Latest news with #TheThirdofMay1808
Indian Express
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Anti-war exhibition in support of Palestine can be held, police shall not interfere: Delhi HC
An anti-war painting exhibition in support of Palestine, which is set to be held on Sunday in North Delhi's Model Town, can be organised as per the schedule without any police interference, the Delhi High Court directed on Friday in a relief to the organiser. Keshwa Anand, a member of the Progressive Artists' League, a collective of artists based in Delhi that organises art exhibitions, discussions on art, poetry recitations, storytelling sessions, film screenings, and other cultural events, had moved the High Court and expressed apprehension over likely police interference in the event. In his petition, Anand stated that police personnel had visited his residence on May 20. He sought the court's direction to restrain the police from interfering in any manner with the exhibition at his residence located in Model Town. He also claimed that the Delhi Police had earlier disrupted the screening of an Israel-Palestine conflict documentary, 'Occupation 101', at his residence on May 18. According to Anand, the police had tried to 'pressure and intimidate' the Progressive Artists' League, and 'tried to coerce the petitioner into cancelling the art exhibition' scheduled for May 25. Anand submitted to the court that the personnel from the Model Town police station had asked him to cancel the event. Following an inquiry from Justice Sachin Datta as to whether the proposed event is a private or a public event, Anand, through his lawyer Manik Gupta, told the court that he expected no more than 20 people to attend it. The police, on the other hand, stated before the court that they had no intention to interfere and were only concerned with law and order. Taking the police's statement on record, the court recorded that the police 'shall not interfere' with the proposed exhibition, subject to unforeseen circumstances. According to Anand's petition, artworks such as Pablo Picasso's 'Massacred in Korea' and 'Guernica', Francisco Goya's 'The Third of May 1808' will be featured at the exhibition. A series of other paintings, including 'the paintings of other members of the Progressive Artists' League, which are about 'the sufferings of people in Gaza, who lost their homes during the attack on the people of Palestine,' are also expected to be featured at the exhibition, the petition states.
Sydney Morning Herald
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The powerful portraits that didn't make the Archibald Prize cut
Entering the Art Gallery of NSW's Archibald Prize for artist Rodney Pople is akin to surrendering yourself for public execution. For his self-portrait, Jesus, Pople has been spared the media spectacle, having missed out on the final cut of this year's $100,000 prize, due to be announced on Friday. But his painterly work has been selected for the Salon des Refusés, at Sydney's S.H Ervin Gallery, an exhibition of second chances which has run alongside the Archibald Prize since 1992. Pople's Jesus riffs on his 2008 Archibald Prize entry, showing him kneeling before the sandstone edifice of the Art Gallery of NSW surrendering to a row of gun-carrying soldiers in high heels. Pople had been on a long drive in the southern states of America last October when he turned the corner to see a huge yellow sign with Jesus on it. 'I nearly ran off the road it was so powerful.' Loading His work also takes inspiration from Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808 painted in 1814. 'Too many artists are playing it too safe. I feel art should have a licence to be on the edge, and that's what the Jesus sign is saying.' Top of mind was Creative Australia's sacking of Khaled Sabsabi in February as Australia's Venice Biennale representative, a decision Pople, a winner of the Sulman Prize, describes as 'dreadful'. 'They should never have caved in to censorship,' he says.
The Age
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The powerful portraits that didn't make the Archibald Prize cut
Entering the Art Gallery of NSW's Archibald Prize for artist Rodney Pople is akin to surrendering yourself for public execution. For his self-portrait, Jesus, Pople has been spared the media spectacle, having missed out on the final cut of this year's $100,000 prize, due to be announced on Friday. But his painterly work has been selected for the Salon des Refusés, at Sydney's S.H Ervin Gallery, an exhibition of second chances which has run alongside the Archibald Prize since 1992. Pople's Jesus riffs on his 2008 Archibald Prize entry, showing him kneeling before the sandstone edifice of the Art Gallery of NSW surrendering to a row of gun-carrying soldiers in high heels. Pople had been on a long drive in the southern states of America last October when he turned the corner to see a huge yellow sign with Jesus on it. 'I nearly ran off the road it was so powerful.' Loading His work also takes inspiration from Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808 painted in 1814. 'Too many artists are playing it too safe. I feel art should have a licence to be on the edge, and that's what the Jesus sign is saying.' Top of mind was Creative Australia's sacking of Khaled Sabsabi in February as Australia's Venice Biennale representative, a decision Pople, a winner of the Sulman Prize, describes as 'dreadful'. 'They should never have caved in to censorship,' he says.
