Maine Dictatorship
For the last few days I've been following the ongoing saga of Governor Paul LePage's high-handed removal of a 36ft-long mural from the Department of Labor building in Augusta, Maine, USA. Governor LePage is a Republican who regards the mural as biased in favour of organized labour and conflicts with his pro-business agenda. The excellent mural, which took artist Judy Taylor a year to create and was installed in 2008, includes in its 11 panels a variety of workers, as well as strikers and child labourers. Its removal to secret storage on LePage's orders has caused a storm of protest. Mount Holyoke College President Lynn Pasquarella has accused him of rewriting history as in "totalitarian regimes". The contract with artist Judy Taylor has been flouted, in breach of the Berne Convention. A federal lawsuit has now been filed against Dictator LePage (CLICK).
posted by Unknown @ 3.4.11
4 comments
4 Comments:
Diego Rivera was commissioned to produce a large mural for the Rockefeller Center in 1933. It was called "Man at the Crossroads" and covered 1071 sq ft of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Rivera proposed part of the mural would be "the workers of the world inheriting the Earth"[1].
The work was completed and paid for - but never unveiled. Rivera had included a portrait of Lenin which he refused to change.
After a long stand-off it was destroyed by the Rockefellers in 1934. In revenge Rivera created a smaller version in Mexico[2] which also included an unflattering portrait of John D. Rockefeller[3].
[1,3] "The Art of the Rockefeller Center" by Christine Roussel.
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_at_the_Crossroads
The workers of the world inheriting the Earth! That's heresy. Yanks don't go in for all that leftish claptrap. Any nation that prints "In God we trust" on its paper money worships Mammon, whoever else it claims to worship. Did you know there's at least one Temple to Kali in New York City?
Thanks for the link. I vaguely recall comming across Rivera's Mexican version with Lenin, but I didn't know about the Rockefeller connection.
Apparently, the biggest problem in the state of Maine was the need to remove a Labor-hist¬ory mural from the headquarters of the Maine Department of Labor! Way to prioritize, Governor LePage! Job-creation efforts aren't going so well.
LePage seems to be creating work for lawyers, if nobody else. He can't blame a mural for his failure to create jobs. So he's made a really stupid political statement for no good reason.
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