Over at the L.A. Times today, art critic Christopher Knight went after Big Government for reporting on the White House Christmas trees ornaments and the man, Simon Doonan, tapped to oversee the decorations for the White House.  Knight’s objection to Big Government’s coverage of the administration’s decision to inject left-wing politics into the White House Christmas tree begins and ends with the fact that Andy Warhol was the artist behind the particular image of the murderous Communist dictator Mao Zedong featured on one of the ornaments we brought to your attention.  Knight’s article is excerpted below followed by Breitbart’s take downs and Knight’s response.  Jump in the comments here or head over to the L.A. Times article and join the fray.

“A Warhol Christmas at the White House”
By Christopher Knight, L.A. Times

When it comes to art, the right-wing anti-Obama crowd hasn’t had a very good year. Repeated efforts to gin up outrage in a manufactured culture war have either fallen flat or proved downright embarrassing. (You can see some of them here, here and here.)

The latest fiasco is the Great Christmas Ornament Scandal.

On Tuesday, Andrew Breitbart’sBig Government blog got its knickers in a twist over one of the Obama White House’s myriad Christmas trees. (Big Government is a sibling to Breitbart’s Big Hollywood blog, which cranked up a paranoid fantasy about the National Endowment for the Arts a few months back.) The blaring “EXCLUSIVE” led with a blurry photo of a decoupage Christmas ornament adorned with the face of Chinese Communist dictator, Mao Zedong.

“Of course, Mao has his place in the White House,” Big Government wailed about the GCOS, taking the Obama-as-socialist meme out for a yuletide spin.

Except, it wasn’t exactly Mao. It was Andy Warhol’s “Mao.”

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Part 2 – In The Beginning

1965.  Cafe Bizarre.  Greenwich Village, New York City.

An unknown band takes the stage and begins to play.  The electric viola weeps an unearthly, hypnotic lament, as the singer chants: “Not a ghost-bloodied country, all covered with sleep, where the black angel did weep…’”

–

Perhaps The Black Angel’s Death Song was just a little too bizarre for Cafe Bizarre.  Perhaps the song’s rumored anti-communist message did no go down well in deep-red lower Manhattan.  For whatever reason, The Velvet Underground are promptly fired from their first regular gig for playing the strange and dissonant tune they had been warned not to play.

But the Velvets had secured their future nonetheless:  Andy Warhol was at Cafe Bizarre that night.  He described the audience as “dazed and damaged” after the performance – Warhol loved it.  He took them into his fold and became their manager, producer and sponsor.  He helped them secure their first record contract; he painted the cover for the first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. (more…)

I painted my first American flag in 1997 after viewing Robert Hughes’ PBS series “American Visions” about the history of American art and its coming of age in the fifties. This left me wanting to see Jasper Johns 1954 flag painting so much that I got up the next day, headed to the library, returned home and wound up painting my own flag. I have painted the American flag numerous times since and will continue to do so.

All Quiet on the Western Front, 1997

In 2001 I wanted to create a work of art that would fuse Jasper Johns flag and Andy Warhol’s 32 Campbell Soup Can paintings titled “Choices” with a little Ed Ruscha thrown in for good measure. The soup can paintings were all identical except for the flavors on the cans and that’s what I would do to my Johns inspired flags. All identical, as much as you can make thirty-two separate paintings, except in this case, instead of flavors, each vertical flag painting would have an almost invisible word at the bottom. (more…)