WASHINGTON — There is a woman silently sitting on a platform in front of the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
She is wearing thin white drawstring pants and a white sports bra, and she is barefoot.
She looks exposed. She looks vulnerable. She looks as if she might be making a statement about one of those causes that typically cause you to look away.
Next to her platform is a row of clear glass jars, some empty, some filled with urine, that she has been using as a bathroom since 6 o'clock the previous morning. It all makes her a bit suspect to the lunchtime crowd in downtown Washington.
She is just a performance artist in the final 36 hours of “Stripped,” her performance piece (or “non-performance” piece, as she calls it). It is the last leg of a months-long journey toward little and less, and, in these final hours, public privation.
Curious passers-by don't know what to make of Melissa Ichiuji's silence on a downtown corner. And, although she is discreet, pulling the ends of her white blanket fully around her form, they are quite thrown by the public urination.
The whole spectacle is arresting.
“I came to see the tourist sights, but this is the most compelling thing I've seen,” said Ray Wollaston of Seattle.
The piece began in January when Ichiuji — a married third-year Corcoran student in her late 30s from Front Royal, Va. — started giving up things: coffee, television, soda and medication, followed in February by fast food and alcohol.
As the seasons changed, she gave up cosmetics and chocolate, meat and magazines. Since the beginning of May, she has had no newspapers, no music, no mirrors, no cell phone, no e-mail, no driving, no sex, no books, no family or friends or running water. No appliances, no speech, no clocks, no shoes, no food, no shelter.
The idea is to let go of things that matter to the woman as a meditation on what matters most to the artist.
“How much would you have to lose to appreciate what you have?” ask the postcards in front of her display.
A statement given out by the Corcoran staff says: “I decided that for 16 weeks I would try to do something that I thought I couldn't. I wanted to stop being so dependent on external things for comfort and security. I wanted to break patterns of behavior, attachment and consumption that, over the years, had become automatic responses to anxiety and boredom.”
Anthony Cervino, the Corcoran's director of college exhibition, says that Ichiuji was questioning her nice house and swimming pool.
“She was interested as an artist in where comfort becomes discomfort,” Cervino says. “She wanted to find her point of personal sacrifice. … How far beyond our needs do we need to go before it's egregious or wasteful?”
Ichiuji wrote: “I decided that I would see how far I could simplify. I wanted to face my biggest fears concerning isolation and poverty.”
Lorrie Oneal
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Harmony is the new Andy Warhol
I saw Harmony Korine last night and I have to say he had a hell of a time coveying his thoughts. He reminded me of how Andy Warhol acted when he was interveiwed. Brilliant creative people acting naive. Maybe it's a safety net, if you don't want to talk about something for whatever reason you can just say well "I just like it" that's why, and end it there.... with silence.
The Kodak Lecture Series presents
HARMONY KORINE
in conversation with Bruce LaBruce
Friday, April 1 @ 7:30pm
Ryerson University
Harmony Korine had an auspicious start to his movie career when he was discovered by photographer Larry Clark and subsequently commissioned to write the screenplay for Clark's first feature film, Kids. Korine's directorial debut, Gummo, was released to an unsuspecting public one year later, drawing praise, disgust and bafflement.
In 1998 he was contacted by the Dogme 95 brotherhood, who asked him to spearhead the American new wave. The resulting film, Julien Donkey Boy-a film based on Korine's experience with his schizophrenic uncle-has been the only certified American Dogme film made thus far.
In addition to writing and directing feature films, Korine has also released two art books-Pass the Bitch Chicken (a collaboration with Christopher Wholl) and The Bad Son, a series of photographs of Macaulay Culkin-and a novel entitled A Crack Up at the Race Riots.
Korine has also collaborated with artists such as Bonnie Prince Billy, David Blaine, Sonic Youth, Agnes B. and Bjork in the creation of music videos and documentaries. He recently collaborated again with Larry Clark as screenwriter of the controversial film Ken Park. Korine currently lives and works in Paris, France.
Bruce LaBruce is a Toronto-based photographer and filmmaker. His photos have appeared in Honcho, The National Post, The Guardian, and Vice. He has directed five feature films including, Super 8 1/2, Huster White, and Rasberry Reich.
The Kodak Lecture Series provides an opportunity for the general public to see and hear about innovative photo-based imaging and art practice. This series has showcased some of the most reputable and intriguing photographers, filmmakers, curators, and new media artists in the world.
Thanks to the generosity of Kodak Canada, admission is free.
The Kodak Lecture Series presents
HARMONY KORINE
in conversation with Bruce LaBruce
Friday, April 1 @ 7:30pm
Ryerson University
Harmony Korine had an auspicious start to his movie career when he was discovered by photographer Larry Clark and subsequently commissioned to write the screenplay for Clark's first feature film, Kids. Korine's directorial debut, Gummo, was released to an unsuspecting public one year later, drawing praise, disgust and bafflement.
In 1998 he was contacted by the Dogme 95 brotherhood, who asked him to spearhead the American new wave. The resulting film, Julien Donkey Boy-a film based on Korine's experience with his schizophrenic uncle-has been the only certified American Dogme film made thus far.
In addition to writing and directing feature films, Korine has also released two art books-Pass the Bitch Chicken (a collaboration with Christopher Wholl) and The Bad Son, a series of photographs of Macaulay Culkin-and a novel entitled A Crack Up at the Race Riots.
Korine has also collaborated with artists such as Bonnie Prince Billy, David Blaine, Sonic Youth, Agnes B. and Bjork in the creation of music videos and documentaries. He recently collaborated again with Larry Clark as screenwriter of the controversial film Ken Park. Korine currently lives and works in Paris, France.
Bruce LaBruce is a Toronto-based photographer and filmmaker. His photos have appeared in Honcho, The National Post, The Guardian, and Vice. He has directed five feature films including, Super 8 1/2, Huster White, and Rasberry Reich.
