To: President Trump

Dear Art Buddy

I used to hate George W’s guts until I saw his artwork, that is not that good. However, George is very happy. George and I can talk. Painting makes him happy. The easiest way to make a lot of friends, is take up art. His bathtub with toes, is a great piece. He took a risk. He has Art Buddies all over the world, now! He has real power! Everyone loves W. This is not the case, if you submerge a image of Jesus in your own urine. This piece caused Jessie Helms to go after the NEA which your gang is doing. All Artists are going to made to suffer because of one female artist. This is……..Nazi-ish.

I can’t do this! I can’t remain positive! To hear Spicer go into another tirade about how cruel the Press is, while at the same time your business freaks prepare to end funding for the Arts, and Alternative Radio and Television, is my ongoing fight that has consumed my whole life. The art of Jacob Epstein has been attacked, along with ‘Piss Christ’. The bust of Winston Churchill was done by an artist who is accused of being obscene! This will not do! First you attack a ‘Golf Buddy’ fight over the work of a ‘Art Buddy’ and now you launch a propaganda campaign against the ‘Press Buddy’. A writer writes about you, and your goons throw him off your golf course.

Get rid of that Pipsqueak, Spicer. He can’t hang with us Bohemians. He’s not Moulin Rouge material. He reminds me of Joe Friday’s sidekick. Not cool! Talk to W. He had a thing for Putin, too. Treat him to a round. Ask him in the locker room if those are Putin’s legs. Get back to your tolerant self. I don’t want to scold you again!

P.S. I hear Putin has really taken a liking to Sean. Is this true?

P.S.S. Just found out the bust of King thingy-wingy was a fraud. This Art Thing can be your downfall. You’re in the middle of a landmine, and don’t know it. I am a Patriot. I am for hire. You’re becoming sensitive in a bad way. You and Spicer are too thin-skinned. We artists hear “no” all the time. Vincent got a big “NO” – and sliced off his ear. He had guts, while Spicer hides, you, and himself behind that bust of Churchill as you both lash out at the press for what amounts to an optical illusion. We artists are master of illusion. So, quit your whining! It is obvious to me you are a frustrated artist. You need an empty canvas, and twenty pounds of clay!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/crowd-controversy-the-making-of-an-inauguration-day-photo/ar-AAm9LFP?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Spicer is a real bitch. He’s going to get us into a nuclear war. Make him wear a beret and smoke a cigarette in a long holder the next time. Tell him to calm the fuck down! Don’t act suave – be suave!

Jon Presco

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/sean-spicer-press-feud-martin-luther-king-bust-234055

“Spicer called the report “racially charged” on Monday and said Miller’s apology to his “colleagues,” sent out on Twitter, was insufficient, even though Spicer had indicated previously, writing from the official press secretary account, that he “accepted” it.

“Where was the apology to the president of the United States?” Spicer asked Monday. “Where was the apology to millions of people who read that and thought how racially insensitive that was?”

“And over and over again, the MLK bust. I think over and over again there’s this constant attempt to undermine his credibility and the movement that he represents. And it’s frustrating for not just him, but I think so many of us that are trying to work to get this message out.”

“SPICER: No. No, look, I’ve been doing this a long time, you’ve been doing this too. I’ve never seen it like this, Jim, I’ve never — and again, I’m not looking to go back and forth, but you’re asking for an explanation.

And I think that it’s important to understand, that whether it’s the president himself, the vice president, the senior team, the volunteers or the people who are out there just in America that voted for him or walked the streets or put up a sign, that to constantly be told no, no, no and watch him go yes, yes, yes every time and to come up to the next hurdle and see someone put a block up gets a little frustrating.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/23/sean-spicers-defense-of-himself-and-explanation-of-donald-trumps-sensitivity-annotated/?utm_term=.3e04442b6ebe

https://rosamondpress.com/2017/01/04/t-bone-tees-off-on-old-foe/

Donald Trump personally booted the author of an unflattering biography off Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Friday. Harry Hurt III, who penned the 1993 biography, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, had come to play with billionaire industrialist David. H. Koch, a Trump club member, and two other golfers.

One of the most famous of Epstein’s early commissions is the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, “which was condemned as indecent and at one point was covered in tarpaulin by the French police.”^[

I wanted to make the point that there is real censorhip over what Hitler called ‘Degenerate Art.

On April 17, 2011, a print of Piss Christ was vandalized “beyond repair” by Christian protesters while on display during the Je crois aux miracles (I believe in miracles) exhibition at the Collection Lambert, a contemporary art museum in Avignon, France.^[17][18] Serrano’s photo The Church was similarly vandalized in the attack.

Beginning September 27, 2012, Piss Christ was on display at the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery in New York, at the Serrano show Body and Spirit.^[19] Religious groups and some lawmakers called for President Barack Obama to denounce the artwork, comparing it to the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims that the White House had condemned earlier that month.

