to be the proud owner of a signed Green Day guitar in about a week. Meanwhile though, so many people who saw the photo of Randy holding the guitar inquired about the artwork directly behind him. Several people asked if they could buy it. Good news:

The artist is Nancy Ohanian, originally from southeast Wisconsin and currently a fine arts professor at Rowan University (where Patti Smith went to school) in Glassboro, New Jersey. In between, she was the editorial cartoonist for the L.A. Times for almost 2 decades and her work is very well known and normally just available through newspaper and magazine syndication. However, she's a huge Randy Bryce fan and sent me a couple of signed prints to sell to benefit his campaign. And how about this for a coincidence? Some years ago Nancy Ohanian gave a talk about art at a middle-school in New Jersey. One of the young students inspired by her that day, David Keith, is now... Randy Bryce's campaign manager! The first one Nancy sent is the imagine of Trump shooting himself in the foot, Active Shooter:

And the second one is just entitled Paul Ryan. (I flipped out when I realized his "desk" is a cheese grater.)

Each one is approximately 16" x 12" and if you're interested, send me a note-- downwithtyranny@gmail.com with your bid. Unlike the guitar these two will go to the two people who are willing to contribute the most to Randy's campaign. Please include your phone number in the e-mail so I can call you.

When Ryan was on Fox with Hannity Friday, absolutely kvelling over a tax cut plan that will be a disaster for the middle class, Hannity complained that some Republican senators "openly trash the president" and asked Ryan about his relationship with Trump. "It’s very good," he avowed. "It is the opposite. We have a great relationship." Hannity asked him if he's happy with Trump's presidency, which most Americans see as an unfolding disaster. Ryan: "I’m very happy... I think the president is giving us the kind of leadership we need to get the country back on the right track." Any big disagreement you have with him, asked Hannity. "No, no," said Ryan. I see a Randy Bryce general election ad in the making, you?

Yesterday Barbara Lee wrote a beautiful endorsement letter for Randy.

You know how Paul Ryan has kept his seat in Congress? By relying on millionaires and billionaires to write big checks to his campaign. Then, after each election, he returns to the House to pass policies that benefit the rich and hurt working families.

Randy Bryce does things differently.

He's an ironworker, a union member, and he's running in Wisconsin's 1st District to unseat Paul Ryan. Randy doesn't accept money from big donors, and he won't be swayed by special interest groups.

The only way Randy will win his campaign against Paul Ryan is if lots of people step up to support him.

Paul Ryan has turned his back on the people of Wisconsin and on the American people. That's why we need Randy in Congress-- someone we can count on to fight for our values.

Randy supports single-payer health care, campaign finance reform, and comprehensive immigration reform. He attended Wisconsin's public schools and understands that all children must have access to quality, affordable education. And he's a lifelong fighter for working people who supports a $15 minimum wage.

We already know that Paul Ryan will pour obscene amounts of money into this race to protect his seat. But Randy has something that Paul Ryan doesn't: a powerful movement of people who want Randy to fight for them in Congress.

There's no doubt about it, this is going to be a tough race. But Randy has a shot at winning it if enough of us step up to show our support.

Meanwhile, on Friday, just after Trump fired his crooked swampy Health Secretary Tom Price for ripping off the taxpayers to the tune of over a million dollars in chartered flights and military planes, Ryan called him "a superb health secretary" and "a good man... His vision and hard work were vital to the House's success passing our healthcare legislation." Ryan is talking about his collaboration with Price to kick between 20 and 30 million Americans off healthcare. That's who Paul Ryan is. Please help Randy repeal and replace him by donating at the No.Trump.NoKKK.NoFascistUSA Act Blue page (by clicking on the Blue America thermometer on the right-- whether you want to guitar or not. And one more reminder-- after midnight tonight that guitar will be part of the history of how an iron worker and union activist, an ordinary American guy, defeated on the the most powerful politicians in America.

Bush Economic Miracle: International Art Market Collapsing-- Along With Every Other Market

Damien Hirst's "Adam & Eve Under the Table." The seated lady isn't part of the exhibition

Sunday I was laughing about some of the Times' top 44 tourist destinations for 2009, especially how they crowned Marrakech the world's primo culinary offering and Doha the place to go for culture. Doha? Yeah, it's in Qatar. Qatar? Yeah it's on the Arabian Peninsula, jutting out into the Persian Gulf and Al Jazeera is based there. You know, one of the United Arab Emirates. And the Emir's 26-year old daughter, Sheikha al Mayassa, recently bought up $160 million worth of Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon and Damien Hirst. Voila! That and it's own Tribeca Film Festival and an I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art and you can forget Paris, London, Rome, Istanbul, Cairo, New York, Mexico City... Doha's where it's at for the culture thing.