The Kodak Lecture Series provides an opportunity for the general public to see and hear about innovative photo-based imaging and art practice. This series has showcased some of the most reputable and intriguing photographers, filmmakers, curators, and new media artists in the world.
Thanks to the generosity of Kodak Canada, admission is free.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Your Art Work Is A Bloody Mess!
Art made with blood won't cut it on eBay
Is it any wonder contemporary art has become such a bloody mess?
Stories like the one about Montreal artist John David Margo, his Toronto dealer Mariemar Gallery and eBay are enough to put you off ever looking at another work of modern art.
The tale hit the news earlier this week when eBay, the web auctioneer, withdrew a series of artworks by Margo.
The pieces are unremarkable but for the fact they were painted with human blood, or so the artist says.
But as far as eBay is concerned, blood is a "human body part" and, therefore, a forbidden item.
Inspired by the events of 9/11, Margo's series, 101 Views of Jerusalem, was produced with blood from "Muslim, Jewish and Christian congregationists (sic)."
According to Mariemar Gallery co-director Sabrina Lee, "The blood, mixed together and applied directly to the artworks as pigment, symbolizes ... victims, violators and voyeurs observed by the impartial artist, traumatized by passionate religious/political extremist acts of violence since 9/11. We knew this was a contentious subject and the use ... of human blood would be highly controversial, to say the least."
Huh?
But what upset Lee was the fact that eBay withdrew the works.
"To say we are trading in human body parts would be wrong," she insists. "His images are the most original I have seen from any contemporary artist today."
Clearly, Lee hasn't seen much. Margo's works show little evidence of skill and even less of originality.
One piece, with the unfortunate and ill-advised title Boom Boom Goes To New York, includes the Manhattan skyline and an airplane above.
In Margo's words, "With this painting, the viewer has a bird's-eye view from behind American Airlines Flight 11 (Allah, the word for God in Arabic, is shaped as an aircraft), approaching the Manhattan skyline (created with the Hebrew word for God) 8:44 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001."
In his artist's statement, Margo informs us, with an apparently straight face, "Fascinating new images are haunting my drawings as I observe the world through television and newspaper. Ancient languages are taking shape. Hate, love, power and poverty are manipulating beautifully written scripts into visual images represented in words and deeds."
If anyone knows what this means, please let us know.
It's not unusual for an artist to be inarticulate, devoid of talent, or, for that matter, to use blood. Istvan Kantor, who won a Governor-General's Visual Art award last year, has gained an international reputation splattering vials of his own on the walls of art galleries around the world. As a result, he has been banned from the National Gallery of Canada and is persona non grata at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Other artists, most notably Piero Manzoni, have used not their blood but their excrement as a medium and the message. In 1961, Manzoni produced 90 cans of his own feces, each titled Merda d'artista.
Though eBay would undoubtedly have refused to have anything to do with the work, Sotheby's wasn't so squeamish. In 1991, a can of Manzoni's best sold at auction for $67,000 (U.S.).
But for the Ontario media, what makes Margo's story newsworthy was his claim that he collected blood from Muslims, Christians and Jews in an "Ottawa area donor campaign."
No one in the capital seems to know what campaign Margo is talking about and so the search is on. Let's hope it isn't in vain.
Some might also wonder why an art gallery would put its artist's work on eBay in the first place. Isn't the selling of art the gallery's job?
"We're new at the game of selling art," admits co-director David Melnick. "I thought I'd put the work on eBay and let market forces decide what it's worth."
However, Melnick insists, it was all worth the effort.
"The blood itself looks great," he reports.
Christopher Hume
Is it any wonder contemporary art has become such a bloody mess?
Stories like the one about Montreal artist John David Margo, his Toronto dealer Mariemar Gallery and eBay are enough to put you off ever looking at another work of modern art.
The tale hit the news earlier this week when eBay, the web auctioneer, withdrew a series of artworks by Margo.
The pieces are unremarkable but for the fact they were painted with human blood, or so the artist says.
But as far as eBay is concerned, blood is a "human body part" and, therefore, a forbidden item.
Inspired by the events of 9/11, Margo's series, 101 Views of Jerusalem, was produced with blood from "Muslim, Jewish and Christian congregationists (sic)."
According to Mariemar Gallery co-director Sabrina Lee, "The blood, mixed together and applied directly to the artworks as pigment, symbolizes ... victims, violators and voyeurs observed by the impartial artist, traumatized by passionate religious/political extremist acts of violence since 9/11. We knew this was a contentious subject and the use ... of human blood would be highly controversial, to say the least."
Huh?
But what upset Lee was the fact that eBay withdrew the works.
"To say we are trading in human body parts would be wrong," she insists. "His images are the most original I have seen from any contemporary artist today."
Clearly, Lee hasn't seen much. Margo's works show little evidence of skill and even less of originality.
One piece, with the unfortunate and ill-advised title Boom Boom Goes To New York, includes the Manhattan skyline and an airplane above.
In Margo's words, "With this painting, the viewer has a bird's-eye view from behind American Airlines Flight 11 (Allah, the word for God in Arabic, is shaped as an aircraft), approaching the Manhattan skyline (created with the Hebrew word for God) 8:44 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001."
In his artist's statement, Margo informs us, with an apparently straight face, "Fascinating new images are haunting my drawings as I observe the world through television and newspaper. Ancient languages are taking shape. Hate, love, power and poverty are manipulating beautifully written scripts into visual images represented in words and deeds."
If anyone knows what this means, please let us know.
It's not unusual for an artist to be inarticulate, devoid of talent, or, for that matter, to use blood. Istvan Kantor, who won a Governor-General's Visual Art award last year, has gained an international reputation splattering vials of his own on the walls of art galleries around the world. As a result, he has been banned from the National Gallery of Canada and is persona non grata at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Other artists, most notably Piero Manzoni, have used not their blood but their excrement as a medium and the message. In 1961, Manzoni produced 90 cans of his own feces, each titled Merda d'artista.
Though eBay would undoubtedly have refused to have anything to do with the work, Sotheby's wasn't so squeamish. In 1991, a can of Manzoni's best sold at auction for $67,000 (U.S.).
