abu ghraib as only an artist could do it

Fernando Botero's exhibit "Abu Ghraib," an obsessive's several dozen oils and drawings of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has now left he art gallery down the hall at American University's Katzen Center, where I work. I would say I'll miss it, but it was very hard to look at. By using a muted palette (except for blood-red), by varying the skintones of his victims to imply all races, not just Iraqis, and by focusing on the victims in a timeless, painterly but not "beautiful" way, Botero did what only an artist can.

He ripped through the veil of blah-blah we shroud upon ourselves iwth our overexposure to "both sides," to "necessary war," and the like. His paintings were about human diugnity in the face of indignity imposed. Decades from now, who were the victims and who were the torturers will be a footnote at best. The paintings, which Botero created over an intense few months from his imagination and the few photographs that accompanied the original Seymour Hersh article, are both remarkable by themselves and, in the context of the endless war on terror, which we fight WITH terror, a testament to the power of an artist to tell the truth. In a way that no one else can.

The other ugly truth is: no one else in the U.S., except for a library in Berkeley, would show these works. All the major museums gutlessly passed, while little American University was left with the honor. For which we thank our director, Jack Rasmussen, and our president, Neil Kerwin, who had the guts to let this go forward.

If only Michael Mukasey had come before his hearings, he would have seen waterboarding in a way that no one could ever forget.