London was not ready for Epstein’s first major commission – 18 large nude sculptures made in 1908 for the façade of Charles Holden‘s building for the British Medical Association on The Strand (now Zimbabwe House) were initially considered shocking to Edwardian sensibilities, again mainly due to the perception that they were over-explicit sexually. In art-historical terms, however, the Strand sculptures were controversial for quite a different reason: they represented Epstein’s first thoroughgoing attempt to break away from traditional European iconography in favour of elements derived from an alternative sculptural milieu – that of classical India. The female figures in particular may be seen deliberately to incorporate the posture and hand gestures of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu art from the subcontinent in no uncertain terms.^[11][12] The current, mutilated condition of many of the sculptures is also not entirely connected with prudish censorship; the damage was caused in the 1930s when possibly dangerous projecting features were hacked off after pieces fell from one of the statues.

One of the most famous of Epstein’s early commissions is the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, “which was condemned as indecent and at one point was covered in tarpaulin by the French police.”^[13]

Immersion (Piss Christ) is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art‘s “Awards in the Visual Arts” competition,^[1] which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects.

Description[edit]

The photograph is of a small plastic crucifix submerged in what appears to be a yellow liquid. The artist has described the substance as being his own urine in a glass.^[2][3] The photograph was one of a series of photographs that Serrano had made that involved classical statuettes submerged in various fluids—milk, blood, and urine.^[4] The full title of the work is Immersion (Piss Christ).^[5][6] The photograph is a 60-by-40-inch (150 by 100 cm) Cibachrome print. It is glossy and its colors are deeply saturated. The presentation is that of a golden, rosy medium including a constellation of tiny bubbles. Without Serrano specifying the substance to be urine and without the title referring to urine by another name, the viewer would not necessarily be able to differentiate between the stated medium of urine and a medium of similar appearance, such as amber or polyurethane.^[7]

Serrano has not ascribed overtly political content to Piss Christ and related artworks, on the contrary stressing their ambiguity. He has also said that while this work is not intended to denounce religion, it alludes to a perceived commercializing or cheapening of Christian icons in contemporary culture.^[8]

The art critic Lucy R. Lippard has presented a constructive case for the formal value of Serrano’s Piss Christ, which she characterizes as mysterious and beautiful.^[7] She writes that the work is “a darkly beautiful photographic image… the small wood and plastic crucifix becomes virtually monumental as it floats, photographically enlarged, in a deep rosy glow that is both ominous and glorious.” Lippard suggests that the formal values of the image can be regarded separately from other meanings.^[9]

Reception[edit]

In 1987, Serrano’s Piss Christ was exhibited at the Stux Gallery in New York and was favorably received.^[10] The piece later caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1989, with detractors, including United States Senators Al D’Amato and Jesse Helms, outraged that Serrano received $15,000 for the work, and $5,000 in 1986^[11] from the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts. Serrano received death threats and hate mail, and he lost grants due to the controversy.^[12] Others alleged that the government funding of Piss Christ violated the separation of church and state.^[13][14]

Sister Wendy Beckett, an art critic and Catholic nun, stated in a television interview with Bill Moyers that she regarded the work as not blasphemous but a statement on “what we have done to Christ”: that is, the way contemporary society has come to regard Christ and the values he represents.^[15]

During a retrospective of Serrano’s work at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in 1997, the then Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, sought an injunction from the Supreme Court of Victoria to restrain the National Gallery of Victoria from publicly displaying Piss Christ, which was not granted. Some days later, one patron attempted to remove the work from the gallery wall, and two teenagers later attacked it with a hammer.^[13] Gallery officials reported receiving death threats in response to Piss Christ.^[16] The director of the NGV cancelled the show, allegedly out of concern for a Rembrandt exhibition that was also on display at the time.^[13] Supporters argued that the controversy over Piss Christ is an issue of artistic freedom and freedom of speech.^[16]

Piss Christ was included in “Down by Law”, a “show within a show” on identity politics and disobedience that formed part of the 2006 Whitney Biennial. The British Channel 4 TV documentary Damned in the USA explored the controversy surrounding Piss Christ.

On April 17, 2011, a print of Piss Christ was vandalized “beyond repair” by Christian protesters while on display during the Je crois aux miracles (I believe in miracles) exhibition at the Collection Lambert, a contemporary art museum in Avignon, France.^[17][18] Serrano’s photo The Church was similarly vandalized in the attack.

Beginning September 27, 2012, Piss Christ was on display at the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery in New York, at the Serrano show Body and Spirit.^[19] Religious groups and some lawmakers called for President Barack Obama to denounce the artwork, comparing it to the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims that the White House had condemned earlier that month.^[20]