But for the Ontario media, what makes Margo's story newsworthy was his claim that he collected blood from Muslims, Christians and Jews in an "Ottawa area donor campaign."
No one in the capital seems to know what campaign Margo is talking about and so the search is on. Let's hope it isn't in vain.
Some might also wonder why an art gallery would put its artist's work on eBay in the first place. Isn't the selling of art the gallery's job?
"We're new at the game of selling art," admits co-director David Melnick. "I thought I'd put the work on eBay and let market forces decide what it's worth."
However, Melnick insists, it was all worth the effort.
"The blood itself looks great," he reports.
Christopher Hume
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Marla
New Questions About Child Prodigy
(CBS) In most ways, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead is just like any other child her age. She goes to pre-school, plays with dolls, and loves to draw and paint. But Marla paints unlike any other kid in the world. She's signed her name to dozens of works deemed breathtaking by fans of abstract art. She’s garnered international attention, and her paintings are selling as fast as she can finish them -- for as much as $24,000. And that’s where the mystery comes in: How is it possible that a girl so young and so small can create works of art that many say are so sophisticated and so complex? Correspondent Charlie Rose reports.
Marla's canvases, which range up to 5 feet tall, are filled with color, and expressive brush strokes. They are compositions of apparent planning and vision. Her parents say Marla has completed more than 50 such paintings in the last two years, most of them bigger than she. "She just wanted to paint. She asked me that question. She said, 'Can I paint, dad, can I paint,'" recalls Marla's father, Mark, an amateur painter himself. "And I just said, 'OK.' You know, good diversionary tactic so I could try to paint." Mark says this conversation took place before Marla's second birthday. If you visit the Olmstead home in Binghamton, N.Y., you'll find a typical preschooler. Marla loves making mischief, and playing with her baby brother, Zane. But give Marla a paintbrush and a canvas, and her parents say she’s all business. Her father says that she paints about three times a week, up to three hours at a time and usually finishes a piece every few sittings. Rose asks Mark to describe one of Marla's paintings. "I see the whole process, which is interesting. This one was a relatively quick painting," says Mark about one painting. "She literally, she had a gallon of white paint. And she does like three or four steps. Three or four sittings. But one this one, she took the paint literally with a brush, a relatively big brush, and just walked around it." Mark then points to another painting titled "Spots." "This was recent," he says. "And it's just a wild process because she just goes to town with the paint." Marla’s rise to fame began when she was 3-and-a-half years old. A family friend hung her paintings in a local coffee shop, and a customer asked to buy one. Not wanting to part with it, Marla's mother, Laura, set what she thought was a high asking price: $250. The painting sold immediately. "I personally thought it was a fluke. And a once-in-a-lifetime thing," says Laura. "I made a photocopy of the check, because I wanted to be able to tell her when she was an adult, 'When you were 3, someone bought one of your paintings. And look, here's the check.' So I thought that was the end of the story." But it was just the beginning. Anthony Brunelli, a painter and gallery owner in Binghamton, began hosting shows for Marla. "You have a genius. An average 4-year-old couldn't do it," says Brunelli. Is there any other explanation, other than genius? "No, other than it's her saving grace," says Brunelli. "It's the way that she can express herself." As word spread, Marla was featured in The New York Times, in an article titled “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.” Time magazine called her a “pint-size Picasso.” And she appeared on NBC, as well as CBS. Her paintings were even compared to those of Jackson Pollock, the legendary abstract expressionist who was famous for dripping paint freely on his large canvases. Others said her bright colors and shapes reminded them of another modern master, Wassily Kandinsky. Ellen Winner is a psychologist who has studied gifted children and specializes in visual arts. 60 Minutes Wednesday showed her several of Marla’s works. “It’s beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful. You could slip it into the Museum of Modern Art," says Winner. "I think you could fool people. They're good. They're good." And Winner says there’s something else that sets Marla apart from other gifted children her age: “I have never seen a child prodigy paint in art abstractly. I’ve only seen them paint realistically or representationally. I have a drawing of Picasso at age 9. It shows that Picasso was struggling to draw realistically, and he was way ahead of his age." "So you know of no one who's a gifted child, might aspire to be a child prodigy, who does abstract art," asks Rose. "No, this is the first one I've seen," says Winner. Winner says that typical children create recognizable forms in their art. So 60 Minutes Wednesday assembled a group of 4-year-olds and gave them the exact materials used by Marla. The end result: stick figures, smears of color, and unlike Marla, no attempts to cover the canvas completely with paint. While those paintings go home with their owners, Marla’s paintings end up in homes across the country. She has already earned more than $300,000, which her parents say has all been put into a college fund. With some 200 buyers on her waiting list, Marla stands to make millions. So just who is the little girl behind the big art? To begin with, she’s very shy. She does open up at home, but she barely ever talks about her paintings. And at her gallery openings, she hardly acknowledged them. 60 Minutes Wednesday showed Marla starting a new work. Her father said it took her only three hours to complete. He also said he's hardly ever had to scrap a painting because it's no good. Winner was particularly interested in seeing Marla’s creative process in action. 