Obama portrait artist Kehinde Wiley once painted black women decapitating white women

92tide

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I provided a link just under the last image.

Are you saying some media is good.....and some media is bad?

Say it isn't so, Joe! :D
you are the one using "the media" as your boogey-man for all things bad. if you cannot differentiate between aol click-bait and other things that's on you. :)
 

Tidewater

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I'm not really "up in arms" about the artist's past work.
I do believe that Obama should expect investigative journalists (if we had any) to ask him if he was aware of the artist's earlier work when he selected that artist to paint his presidential portrait, and if he was aware, what people should make of his decision in light of that prior knowledge.
Obama would probably say, "I liked the guy's style, his use of color. He is unconventional, and I like that. And no, I do not support any effort to incite racial disharmony and my decision to use this artist should not be interpreted as support for inciting racial disharmony."
With that explanation, that matter should be dropped.

And in other cases, rather than jumping to conclusions about someone else's perceived support for heinous acts, a rational explanation for the person engaging in that speech should suffice to calm the purveyors of moral outrage.
 

MattinBama

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The first one looks like Brandy and the head of Lisa Loeb
The bottom one looks like Aretha Franklin and the head of Celine Dion (from the 90s)

maybe it's not a racist picture after all -- she just hates Sugary Pop Music
Top head looks like Miley Cyrus so you may actually be correct about the music thing as some level of the meaning here.

Having said plenty of stupid things in the past I don't always hold everyone's past against them. There's a lot of things I wish I could change in hindsight.

Based just on the associated extra scrutiny it would definitely seem to be a very poor choice of artist for the Obama's to make. Even if they didn't know these images were out there and would be used against them in this manner they should have at least had the artist's past work researched to find out before making the selection.

I thought Kathy Griffin made a stupid decision with a head and I think this was a stupid decision. That doesn't mean that the artist intended these as racial violence or that the Obama's have feelings in that direction. But it's stupid at the very least on the level of not anticipating the optics it would bring with it.
 

sabanball

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Free floating spermatozoa in his paintings? :eek2:

What Wiley and his subjects do behind the scenes may be none of our business, but his paintings kiss and tell. Saint Andrew grinds his crotch against a wooden cross, and in case we don’t quite get it, Wiley has painted free-floating spermatozoa across the canvas. The same goes for the bear of a fellow in Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps, which could be subtitled “(Through a Light Ejaculate Mist).” And if the painted
tadpoles aren’t sufficiently suggestive, several of the gilded frames contain sperm reliefs of their own. (Talk about painting outside the lines.)
What to Make of Kehinde Wiley’s Pervy Brooklyn Museum Retrospective?

A high-resolution version of the whole Obama painting can be found here.
 

CajunCrimson

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Bazza

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Just to clarify again - I have NO problem with the artist. Or the portrait. Heck - I even like Obama as a person -his policy is another matter - but I digress.....

I was just pointing out how the headline/title of the article was attempting to stir up controversy.

Trolling in other words.

And I understand these media operations make a living on circulation and ratings. I totally get that.

But when you see stories in the paper about racial tension, racism, and race-related crime - guess where a lot of that comes from? Yup......ratings! :rolleyes:
 

92tide

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Just to clarify again - I have NO problem with the artist. Or the portrait. Heck - I even like Obama as a person -his policy is another matter - but I digress.....

I was just pointing out how the headline/title of the article was attempting to stir up controversy.

Trolling in other words.

And I understand these media operations make a living on circulation and ratings. I totally get that.

But when you see stories in the paper about racial tension, racism, and race-related crime - guess where a lot of that comes from? Yup......ratings! :rolleyes:
you do realize you added to their ratings by posting this
 

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