Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Obama separating himself from Jesus sculpture portrayal


The first prominent person to refer to Sen. Barack Obama as "the Messiah" was Illinois House Speaker and fellow Democrat Michael Madigan, but he said it in a derisive fashion.

As numerous news outlets and blogs have reported, School of the Art Institute of Chicago student David Codero created a statue, meant to "create dialogue," of Illinois' junior senator portrayed as Jesus.

The Obama campaign wisely chose not to claim their candidate is the Messiah. A staffer said that the Democratic presidential candidate is not a fan of art that offends religious beliefs, according to CBS 2 Chicago.


The School of the Art Institute has a tradition of outrageous art that seems to succeed in only drawing attention to the artists. In 1988, a painting of Harold Washington in women's underwear was removed from the premises of the school by three Chicago aldermen. As I recall, the artist, David Nelson, was trying to make a point over what he viewed as the undeserved "deification" of the then-recently deceased mayor. Yeah, perhaps the painting is over-the-line, but compared to some of the caricatures I've see of President Bush, it's pretty tame.

Not to be outdone, a year later, an art exhibit that encouraged walking on a United States flag was produced by an artist with the odd name of Dread Scott.

I suppose some whacko student over the years has done a painting of tree or a flower over the years for the school's annual student exhibition. If that happened, I'm sure the student got an 'F.'

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