Exceptional-height African-American male.

I'm artsy and ignant, threatening and cuddly, and generally not easily summarized.

[lovedripdrop]

[zibaldoni-elzapoppin]

[wordcubed]

[tkthegoddess]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💋

[wilwheaton]

(via 67rk0gk23p7a1.jpg (JPEG Image, 411 × 613 pixels))

[nerdygaymormon]

“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is a 1991 piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a spilled pile of candy. 

“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) represents a specific body, that of Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torres’ partner who died of AIDS in 1991. This piece of art serves as an “allegorical portrait,” of Laycock’s life. 

The pile of candy consists of commercially available, shiny wrapped confections. The physical form of the work changes depending on the way it is installed. The work ideally weighs 175 pounds (79 kg) at installation, which is the weight of Ross Laycock when healthy. 

Visitors are invited to take a piece of candy from the work. Gonzalez-Torres grew up Roman Catholic and taking a candy is a symbolic act of communion, but instead of taking a piece of Christ, the participant partakes of the “sweetness” of Ross. As the patrons take candy, they are participants in the art. Each piece of candy consumed is like the illness that ate away at Ross’s body.  

Multiple art museums around the world have installed this piece.

Per Gonzalez-Torres’ parameters, it is up to the museum how often the pile is restocked, or whether it is restocked at all. Whether, instead, it is permitted to deplete to nothing. If the pile is replenished, it is metaphorically granting perpetual life to Ross.

In 1991, public funding of the arts and public funding for AIDS research were both hot issues. HIV-positive male artists were being targeted for censorship. Part of the logic of “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is you can’t censor free candy without looking ridiculous, and the ease of replicability of the piece in other museums makes it virtually indestructible.

[wakingfromthewater]

As of late September 2022, the Art Institute of Chicago has changed their exhibit label on this piece to remove any mention of AIDS, Ross Laycock, death, or his relationship with Gonzalez-Torres (via willscullin on Twitter).

Left: old wall text. Right: new wall text as of 9/28/22.

The language they’ve changed to use, talking about “the average body weight of an adult male” is the kind of careful language that art museums might use when we don’t know for sure what something is about – but in this case we do know exactly what the Gonzalez-Torres intended this to be about. (Take it from the Smithsonian if you don’t want it from me!) The museum hasn’t attempted to offer any explanation why, although I cannot think of any unless they wanted to give in object lesson that erasure doesn’t stop even in death.

[vaspider]

As I mentioned in another thread, there is some indication that this may be at the behest of the Estate of the artist, who are, if I may be so succinct, fucking twerps if this is so.

Gonna put this over here too.

[superheroesincolor]

It’s Life as I See it: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940 - 1980 (2021)

 "Between the 1940s and 1980s, Chicago’s Black press—from The Chicago Defender to the Negro Digest to self-published pamphlets—was home to some of the best cartoonists in America. 

Kept out of the pages of white-owned newspapers, Black cartoonists found space to address the joys, the horrors, and the everyday realities of Black life in America. 

From Jay Jackson’s anti-racist time travel adventure serial Bungleton Green, to Morrie Turner’s radical mixed-race strip Dinky Fellas, to the Afrofuturist comics of Yaoundé Olu and Turtel Onli, to National Book Award–winning novelist Charles Johnson’s blistering and deeply funny gag cartoons, this is work that has for far too long been excluded and overlooked. Also featuring the work of Tom Floyd, Seitu Hayden, Jackie Ormes, and Grass Green, this anthology accompanies the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s exhibition Chicago Comics: 1960 to Now, and is an essential addition to the history of American comics.”

by Dan Nadel  (Editor), Ronald Wimberly (Afterword), Charles Johnson (Contributor), Kerry James Marshall (Designer)

Get it here 

[SuperheroesInColor linktr.ee / FB / IG / Twitter / Twitch / Support ]

[depsidase]

[special-lucky-chosen-one]

ART

[annakarenina]

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

postcard c1910

I shall pass through this world but once, any good thing therefore I can do, or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now, let me not defer it or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.

[browsethestacks]

The World Of Becca Blake

Art by Dan Schkade

[anxietyproblem]

[deliriumcrow]

[politicalprof]

Modern American “conservatism” consists of four basic premises:

—if a “conservative” controls the presidency, then every executive order is constitutional.

—if “conservatives” control one or both houses of Congress, “bipartisanship” consists entirely of doing whatever that “conservative” branch of Congress demands.

—if “conservatives” control the Court, every ruling is constitutional.

—if “conservatives” don’t control one or more of these, nothing the “wrong” branch does is constitutional or moral.

Repeat.

[memewhore]

[memewhore]

[tparadox]

[fluoresensitivearchived]

People mad at 5hahem and theericklouis for pointing out that white supremacy and Nazism is what killed that white supremacist's child, so his hateful shit 110% contributed to the violence and mass shooting which is... Anyways, the truth hurts but they're not like, wrong.

[fluoresensitivearchived]

Everyone's pro-gun and a right wing asshole until your pro-gun and right wing asshole behavior leads to their child dying. Terrible that the child is gone. Her father's going to have a lot to consider, if he even bothers

[fluoresensitivearchived]

I really don't see the evil in this, it's just the truth

[fluoresensitivearchived]

She's right, as usual

[africanaquarian]

like the girl’s dad is a white supremacist and they’re so mad at this fact being pointed out it’s mind boggling. like these ideologies are getting kids killed but as long as it’s not your kid it’s whatever. but the dad being “canceled” is the problem

[threesideddream]

how tf do you cancel a dad

[dynastylnoire]

Brown people that think they have white privilege is never not bizarre. He's a white supremacist but those same cops would have killed his ass for reaching for the guns he clings to.

[tikkety-tok]

man is shooting his shot

[millennial-review-deactivated20]

[sprachgefuehle]

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1755), Discourse on the Origin of Inequality