Art Pottery, Politics and Food
Thursday, August 28, 2003
 
Wartime for Bonzo

I guess the buildings and extras
are bluescreened in?

To me, the above photograph better resembles some guy and a geezer fireman at the town dump more than a dramatic recreation of President Bush's megaphone/photo op with the post 9/11 NYC Firemen and Rescue Workers.
Thanks to the VillageVoice.com, we get a stomach-turning glimpse of Showtime’s chintzy DC9/11: Time of Crisis a fictionalized attempt, it seems, to further thicken the Fog of War from the September 11 terrorist attack while glossing Bush Junior’s electability.
An accompanying set of laughable publicity stills, published with the article, confirms the amateur budget of the White House-assisted production by eponymous Hollywood conservative Lionel Chetwynd:

Scheduled for cablecast on September 7, "DC 9/11" inaugurates Bush's re-election campaign 50 weeks before the 9-11 Memorial Republican National Convention opens in Madison Square Garden. "DC 9/11" also marks a new stage in the American cult of personality: the actual president as fictional protagonist. There are, of course, precedents. "One of the original aspects of Soviet cinema is its daring in depicting contemporary historical personages, even living figures," André Bazin dryly observed in his 1950 essay, "The Myth of Stalin in the Soviet Cinema." It was one of the unique characteristics of Stalin-era Soviet movies that their infallible leader was regularly portrayed, by professional impersonators, as an all-wise demiurge in suitably grandiose historical dramas.

Meanwhile, on the Art Pottery and Feminist Art History front, I’m wetting my pants with excitement over a new book by Cincinnati Art Museum Curator of Decorative Arts Anita J. Ellis.

The book, The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin, showcases the first American to develop a technique for under glaze painting.
The book, months tardy from it’s original June publication date, is published by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Ohio University Press and is available through both organizations as well as Amazon.com. My copy, ordered in March, arrived Monday.
I am savoring my read as though the book were a small tasty chocolate. An enjoyable book, Ms. Ellis has also written an important book with terrific photographs and, what is becoming standard for her publications, an excellent section of records and marks.
A must read for the American Art Pottery fan and anyone interested in American women’s first assaults upon the male social fortress.

Photos: Sean and Ken Woroner/Showtime
- posted by Sean @ 1:28 PM
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