Colombian Artist Depicts Abu Ghraib Abuse

[tuvor]

BOGOTA, Colombia - In a new series of paintings by famed Colombian artist Fernando Botero, Iraqi detainees are shown being beaten by American prison guards, made to wear women's lingerie and suffering other abuse.

Botero has taken his sharpest departure yet from his normally placid scenes of chubby people and other still life paintings and sculptures, which have hung in such places as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo.

He told The Associated Press that he became so upset by prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison that he felt compelled to produce works that would graphically depict it.

"I, like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity, especially because the United States is supposed to be this model of compassion," he said in an interview from his art studio in Paris.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=487&e=2&u=/ap/art_abu_ghraib

[tuvor]

1. Kicking myself.

I thought this was a great story, but no comments. Maybe the evening crowd has some thoughts...?

[RBHam]

2. Look what the BFEE has done to America's reputation...

as ye reap, so shall ye sew

[mopinko]

3. never underestimate a pissed off artist.

i am shocked! i have seen this guy's work in many, many places, and thought of him a as step or 2 above thomas kincaid.
way to go fernando. sometimes there is a real artist lurking under the surface of a guy making a living.
i wish him well. i will be curious to see what happpens to his little cherubs now.