Oil on Canvas. Triptych: 3 canvases, each 72″ Wide x 48″ High
“Absurdity: In Dada We Trust” The Art Center Highland Park, July 2023
The Making of a Fiasco Showing the Destruction of a Democracy draws upon formal and thematic elements from Diego Rivera’s The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City (1931) which depicts the artist and his assistants as they paint a fresco illustrating the involvement of many — planners, architects and tradesmen — in building San Francisco. The Worker dominates the composition. Larger-than-life, in blue work clothes, his large hands are at work controlling machinery. Reading about the painting’s endangered (now landmark) status, I was struck by the parallels between Rivera’s composition and the structure of the events of January 6th. What we now know about the Capitol Insurrection is that it was orchestrated by a host of figures, remote and proximate, the powerful and the not-so-powerful, both within and outside our institutions. We know that the riot itself was fueled by misinformation and the deep grievance embedded in American racism, nativism and classism.
Study for the Making of a Fiasco Showing the Destruction of a Democracy
Graphite and Colored Pencil on Paper
“The Big Lie” York College, PA, Marketview Arts Center January, 2022
This color pencil sketch for a painting-in-progress, a triptych, depicts the Capitol building in flames, beset by a tornado, engulfed in smoke. Senators, led by Josh Hawley, gather to watch. In the place of Rivera’s Worker sits Trump, who appears to be a man of leisure. Seated in the the Lincoln Memorial throne, he is dressed for a game of golf, holding a putter as a scepter. Surrounded by Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Congress members that supported the Big Lie, he also holds a remote control that points at Manafort, Stone and Tom Barrack. Appearing in what appears to be the Senate Chamber, are Senators McConnell and Graham, and Minority Leader McCarthy. Their central location and the beacon of light directed at them reflect their shirked responsibility to operate as a check on the President. They stand beneath the motto “Unum Super Omnia” (One Over All) as they tear up the Constitution. Above them, also central, Attorney General Bill Barr, aided by Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, put their thumbs on the scales of justice while Secretary of State Pompeo looks on. The central figures are flanked by two pipelines representing the apparatuses of regressive forces. The first, in red, represents Neo-Fascist forces within the administration (Bannon, Miller, Nielsen) and Russian interference (Flynn, Kislyak, Sondland). Bannon, depicted as a crouching creature with talons, hands a memo up the pipeline; perhaps it is the plan he hatched with Giuliani at the Hotel Willard War Room. The second pipe, representing sensationalist “yellow journalism” leads from Kellyanne Conway’s Press Room up to Fox News’ Hannity and Carlson. Below, flag-waving insurrectionists flow in a river of darkness to invade the Capitol. Sidney Powell and the Q-Anon Shaman preside over the unleashing of the Kracken, as the Grim Reaper appears beneath the Trump 2020 banner. The chaotic scene below belies the structured work of those above, whose actions over the course of the Trump presidency gave birth to the Big Lie.