60 Minutes Wednesday showed her more than 50 minutes of videotape shot by CBS, and by Marla's parents. Winner’s enthusiasm immediately turned to concern and suspicion. "This is eye-opening to me to see her painting," says Winner. "Because she isn't doing anything that a normal kid wouldn’t do. She’s just kind of slowly pushing the paint around. I expected to see a child feverishly and intensively working at her canvas and filling up space." Winner says gifted children have something she calls “the rage to master," an intense focus and drive to pursue their talent. Case in point: Child prodigy Alexandra Nechita, who at the time was 10, continues to enjoy a successful career as an artist. Winner says she's looked at videos of gifted children, and watched them painting personally. She says the children always show excitement in their work. "You don't see that here," asks Rose. "Well, I didn't see that in those clips," says Winner. "I would love to hide and watch her doing a painting from beginning to end.” Winner asked 60 Minutes Wednesday if anyone had ever seen Marla paint a piece from start to finish. It turns out that no one, except her parents, apparently ever has. Not even Brunelli, the gallery owner who represents Marla. "Just here and there," says Brunelli, when Rose asked him if he's seen Marla paint in person. "Not anything full length." 60 Minutes Wednesday asked the Olmsteads if it could videotape Marla painting a single work from start to finish. But they told us she is uncomfortable in front of a camera. "And so the skepticism always arises: something's wrong here. Where is the artist at work," asks Rose. "Why shouldn't you close that circle for the benefit of everybody?" "To be honest with you? If it were in Marla's makeup to close that, we would do it. But it's not in her makeup," says Marla's father, Mark. "And you're not gonna see what she does if you're sitting there with 14 cameras. Or if we could put her in the middle of an auditorium one time and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, pay-per-view, here's Marla painting.' If we could do it, we would do it." Almost two months after our interview, the Olmsteads agreed to let 60 Minutes Wednesday place a concealed camera where Marla paints, so she wouldn’t be distracted by its presence. Beginning on a canvas primed red by her father, it took Marla about five hours of painting, spread over the course of a month, to complete a piece. 60 Minutes Wednesday asked Winner to review the tapes. “My mind was not changed by watching 4-and-a-half hours of home videotape. I saw her making very ordinary kinds of marks, no different from what a typical 3- or 4-year-old would make. She didn’t seem to have any overall plan. And she didn’t seem very focused," says Winner. "I saw no evidence that she was a child prodigy in painting. I saw a normal, charming adorable child painting, the way preschool children paint, except that she had a coach that kept her going." Her coach is her father, Mark, who is often present when Marla paints. He can be heard on the tape, directing her, sometimes sternly: "Pssst …. Paint the red. Paint the red. You're driving me crazy. Paint the red." "If you paint, honey, like you were … This is not the way it should be." Winner suspects that without her father’s urging, Marla would not have the focus or desire to stay with one painting as long as she did on the tapes. "I think she’s being urged to continue. Many times she says, 'I’m done,' and there would be silence and she would continue to paint,'" says Winner. Marla's parents told 60 Minutes Wednesday that the painting was a struggle for their daughter, saying she seemed stuck. Still, during the month or so that the hidden camera was in their home, they claim Marla was able to finish four other paintings off camera, with no problems at all. Winner also believes the painting captured on the 60 Minutes Wednesday tape is less polished than some of Marla’s previous works. How does she explain that difference? "I can only speculate. I don’t see Marla as having made, or at least completed, the more polished looking paintings, because they look like a completely different painter," says Winner. "Either somebody else painting them start to finish, or somebody else doctored them up. Or Marla just miraculously paints in a completely different way than we see on her home video." And Winner isn’t the only skeptic. 60 Minutes Wednesday spoke with two other specialists in children’s art. While they didn’t study Marla as intensively, they independently raised similar concerns. 60 Minutes Wednesday revisited the Olmsteads, who stand by their story. "No one has interfered with Marla’s paintings. No one has touched any paint to her canvases, other than the priming and the outlining the edge of the canvas that Mark has done," says Laura. "Neither of us have done that. Neither of us would allow someone to do that, ever." The Olmsteads also told 60 Minutes Wednesday that any opinions based on the concealed camera footage are unfair, because it does not reflect Marla’s true creative process. "She didn’t pick the place this time. She didn’t pick when she got to paint," says Laura. "It was basically us saying, 'OK, Marla, do your stuff and do it right here,' It was a false environment for her." "It turned out to be more static and strict," adds Mark. "And that’s not the way she does it." As to Winner’s claim that Marla was being heavily coached, her parents explained they felt pressured by the hidden camera, and behaved differently towards their daughter. "We were tense and nervous about it," says Laura. "There were points on the hidden camera film where we probably, because we wanted to show that she was indeed the person doing these paintings and nobody else, that we probably did force the issue." "This was a little more pressure-packed," says Mark. "And what Marla read from me may have been different than a typical painting." Finally, the Olmsteads say that as parents, they would never do anything to embarrass their daughter. And that Marla will continue to paint with their love and support. "It’s a story that invites skepticism. And there will be skeptics," says Laura. "And, you know, as long as the people who are purchasing the work believe Marla did it, and as long as our friends and family, and the people that matter believe it, that’s enough for me." Marla is having her first West Coast gallery opening later this week. It will include the painting captured on hidden camera by 60 Minutes Wednesday, which has already been sold for $9,000.
(CBS) In most ways, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead is just like any other child her age. She goes to pre-school, plays with dolls, and loves to draw and paint. But Marla paints unlike any other kid in the world. She's signed her name to dozens of works deemed breathtaking by fans of abstract art. She’s garnered international attention, and her paintings are selling as fast as she can finish them -- for as much as $24,000. And that’s where the mystery comes in: How is it possible that a girl so young and so small can create works of art that many say are so sophisticated and so complex? Correspondent Charlie Rose reports.
