There has been some media discussion about whether the latest Presidential portrait, of Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley, was actually painted by Chinese artists in China. A 2012 article on Mr. Wiley, “Outsource to China,” (New York), says “These days in Beijing he employs anywhere from four to ten workers…”
This was predicted by a 2009 New Yorker article describing an entire city in China given over to artistic oil painting.
Separately, the New York interview with Mr. Wiley is kind of interesting.
Wiley grew up in South Central Los Angeles, the fifth of six children raised by a single mother on welfare putting herself through grad school in linguistics.
Mom was getting cash from the taxpayer (and maybe from some of the fathers of these six children under California family law?), but she was “putting herself through school”? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that U.S. and California taxpayers were putting her through school? Or possibly one of the men with whom she had sex?
Mr. Wiley displays his knowledge of history:
“Women have always been decorative,” Wiley says, gesturing at the portraits around him. ‘They’ve never been actors or possessed real agency.”
Would it be accurate to say that Catherine the Great did not possess “real agency”?
Your point is taken, tho I think that this is an example of welfare in good hands. I am vaguely aware how extraordinarily difficult it is to get the government to take and pass those midterms and finals.
Mike: At least at Harvard, I don’t think that a government welfare worker, or a computer program working on his/her behalf, would have trouble earning a passing grade. The average GPA at Harvard is an A- (see http://www.businessinsider.com/more-than-half-of-harvards-most-recent-graduates-had-an-a-gpa-or-better-2015-5 ).
Remember that even a D- yields credit toward a degree. See https://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/requirements-honors-degrees
Hmm… I did a little more searching. http://robertsprojectsla.com/artists/wiley/press/2011%20ArtNews.pdf says that mom was studying “African linguistics”. So this was not the conventional academic Chomsky-style linguistics. There is also no suggestion that mom finished her degree. What’s the cash value to the government of funding a half-completed Masters in African linguistics? Does a person who is out of the workforce for several years and studying this subject end up becoming more valuable to employers and therefore paying higher taxes? Given the number of African immigrants to the U.S., if you needed someone with fluency in an African language, wouldn’t it be simpler to hire the native speaker? Or hire an African native speaker in Africa via Skype?
The absurdity meter is off the charts on this one Phil!
And now for the irony, let me quote John Adams: “The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
And so now we’ve reached the point where children can outsource the making of the art itself!
We are so lazy, we don’t even make our own art.