The Pow Wow

[Goonch]

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. I don't get it.

[dchill]

2. Is Clarence's head REALLY that big?

Seems odd.

[Ellipsis]

4. It's a painting.

The news that United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has spent the past 20 years taking undisclosed luxury vacations on the dime of Republican donor Harlan Crow comes with a bizarre art angle: Crow has immortalized their time together in a painting that hangs at his home at Camp Topridge, a massive compound in Upstate New York’s Adirondack Park.

It’s a photo-realistic work that depicts Crow and Thomas with lawyers Peter Rutledge, Leonard Leo, and Mark Paoletta—all described by ProPublica, which broke the story, as “conservative operatives”—sitting in rustic wooden rocking chairs at Crow’s resort. (Leo, a Federalist Society leader, is said to have been instrumental in the confirmation of a third of the Supreme Court’s current justices, including Thomas, who faced allegations of sexual harassment during his hearings.)

Surrounded by verdant trees, the five men sit below statue of a bare-chested Native American man who is reaching up to the heavens. Crow wears a long-sleeved gingham shirt and khaki shorts that end above the knee with strap-on sandals. Thomas has on a striped blue polo shirt and a casual vest with khaki pants and brown shoes. Both men are smoking cigars.

The canvas is the work of Sharif Tarabay, a Montreal illustrator repped by John Brewster Creative Services in Westport, Connecticut. His artistic influences are reportedly 19th- and 20th-century painters—specifically Norman Rockwell and Haddon Hubbard Sundblom, an American illustrator best known for the Coca-Cola Santa Claus, considered to be the first modern depiction of the legendary Christmas saint.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/clarence-thomas-republican-donor-vacation-painting-2282167

[dchill]

5. I know. It seems money really can't buy everything.

[2naSalit]

11. Well...

Egotistically, yes.

[dchill]

13. So. Surrealism, then?

[2naSalit]

15. I suppose...

It is disproportionately large compared to his body and the heads of the others. I mean, his gut is bigger than his head in real life but not in this painting. For what it probably cost, one would think an error of that proportion would have been remedied.

[dchill]

17. In other words, those billionaires got ripped off!

Heh.

[2naSalit]

18. By bad art!

[dchill]

19. It's all bad art if it doesn't have a swastika on it somewhere.

Right, Harlan?

[2naSalit]

21. It does have...

A black person in it too, one not in a subservient position so...

[dchill]

22. So many bad messages in one "work."

[2naSalit]

23. Entirely.

Every element of it is problematic in major ways.

[dchill]

24. Which would be worse - deliberate or blithely unaware?

[Joinfortmill]

3. Just using him.

[2naSalit]

16. ...

They are paying him, though.

[Cobalt Violet]

6. Pretty offensive use of the word Powwow.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. Yep.

[Goonch]

8. pow·wow: informal

pow·wow: informal
a conference or meeting for discussion, especially among friends or colleagues.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

9. So why say powwow when there are clearly alternatives? Especially in front of the statue.

[dchill]

14. Like "gaggle" ...

... or "congress?"

[Cobalt Violet]

25. That is a racist erasure of what an actual Powwow is.

It's not acceptable to use it that way at all. It's deeply offensive to appropriate the word for this any other thing that is not an actual Powwow.

[Goonch]

26. I see your point nevertheless...

Languages are constantly in flux. Changes in lexical meaning alter with each generation, even within the same culture or social group, and languages evolve as new words are developed in line with technology or are borrowed from other languages.

[2naSalit]

12. Yes, it is.

[H2O Man]

20. Very much so.

[Meadowoak]

10. The world would be a much better place if a lightning bolt had

Came out of nowhere and struck all 5 dead.