Marla's canvases, which range up to 5 feet tall, are filled with color, and expressive brush strokes. They are compositions of apparent planning and vision. Her parents say Marla has completed more than 50 such paintings in the last two years, most of them bigger than she. "She just wanted to paint. She asked me that question. She said, 'Can I paint, dad, can I paint,'" recalls Marla's father, Mark, an amateur painter himself. "And I just said, 'OK.' You know, good diversionary tactic so I could try to paint." Mark says this conversation took place before Marla's second birthday. If you visit the Olmstead home in Binghamton, N.Y., you'll find a typical preschooler. Marla loves making mischief, and playing with her baby brother, Zane. But give Marla a paintbrush and a canvas, and her parents say she’s all business. Her father says that she paints about three times a week, up to three hours at a time and usually finishes a piece every few sittings. Rose asks Mark to describe one of Marla's paintings. "I see the whole process, which is interesting. This one was a relatively quick painting," says Mark about one painting. "She literally, she had a gallon of white paint. And she does like three or four steps. Three or four sittings. But one this one, she took the paint literally with a brush, a relatively big brush, and just walked around it." Mark then points to another painting titled "Spots." "This was recent," he says. "And it's just a wild process because she just goes to town with the paint." Marla’s rise to fame began when she was 3-and-a-half years old. A family friend hung her paintings in a local coffee shop, and a customer asked to buy one. Not wanting to part with it, Marla's mother, Laura, set what she thought was a high asking price: $250. The painting sold immediately. "I personally thought it was a fluke. And a once-in-a-lifetime thing," says Laura. "I made a photocopy of the check, because I wanted to be able to tell her when she was an adult, 'When you were 3, someone bought one of your paintings. And look, here's the check.' So I thought that was the end of the story." But it was just the beginning. Anthony Brunelli, a painter and gallery owner in Binghamton, began hosting shows for Marla. "You have a genius. An average 4-year-old couldn't do it," says Brunelli. Is there any other explanation, other than genius? "No, other than it's her saving grace," says Brunelli. "It's the way that she can express herself." As word spread, Marla was featured in The New York Times, in an article titled “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.” Time magazine called her a “pint-size Picasso.” And she appeared on NBC, as well as CBS. Her paintings were even compared to those of Jackson Pollock, the legendary abstract expressionist who was famous for dripping paint freely on his large canvases. Others said her bright colors and shapes reminded them of another modern master, Wassily Kandinsky. Ellen Winner is a psychologist who has studied gifted children and specializes in visual arts. 60 Minutes Wednesday showed her several of Marla’s works. “It’s beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful. You could slip it into the Museum of Modern Art," says Winner. "I think you could fool people. They're good. They're good." And Winner says there’s something else that sets Marla apart from other gifted children her age: “I have never seen a child prodigy paint in art abstractly. I’ve only seen them paint realistically or representationally. I have a drawing of Picasso at age 9. It shows that Picasso was struggling to draw realistically, and he was way ahead of his age." "So you know of no one who's a gifted child, might aspire to be a child prodigy, who does abstract art," asks Rose. "No, this is the first one I've seen," says Winner. Winner says that typical children create recognizable forms in their art. So 60 Minutes Wednesday assembled a group of 4-year-olds and gave them the exact materials used by Marla. The end result: stick figures, smears of color, and unlike Marla, no attempts to cover the canvas completely with paint. While those paintings go home with their owners, Marla’s paintings end up in homes across the country. She has already earned more than $300,000, which her parents say has all been put into a college fund. With some 200 buyers on her waiting list, Marla stands to make millions. So just who is the little girl behind the big art? To begin with, she’s very shy. She does open up at home, but she barely ever talks about her paintings. And at her gallery openings, she hardly acknowledged them. 60 Minutes Wednesday showed Marla starting a new work. Her father said it took her only three hours to complete. He also said he's hardly ever had to scrap a painting because it's no good. Winner was particularly interested in seeing Marla’s creative process in action. 60 Minutes Wednesday showed her more than 50 minutes of videotape shot by CBS, and by Marla's parents. Winner’s enthusiasm immediately turned to concern and suspicion. "This is eye-opening to me to see her painting," says Winner. "Because she isn't doing anything that a normal kid wouldn’t do. She’s just kind of slowly pushing the paint around. I expected to see a child feverishly and intensively working at her canvas and filling up space." Winner says gifted children have something she calls “the rage to master," an intense focus and drive to pursue their talent. Case in point: Child prodigy Alexandra Nechita, who at the time was 10, continues to enjoy a successful career as an artist. Winner says she's looked at videos of gifted children, and watched them painting personally. She says the children always show excitement in their work. "You don't see that here," asks Rose. "Well, I didn't see that in those clips," says Winner. "I would love to hide and watch her doing a painting from beginning to end.” Winner asked 60 Minutes Wednesday if anyone had ever seen Marla paint a piece from start to finish. It turns out that no one, except her parents, apparently ever has. Not even Brunelli, the gallery owner who represents Marla. "Just here and there," says Brunelli, when Rose asked him if he's seen Marla paint in person. "Not anything full length." 60 Minutes Wednesday asked the Olmsteads if it could videotape Marla painting a single work from start to finish. But they told us she is uncomfortable in front of a camera. "And so the skepticism always arises: something's wrong here. Where is the artist at work," asks Rose. "Why shouldn't you close that circle for the benefit of everybody?" "To be honest with you? If it were in Marla's makeup to close that, we would do it. But it's not in her makeup," says Marla's father, Mark. "And you're not gonna see what she does if you're sitting there with 14 cameras. Or if we could put her in the middle of an auditorium one time and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, pay-per-view, here's Marla painting.' If we could do it, we would do it." Almost two months after our interview, the Olmsteads agreed to let 60 Minutes Wednesday place a concealed camera where Marla paints, so she wouldn’t be distracted by its presence. Beginning on a canvas primed red by her father, it took Marla about five hours of painting, spread over the course of a month, to complete a piece. 