{"id":149,"date":"2014-07-30T02:14:37","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T06:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2014-09-01T19:02:22","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T23:02:22","slug":"that-which-offends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"That Which Offends"},"content":{"rendered":"<table width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"10\" cellspacing=\"10\" bgcolor=\"#000000\">\n<tr>\n<td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\" bgcolor=\"99CC99\">\n<div align=\"left\">\n<div id=\"content\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/yabanji.tripod.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Dickinson<\/a> is a very rude man. He creates unpleasant images. <\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonwindowshoppingsm.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"220\" height=\"336\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonfoodwastecu.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"220\" height=\"336\" \/><\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">His work is tedious. It&#8217;s preachy. It&#8217;s pretentious. Oh, children are starving. Oh, goodness. Oh, voracious consumption is bad. Oh, woe is me. Oh, our values are debased.  <\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonkids2sm.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"220\" height=\"336\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonicecreamsm.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"220\" height=\"336\" \/> <\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Give me a break. It&#8217;s easy to see why he&#8217;s hardly a blip in the Art World. Sure, there may be some talent here. Some sense of aesthetics. Perhaps he could start doing something more&#8230;abstract. Something powerful. <\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsontorturesm2.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"459\" height=\"336\" \/> <\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But no. He keeps doling out the same old crapola. His depictions of American foreign policy can be most tiresome. Of course, we&#8217;re all against torture. We don&#8217;t <i>wish<\/i> to hurt people. But in the neverending war against global terrorism, we&#8217;ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette. <\/p>\n<p>Perhaps many, many, many eggs.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonmotorcadesm.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"275\" height=\"347\" \/> <\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And to show American leaders in such an unflattering light? That&#8217;s libelous. And just plain wrong. Dickinson has a particular obsession with President George W. Bush. What&#8217;s Bush ever done to him? <\/p>\n<p>Nothing, that&#8217;s what. But still Dickinson makes his disagreeable implications.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonstatuesm.jpg\" border=\"10\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"249\" height=\"360\" \/> <\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Historically, photomontage has been used for powerful political expression and outrage.  But that was then. Back in history. When Hitler walked the streets, and the world was a terrible, terrible place. Now it&#8217;s far more complicated. We need some courtesy. Some restraint. We need afffirmative images. Positive things. Not offensive depictions that no one cares about in the slightest.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonbushcasketcu.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"400\" height=\"322\" \/> <\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Dickinson has even created scenes that reveal his own dark fantasies &#8211; clearly something that no respectable artist should indulge in.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.surfingthespectacle.com\/images\/uploads\/dickinsonjesusassassm.jpg\" border=\"5\" alt=\"image\" name=\"image\" width=\"300\" height=\"281\" \/> <\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">One can only ask, how can this madman be stopped? You&#8217;ll be relieved to know that the Turkish government may have found an answer. More on that next time.<\/p>\n<div align=\"left\"><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Dickinson is a very rude man. He creates unpleasant images. His work is tedious. It&#8217;s preachy. It&#8217;s pretentious. Oh, children are starving. Oh, goodness. Oh, voracious consumption is bad. Oh, woe is me. Oh, our values are debased. Give me a break. It&#8217;s easy to see why he&#8217;s hardly a blip in the Art [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}