Painting and Politics

Just this week, Gainesville State College instructor and painter Stanley Bermudez demonstrated that political provocation is hardly limited to performance and activism, when his painting Heritage? was removed from a faculty show after a wave of local criticism.

I'm honestly not going out of my way to look for these stories, but the current political/cultural moment keeps throwing them out there. We seem to be replaying the 1980's culture wars – the NEA battles, Karen Finley, Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe and North Carolina's own Jesse Helms(JStor id and password required) – with a new cast of artists and a range of new and old opponents.