60 Minutes Wednesday asked Winner to review the tapes. “My mind was not changed by watching 4-and-a-half hours of home videotape. I saw her making very ordinary kinds of marks, no different from what a typical 3- or 4-year-old would make. She didn’t seem to have any overall plan. And she didn’t seem very focused," says Winner. "I saw no evidence that she was a child prodigy in painting. I saw a normal, charming adorable child painting, the way preschool children paint, except that she had a coach that kept her going." Her coach is her father, Mark, who is often present when Marla paints. He can be heard on the tape, directing her, sometimes sternly: "Pssst …. Paint the red. Paint the red. You're driving me crazy. Paint the red." "If you paint, honey, like you were … This is not the way it should be." Winner suspects that without her father’s urging, Marla would not have the focus or desire to stay with one painting as long as she did on the tapes. "I think she’s being urged to continue. Many times she says, 'I’m done,' and there would be silence and she would continue to paint,'" says Winner. Marla's parents told 60 Minutes Wednesday that the painting was a struggle for their daughter, saying she seemed stuck. Still, during the month or so that the hidden camera was in their home, they claim Marla was able to finish four other paintings off camera, with no problems at all. Winner also believes the painting captured on the 60 Minutes Wednesday tape is less polished than some of Marla’s previous works. How does she explain that difference? "I can only speculate. I don’t see Marla as having made, or at least completed, the more polished looking paintings, because they look like a completely different painter," says Winner. "Either somebody else painting them start to finish, or somebody else doctored them up. Or Marla just miraculously paints in a completely different way than we see on her home video." And Winner isn’t the only skeptic. 60 Minutes Wednesday spoke with two other specialists in children’s art. While they didn’t study Marla as intensively, they independently raised similar concerns. 60 Minutes Wednesday revisited the Olmsteads, who stand by their story. "No one has interfered with Marla’s paintings. No one has touched any paint to her canvases, other than the priming and the outlining the edge of the canvas that Mark has done," says Laura. "Neither of us have done that. Neither of us would allow someone to do that, ever." The Olmsteads also told 60 Minutes Wednesday that any opinions based on the concealed camera footage are unfair, because it does not reflect Marla’s true creative process. "She didn’t pick the place this time. She didn’t pick when she got to paint," says Laura. "It was basically us saying, 'OK, Marla, do your stuff and do it right here,' It was a false environment for her." "It turned out to be more static and strict," adds Mark. "And that’s not the way she does it." As to Winner’s claim that Marla was being heavily coached, her parents explained they felt pressured by the hidden camera, and behaved differently towards their daughter. "We were tense and nervous about it," says Laura. "There were points on the hidden camera film where we probably, because we wanted to show that she was indeed the person doing these paintings and nobody else, that we probably did force the issue." "This was a little more pressure-packed," says Mark. "And what Marla read from me may have been different than a typical painting." Finally, the Olmsteads say that as parents, they would never do anything to embarrass their daughter. And that Marla will continue to paint with their love and support. "It’s a story that invites skepticism. And there will be skeptics," says Laura. "And, you know, as long as the people who are purchasing the work believe Marla did it, and as long as our friends and family, and the people that matter believe it, that’s enough for me." Marla is having her first West Coast gallery opening later this week. It will include the painting captured on hidden camera by 60 Minutes Wednesday, which has already been sold for $9,000.
Yummy!
Kraft halts production of contoversial roadkill-shaped candy
25/02/2005 6:19:00 PM
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Production of candy shaped like roadkill has come to a screeching halt. The decision, announced Friday by Kraft Foods Inc., was the result of an outcry by New Jersey animal rights activists who said the candy encouraged children to be cruel to animals.
"We take comments from our consumers really seriously and, in hindsight, we understand that this product could be misunderstood," said Kraft spokesman Larry Baumann.
Kraft plans to stop production as soon as possible and then sell off remaining inventory, Baumann said.
The fruity-flavoured Trolli Road Kill Gummi Candy - shaped like flattened snakes, chickens and squirrels, complete with tire treads - hit store shelves last summer and was supposed to be another offbeat and unusual addition to Kraft's Gummi candy line.
But the nonprofit New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals thought differently. Earlier this week, it threatened petition drives, boycotts and letter-writing campaigns.
Stuart Rhodes, the organization's president, said he never thought his group's efforts would be so successful.
"Did I think it would happen as fast as I did? No. I guess like most people I've become very cynical. All too often it seems that profit rules all. This was refreshing," Rhodes said.
The state of New Jersey designates the NJSPCA the enforcer of its animal cruelty laws. Law enforcement takes up a large part of the group's efforts, but Rhodes has stressed more public advocacy since he took over a year ago.
This is the first time the organization has complained to a company about a product, Rhodes said.
Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. is in the process of acquiring the Trolli brand along with other Kraft candy lines as part of a $1.48 billion US deal.
25/02/2005 6:19:00 PM
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Production of candy shaped like roadkill has come to a screeching halt. The decision, announced Friday by Kraft Foods Inc., was the result of an outcry by New Jersey animal rights activists who said the candy encouraged children to be cruel to animals.
"We take comments from our consumers really seriously and, in hindsight, we understand that this product could be misunderstood," said Kraft spokesman Larry Baumann.
Kraft plans to stop production as soon as possible and then sell off remaining inventory, Baumann said.
The fruity-flavoured Trolli Road Kill Gummi Candy - shaped like flattened snakes, chickens and squirrels, complete with tire treads - hit store shelves last summer and was supposed to be another offbeat and unusual addition to Kraft's Gummi candy line.
But the nonprofit New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals thought differently. Earlier this week, it threatened petition drives, boycotts and letter-writing campaigns.
Stuart Rhodes, the organization's president, said he never thought his group's efforts would be so successful.
"Did I think it would happen as fast as I did? No. I guess like most people I've become very cynical. All too often it seems that profit rules all. This was refreshing," Rhodes said.
The state of New Jersey designates the NJSPCA the enforcer of its animal cruelty laws. Law enforcement takes up a large part of the group's efforts, but Rhodes has stressed more public advocacy since he took over a year ago.
This is the first time the organization has complained to a company about a product, Rhodes said.
Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. is in the process of acquiring the Trolli brand along with other Kraft candy lines as part of a $1.48 billion US deal.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Carmelita
Hunter Thompson's Final Moments
(CBS/AP) "Anita Thompson still slips into the present tense when she talks about her marriage to the legendary writer Hunter S. Thompson, and how her life plunged into a nightmare when he committed suicide last weekend, turning a gun on himself like his idol, Ernest Hemmingway. "He says he has a perfect life now, he loves me very much, he's writing well," she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday. Thompson, best known for wildly original books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," began saying that suicide wasn't a dishonorable thing a few months before he shot himself in the head, his wife said. "He feels at the peak of his life right now, has a very successful career, has a network of perfect friends," she said. "If he quit now, he would feel he was a champion." Anita Thompson said that although she had not thought he would take his life so soon, she had argued furiously against suicide. "I threatened him, 'I'm out of here,' I wouldn't mourn, I would hate him," she said. "That's my biggest regret. I'm so sorry, Hunter. Yeah, that's my biggest regret." Days after losing her husband, Anita Thompson talks calmly, if sometimes tearfully, about the moment he swept her off her feet, the brilliance she saw in his writing, her plans to keep alive his legacy and the love letters he wrote her that help ease the pangs of grief and regret. When a mutual friend introduced them about five years ago, "I got butterflies," she said. Soon they were spending hours together, compiling his letters into a book. "It was wonderful, just so wonderful. I fell in love with him right away." Despite his cultivated image as a drug-driven wild man who invented "gonzo journalism," she saw something else: "This man is not a crazy gonzo freak, this man is a serious man of letters, a Southern gentleman." Hunter Thompson, 67, and his 32-year-old wife lived together at Thompson's home in the hamlet of Woody Creek near Aspen for three years and married April 24, 2003. On Sunday, they talked on the phone when she was at a health club and he was at home. He asked her to come help him on his writing. He set the phone on the tabletop, still on, and she heard clicks that sounded like he had started typing. She tells the Associated Press it was a gesture of love, because he could usually warm any chill between them that way: "All he'd have to do was start writing, and I would start melting at the knees." Now she thinks the clicking noise was her husband loading and cocking the .45-caliber handgun he used to take his life. She said she didn't hear a gunshot before she hung up. However, she earlier told the Aspen Daily News a slightly different version of the story. "I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," she said. Thompson said she heard a loud, muffled noise, but didn't know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone," she told the newspaper. In the first hours after his death, when she rushed back to Woody Creek, she felt horror and then anger, she told the Associated Press. "When I saw his body, that took a lot of the anger away," she said. Now she is working with friends and family on celebrations of Thompson's life and moving ahead with previously launched plans for the Hunter S. Thompson Foundation, dedicated to helping people in the prison system "who don't belong there." She is also rereading the stacks of love letters he sent her. The last one came in early March, when she had fled to her parents' home in Fort Collins. "He did something rude, which is really common for Hunter, and I needed an apology letter," she said. She read the last line, a paraphrase of "Carmelita," a song by one of his favorite artists, Warren Zevon: "I feel calm, sleepy, Carmelita. Hold me, Carmelita. LOCVE" — then he respelled the word, without bothering to remove the misspelling — "LOVE soon come HST." He signed the letter and drew a tiny heart. "Hunter, thank you very much for leaving me all these letters," Anita Thompson said. "I'm so lucky that way.""
(CBS/AP) "Anita Thompson still slips into the present tense when she talks about her marriage to the legendary writer Hunter S. Thompson, and how her life plunged into a nightmare when he committed suicide last weekend, turning a gun on himself like his idol, Ernest Hemmingway. "He says he has a perfect life now, he loves me very much, he's writing well," she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday. Thompson, best known for wildly original books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," began saying that suicide wasn't a dishonorable thing a few months before he shot himself in the head, his wife said. "He feels at the peak of his life right now, has a very successful career, has a network of perfect friends," she said. "If he quit now, he would feel he was a champion." Anita Thompson said that although she had not thought he would take his life so soon, she had argued furiously against suicide. "I threatened him, 'I'm out of here,' I wouldn't mourn, I would hate him," she said. "That's my biggest regret. I'm so sorry, Hunter. Yeah, that's my biggest regret." Days after losing her husband, Anita Thompson talks calmly, if sometimes tearfully, about the moment he swept her off her feet, the brilliance she saw in his writing, her plans to keep alive his legacy and the love letters he wrote her that help ease the pangs of grief and regret. When a mutual friend introduced them about five years ago, "I got butterflies," she said. Soon they were spending hours together, compiling his letters into a book. "It was wonderful, just so wonderful. I fell in love with him right away." Despite his cultivated image as a drug-driven wild man who invented "gonzo journalism," she saw something else: "This man is not a crazy gonzo freak, this man is a serious man of letters, a Southern gentleman." Hunter Thompson, 67, and his 32-year-old wife lived together at Thompson's home in the hamlet of Woody Creek near Aspen for three years and married April 24, 2003. On Sunday, they talked on the phone when she was at a health club and he was at home. He asked her to come help him on his writing. He set the phone on the tabletop, still on, and she heard clicks that sounded like he had started typing. She tells the Associated Press it was a gesture of love, because he could usually warm any chill between them that way: "All he'd have to do was start writing, and I would start melting at the knees." Now she thinks the clicking noise was her husband loading and cocking the .45-caliber handgun he used to take his life. She said she didn't hear a gunshot before she hung up. However, she earlier told the Aspen Daily News a slightly different version of the story. "I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," she said. Thompson said she heard a loud, muffled noise, but didn't know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone," she told the newspaper. In the first hours after his death, when she rushed back to Woody Creek, she felt horror and then anger, she told the Associated Press. "When I saw his body, that took a lot of the anger away," she said. Now she is working with friends and family on celebrations of Thompson's life and moving ahead with previously launched plans for the Hunter S. Thompson Foundation, dedicated to helping people in the prison system "who don't belong there." She is also rereading the stacks of love letters he sent her. The last one came in early March, when she had fled to her parents' home in Fort Collins. "He did something rude, which is really common for Hunter, and I needed an apology letter," she said. She read the last line, a paraphrase of "Carmelita," a song by one of his favorite artists, Warren Zevon: "I feel calm, sleepy, Carmelita. Hold me, Carmelita. LOCVE" — then he respelled the word, without bothering to remove the misspelling — "LOVE soon come HST." He signed the letter and drew a tiny heart. "Hunter, thank you very much for leaving me all these letters," Anita Thompson said. "I'm so lucky that way.""
Monday, February 21, 2005
Hunters gone! Good for Him. Smart Man He Is (or was).