Forbes
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Kent Monkman At Denver Art Museum: One Painting, One Little Girl, One Genocide
Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), 'The Scream,' 2017. Acrylic paint on canvas; 84 x 132 in. Denver Art Museum: Native Arts acquisition funds, purchased with funds from Loren G. Lipson, M.D, 2017.93. © Kent Monkman History is painted by the victors. Except when it's not. Those are among the greatest paintings in art history. Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814) Theodore Gericault's Raft of the Madusa (1818-19). Picasso's Guernica (1937). Jacob Lawrence's 'Migration Series' (1940-41). Amy Sherald's portrait of Breonna Taylor (2020). These artworks reveal history as experienced by the oppressed, not history enforced by the powerful. A people's history, not a dictator's history. History as seen from the barrel end of a rifle, not the trigger end. Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation, b. 1965) follows in this grand tradition of history painting. The Denver Art Museum premiers the artist's first major survey in the United States in partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts during 'Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors,' on view from April 20, 2025, through August 17, 2025. The title, of course, mirrors the well-trod expression: history is written by the victors. Those who vanquish their enemies are the ones who write the books and songs and movies about what took place, why, and how. History is generally written by the victors. Painted by the victors. Sanitized by the victors. 'Massacres' described as battles. Forced starvation and stolen land spun into bedtime stories of inevitable progress. Indigenous people rebranded 'savages.' Genocide rebranded as 'Western expansion' or 'self-defense.' Nature rebranded as 'resource.' Invaders called 'settlers.' Butchers called 'discoverers' and 'heroes.' Enslavers = 'farmers.' Robber barons = 'entrepreneurs.' Through 41 monumental works–heart-breaking, stomach churning, violent depictions of colonization, the wanton destruction of wildlife, Indigenous children kidnapped from their homes by Catholic nuns and Royal Canadian Mounted Police–the exhibition presents Monkman confronting a range of agonizing subjects through large-scale history paintings: the absence and erasure of Indigenous artists in the art history canon, the representation of 2SLGBTQ+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus) people in art, the ongoing project to decolonize bodies and sexuality while challenging gender norms, and generational trauma inflicted by forced residential and boarding school experiences. That last subject is where Monkman's artistic brilliance achieves its greatest height. Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), Compositional Study for 'The Sparrow,' 2022. Acrylic paint on canvas, 43 × 36 in. From the collection of Brian A. Tschumper. © and image courtesy of Kent Monkman Canada's residential schools and America's Indian boarding schools were tools of genocide. Native kids were forcibly and illegally removed from their families–kidnapped–and sent hundreds of miles away to 'schools' that more closely resembled concentration camps. Forced labor. Physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse. Forced indoctrination into Christianity. Into 'white' thinking. Native children were forbidden from practicing or learning their languages, cultures, or spirituality. Punished–severely–when they tried. An untold number died in the custody of these schools. Children were of course not free to come and go as they pleased. The schools operated from the late 19th century into the later part of the 20th century in some cases. The generational trauma caused continues. How could this century long atrocity experienced by hundreds of thousands of stolen children and robbed parents be summarized in a single artwork? Not a 700-page book or a 5-hour movie, but one painting? That's what artists do. That's what Kent Monkman has done in his Compositional Study for The Sparrow (2022) on view in the show. Monkman distills that universe of pain down into one little girl. Using a baseball analogy, no painter throws harder than Kent Monkman. His pictures are 98-mph up and in. Nasty. Confrontational. With the residential schools and The Sparrow–the worst of the worst, the definition of cultural genocide–Monkman doesn't rare back and throw as hard as he can to strike out the batter, he throws a looping, off-speed curveball to devastating effect. The Sparrow isn't noisy and roiled and full of figures. It's quiet. Solitary. One little girl wearing a nightgown stretches toward a sparrow which has landed upon the open window of a boarding school barracks. A gentle breeze blows through the window, catching the curtain and the girl's closely clipped hair–a reference to how the schools stripped Indigenous children of their customs and heritage. The sun shines on her face. A gentle sun penetrating her prison. A moment of warmth. The sparrow is freedom. The outside. Nature. The life Indigenous people across what is now called North America once knew. The life this little girl's ancestors knew. The life–the freedom–she never will due to European colonization. The girl strains on tiptoe to touch the sparrow, to reach freedom, but she's not tall enough. The bird–freedom–remains just out of reach. Why? The cross conspicuously placed on the back wall holds those answers. History as written by the victors. Cultural and literal genocide rebranded as 'missioning' and 'civilizing.' Dominance rebranded as 'religion.' It's all right there. A painting to weep over. A story to weep over. Kent Monkman painting history, not from the winner's side.
