Arts and Arts News, July 23, 2009

Art Review
The van Gogh of the Gross-Out
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: July 22, 2009, New York Times
If you were a preteenager in the 1950s and had precocious friends or a with-it dad, it’s a good bet you knew the cartoons of Basil Wolverton, the Michelangelo of Mad magazine, even if you didn’t know his name.

Like rock ’n’ roll and beatniks, Mad was a freakish spawn of the A-bomb era. It was like an emanation from some dark, Dada side of Disney; a stink bomb planted in the suburban Eden; and a preview of the underground-comics era to come. Wolverton, who is the subject of a career survey at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea this summer, was Mad’s early signature artist, the one who embodied its sick-and-proud humor.

Read more http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/arts/design/23basil.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

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For New Leader of Arts Endowment, Lessons From a Shaky Past - NYTimes.com, July 23, 2009
Although it may be hard to remember now, there was a time when the National Endowment for the Arts seemed to be on solid footing, both financially and politically, and could spend its days quietly financing artists and arts groups at its discretion.
The N.E.A. was criticized for financing works by artists like Karen Finley, who performed chocolate-smeared pieces.
Then came the controversies — Robert Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic photographs, Karen Finley’s chocolate-smeared performance pieces, Andres Serrano’s urine-immersed crucifix and others — and from the late 1980s onward, the endowment seemed to be constantly under siege.
Read more http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/arts/23funding.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

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