He is the one who has been making the news lately with his “artwork” on display by the Center for Latin American History in the “conservative bastion” of Berkeley. His series of rather crude paintings and drawings showing obese inmates being abused by obese US soldiers and overfed dogs in the now famous Abu Ghraib internment camp for terrorist is making front-page news and contributing to the American guilt trip.
He is also a wise guy, and his “a propos” world tour of the American abuses is providing a new fame to somebody who was only know for his fat naked women treated “abstract Renaissance” style and for his early pieces of art on Colombian violence. He came from Colombia and teamed with Berkeley “to address this country’s history”. Nice!
Botero once said, “In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.” In this case, mister Botero, your art is not history either, deformation all right and disinformation for sure!
When is Botero, or better Berkeley, an American place of “higher learning”, going to show us the execution videos of Nick Berg, or pictures of the bodies of tortured Iraqis that died in sectarian violence, the Geneva convention and the laws of war that are broken every day by the terrorists? When is the last time the Center for Latin American History have showed students the effects of the dictatorship in Cuba or Mexico, and the violence induced by the drug cartel in Colombia? What about Chavez and his absolute power grab in Venezuela, pictures or artwork depicting victims of the right wing and left wing oppressive regimes and “death squads” that have taken turns at the helm of most of the South American countries, etc, etc.
For the kick of it, I contacted Berkeley, both the library and center for Latin American History – and got no reply at all!
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