Hunter S. Thompson, Outlaw Journalist, Is Dead at 67
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN Published: February 22, 2005
Hunter S. Thompson, the anger-driven, drug-fueled writer for Rolling Stone magazine whose obscenity-laced prose broke down the wall between reader and writer, writer and subject, shot and killed himself on Sunday at his home in Woody Creek, Colo. He was 67.
His death was reported by the Pitkin County sheriff's office.
At his peak Mr. Thomson reached out in his writing to a generation made cynical by the Vietnam War and the Watergate political scandal and that was prepared to respond to Mr. Thompson's visceral honesty, his creative blend of fact and fantasy, his rage at convention and power.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," published by Random House in 1972, cemented Mr. Thompson's place as a singular presence in American journalism or, as he once called himself, "a connoisseur of edge work." In that semi-fictional work, Mr. Thompson's alter ego, Raoul Duke, and his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, ride from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a convertible loaded up with drugs, in what the book's subtitle describes as "a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream."
But it was his writing as a national political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine that brought Mr. Thompson's rule-breaking style to a broader audience, where his outrageous voice helped refocus the nation's customarily straitlaced political dialogue.
It was while covering the primary race and the presidential campaign between George McGovern and the incumbent Richard M. Nixon in 1972 that Mr. Thompson forced mainstream news organizations to take notice. That year, some of his most acerbic lines were quoted in publications like Newsweek and The New York Times. (A Times writer quoted Mr. Thompson saying Hubert Humphrey was campaigning like "a rat in heat.")
For Mr. Thompson the goal was to tell the truth - at least his version of the truth - and it did not much matter how he got there. "Fiction," Mr. Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2003, "is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."
In more recent years Mr. Thompson seemed a man cornered by his own self-image, marginalized for having stayed put while the generation he once courted - the generation that brandished the slogan "drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll" - turned its attention to issues like property taxes and social security. Mr. Thompson found that the image he built during his adult life, that of the heavy-drinking, drug-using, gun- toting, sharp-tongued social critic with aviator glasses and a cigarette between his lips, had become a cartoon character - literally. Uncle Duke, a character in "Doonesbury," the Garry Trudeau comic strip, was modeled after Mr. Thompson, and the real Mr. Thompson wasn't too thrilled.
"You don't really think of making it in America as being a cartoon character," Mr. Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press in the early 1980's. "It's hard to try and run around and be normal when you're confronted constantly with movies and comic strips."
Yet his early work presaged some of the fundamental changes that have rocked journalism today. Mr. Thompson's approach in many ways mirrors the style of modern-day bloggers, those self-styled social commentators who blend news, opinion and personal experience on Internet postings. Like bloggers, Mr. Thompson built his case for the state of America around the framework of his personal views and opinions.
Hunter Stockton Thompson was born on July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Ky. He was educated in public schools and joined the United States Air Force after high school. There he was introduced to journalism, covering sports for an Air Force newspaper in Florida. He was honorably discharged in 1958 and then worked a series of jobs writing for small-town newspapers. Even before he burst onto the national scene, Mr. Thompson had built a reputation as an eccentric, hard-driving reporter in upstate New York.
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN Published: February 22, 2005
Hunter S. Thompson, the anger-driven, drug-fueled writer for Rolling Stone magazine whose obscenity-laced prose broke down the wall between reader and writer, writer and subject, shot and killed himself on Sunday at his home in Woody Creek, Colo. He was 67.
His death was reported by the Pitkin County sheriff's office.
At his peak Mr. Thomson reached out in his writing to a generation made cynical by the Vietnam War and the Watergate political scandal and that was prepared to respond to Mr. Thompson's visceral honesty, his creative blend of fact and fantasy, his rage at convention and power.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," published by Random House in 1972, cemented Mr. Thompson's place as a singular presence in American journalism or, as he once called himself, "a connoisseur of edge work." In that semi-fictional work, Mr. Thompson's alter ego, Raoul Duke, and his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, ride from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a convertible loaded up with drugs, in what the book's subtitle describes as "a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream."
But it was his writing as a national political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine that brought Mr. Thompson's rule-breaking style to a broader audience, where his outrageous voice helped refocus the nation's customarily straitlaced political dialogue.
It was while covering the primary race and the presidential campaign between George McGovern and the incumbent Richard M. Nixon in 1972 that Mr. Thompson forced mainstream news organizations to take notice. That year, some of his most acerbic lines were quoted in publications like Newsweek and The New York Times. (A Times writer quoted Mr. Thompson saying Hubert Humphrey was campaigning like "a rat in heat.")
For Mr. Thompson the goal was to tell the truth - at least his version of the truth - and it did not much matter how he got there. "Fiction," Mr. Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2003, "is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."
In more recent years Mr. Thompson seemed a man cornered by his own self-image, marginalized for having stayed put while the generation he once courted - the generation that brandished the slogan "drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll" - turned its attention to issues like property taxes and social security. Mr. Thompson found that the image he built during his adult life, that of the heavy-drinking, drug-using, gun- toting, sharp-tongued social critic with aviator glasses and a cigarette between his lips, had become a cartoon character - literally. Uncle Duke, a character in "Doonesbury," the Garry Trudeau comic strip, was modeled after Mr. Thompson, and the real Mr. Thompson wasn't too thrilled.
"You don't really think of making it in America as being a cartoon character," Mr. Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press in the early 1980's. "It's hard to try and run around and be normal when you're confronted constantly with movies and comic strips."
Yet his early work presaged some of the fundamental changes that have rocked journalism today. Mr. Thompson's approach in many ways mirrors the style of modern-day bloggers, those self-styled social commentators who blend news, opinion and personal experience on Internet postings. Like bloggers, Mr. Thompson built his case for the state of America around the framework of his personal views and opinions.
Hunter Stockton Thompson was born on July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Ky. He was educated in public schools and joined the United States Air Force after high school. There he was introduced to journalism, covering sports for an Air Force newspaper in Florida. He was honorably discharged in 1958 and then worked a series of jobs writing for small-town newspapers. Even before he burst onto the national scene, Mr. Thompson had built a reputation as an eccentric, hard-driving reporter in upstate New York.
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