Do you remember how elementary school teachers or parents would try to motivate you to do well in school by telling you that if don’t get good grades, you wont get a good job, and you’ll end up cleaning up elephant dung for a living? Christopher Ofili was born October
Tag: religion
Freedom of religion and Freedom of Speech and Expression: Both are critical cornerstones of the United States constitution. So, what happens when those two come head to head? Well, they did just that when Saturday Night Live, the long-running celebrity sketch show, published a segment that created outrage and asked
In recent years, several communities have been affected by a rise in anti-Muslim incidents and New York City is no exception. In early July of 2017, several newspapers reported on an incident that took place outside of a mosque in Hyde Park, though it is still unclear to reporters and
In 1999, Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary gained controversy where it showed a black-descendant Virgin Mary surrounded in elephant feces and pornographic images in the background. New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani expressed outraged and threatened to cease funding of the Brooklyn Museum where the painting was being held.
In extreme situations, freedom of speech can result in death; Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh is only the most recent example of this horrendous outcome. Over the past two years, Fayadh has been detained by the Saudi Arabian authorities several times. He was first arrested in August 2013 by the Saudi
In the picture above, Diego Velázquez’s 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X is on the left while Francis Bacon’s “Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” is on the right. Francis Bacon’s work entitled “Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” is indicative of classic détournement. When placed
This article is about the passing of Leonard Knight, the creator of Salvation Mountain. In the early 1980’s Knight was driving through the desert when he came across a hill in the community Slab City and decided to “express his pent up religious devotion.” He used adobe, straw, and gallons
Deliberately burning or destroying a Bible to make an artistic or political statement is not novel in this more secular age. What’s so unusual about this exhibit is that the artist, Paul Roorda, isn’t burning Bibles to make a statement against the book or the religion. To destroy a Bible
Art can be interpreted by different people in different ways. Art can even be used in different ways than the artist originally intended. The way a person views art will depend on their religion, race, history, and age. Muslims may look at a picture of The Bible in a toilet
A woman drove across state lines to destroy an art piece displaying “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals.” The lithograph shows Jesus “receiving oral sex” and other sexual innuendos. The artist expressed the attack on his “freedom of speech” and a Councilmember agreed. Perhaps the suspect felt a violation of