Except... today's Times has some bad news for all Damien Hirst purchasers. His edgy art may have been a better investment before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection (the same day his work peaked at a Christie's auction). As we reported last fall, the Bush Economic Miracle is flushing art prices down the toilet along with the price of homes, stocks and everything else. Christie's is starting to lay off employees.

In the last months, auction prices dropped together with financial markets, ending a decade-long boom in the art market that was buoyed by record bonuses paid to financial executives.

Lehman plans to sell about $8 million in artwork to help pay its creditors, but if a recent auction by the bank’s former chief executive and his wife is anything to go by, it might be a challenge to attract buyers as many still wait for bigger bargains. Richard S. Fuld Jr. and his wife, Kathy, sold 16 drawings for $13.5 million through Christie’s in November in New York, below the $15 million low estimate.

...Its rival, Sotheby’s, said in December that it planned to reduce costs by $7 million in 2009 by cutting jobs and salaries, citing an “uncertain and challenging macroeconomic environment.”

Initial predictions by some art investors last year that oil-rich Arab countries, Russia, India and China would continue to spend on art, even as the United States and much of Western Europe stumbled into a recession, proved too optimistic.

A two-day sale of paintings and jewels in Dubai by Christie’s in October yielded only about half of what the auction house expected. A sharp drop in the price of oil since its peak in July made the region, identified by Christie’s as a growth market, less open to investing in art.

At an auction in New York in November, almost a third of the pieces remained unsold, including a self-portrait by Francis Bacon.

And if Bacon is selling low... it's all over. Cancel that trip to Doha.

And you know what? It could be worse. Imagine you were stuck in an accelerating recessionary trend, with unemployment spiraling out of control and... your unemployment insurance dries up. And you don't have a Hirst or Bacon to sell even at reduced prices. These aren't people who expected to ever go on welfare, but that's what's coming next for a couple hundred thousand people in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Virginia, Pennsylvania and 20 other states across the country.

Obama asked Bush to request the rest of the bailout money ($350 billion) from Congress to stabilize the financial system. But I don't see banksters loosening up the credit market. I don't see them as part of the solution. I think they are the problem. The money should go to trickle up programs (an idea that banksters and their well-paid Washington shills abhor), not more failed trickle down programs. Screw the banksters; they screwed the whole country world.

Obama began calling lawmakers, promising to respond to their intense criticism of the financial rescue program by expanding its scope to aid struggling homeowners, small businesses and others. His top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, sent a three-page letter to congressional leaders, vowing to better track how the money is spent and bolster oversight.

The president-elect plans to appear today at a luncheon in the Capitol where he will ask Senate Democrats to stand with him on an issue that is shaping up as an early test of his ability to build bipartisan consensus. Yesterday, he was forced to relent to skepticism on a separate politically complicated initiative, the economic stimulus package, by dropping his proposal to give businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every job they save or create.

Howie reports from Africa: Fascism Lives -- And Not Just In The Old Confederacy

When we think of the South, we think of backward, poorly educated states filled with narrow-minded bigots, obsessed with primitive superstitions based on Bronze Age fears... like Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, the racist and reactionary places that voted Bush into office, still support him and voted for McCain last month. But other countries have their problems with their own Souths. The most backward and reactionary part of Germany, for example, home of the Nazi Party and Hitler's original power base-- a kind of European Texas-- is Bavaria.

Today I woke up to a TV report about how the strong neo-Nazi party in Bavaria, no further right than our own Georgia or Oklahoma GOP, may be banned because of increasing violence reminiscent of the early 1930s. A hard-line police chief who offers no leeway for extremists was stabbed at his home Monday night, and now pressure is mounting to ban the German right-wingers.

A not-unrelated bit of news came out of Russia, the other country with a hugely resurgent neo-Nazi party. Oddly enough, it came in the form of an art prize! Aleksei Beliayev-Guintovt is a thuggish, no-talent polemicist for GOP-style politics in Russia. His crude nationalistic propaganda has nothing to do with art-- in terms of Truth and Beauty-- whatsoever but yesterday he won the Kandinsky Prize, Russia's top contemporary art award. Except for his far right followers, virtually the entire audience stood and booed when he was given the prize (which includes around $50,000).

I watched an interview with him afterwards, and he was a typically defiant right-wing jackass, vowing to glofify the Motherland. I guess we can hope he sticks to his paints and brushes and doesn't venture the way of an Austrian painter whose ideas have been such a tremendous inspiration for so many fearful, violent bigots all over the world, most recently demonstrated in a run-off election in Georgia.