GALLERY of Political Paintings
Note to gallery owners, collectors and other fine art dealers:
My aim here is to sell you on two ideas:
1) Conventional political paintings--as we know them from the great artists of history as well as from contemporary painters--with paltry few exceptions, have failed, are inept, boring and trade upon their ugliness.
2) Representing my paintings would be good business, because they bring into art's mainstream the bold, brazen, humorous, unique, outrageous weapons of newspaper political cartoonists. Thus Larry Kaiser political paintings promise to be adorably, profitably controversial, both in content and style.
To elaborate:
Larry Kaiser political paintings, although political and editorial in tone, champion fine art qualities which the genre of political fine art has never before expressed. That is a selling point that should interest any art dealer who aspires to offer art that is fundamentally outrageous enough to blow the thousand-dollar bowlers off tycoon collectors everywhere.
Consider: To date none of the vast array of art classified as political art has passed the titanic means test of superstar-quality fine art.
Why? Because while acing all the questions in regard to how awful things are and getting all the easy questions right in regard to choosing social and governmental issues against which to protest, political art has gotten all the difficult questions wrong ...all the questions about quality and style and metaphor and draftsmanship and poetic symbolism and philosophical irony and content subtlety and classical and contemporary artistic concerns, and worse...political art has totally failed at effective tactics and strategy.
The soldiers of political art up until now have shown a lot of rag-tag passion but have displayed no professional warrior's understanding whatsoever of where the enemy’s weakness is...or how to strike at it...or how to look appealing and smart while doing it...or how to truly speak to the host population.
The great lesson political painters need to learn about the artist’s actual possession of real power and the most effective tactical employment of that power is taught by the world’s great newspaper editorial cartoonists--attack the idea not the person; ridicule the idea; turn the idea into the community laughing-stock: despots know that they cannot survive much brightlight exposure of the ridiculous and unnatural nature of their regime's underlying philosophy.
To wit:
In 2011, masked members of Mukhabarat, Syria’s security forces, attacked the Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat. They broke both his hands and dumped him by the side of the road, then published a notice that said, “This is just a warning”. His art was guilty of ridiculing an idea held by authority.
To wit:
In 2006, the Iranian government jailed the political cartoonist, Mana Neyestani, in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, killed nineteen people associated with the artist, stoned his home, burned his newspaper’s office and exiled his family. His art was guilty of ridiculing an idea held by authority.
Both these political artists, and dozens more with similar stories of brutal and desperate regime obstruction of their art, including violent retribution, are examples not of the weakness of political art nor its ineffectiveness, but rather importantly they are clear witness to the opposite--the ability of political art, when done right, to instill fear and a sense of panic in the establishment.
~Larry Kaiser~
All images and written content are copyrighted by Larry Kaiser. Digital reproductions of any image for the sole purpose of internet discussion are permitted so long as they are below 4 meg and include credit to Larry Kaiser as the artist, a link to this site and a mention of Larry Kaiser Political Paintings. No other reproduction of any image from Larry Kaiser Political Paintings is permitted without prior written contractual consent of the artist.
Click here to view Kaiser animated movie featuring guns, God, platitudes and punch lines.Imore about you.
