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Mike Bloomberg
is a hypocrite on art
and an art elitist

by Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
April 30, 2002

To the editor,

Mike BloomberBloomberg is a hypocrite on art and an art elitist.

He wants to let Christo wrap all of Central Park in giant swaths of yellow fabric, yet at the same time his lawyers are before the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals trying to prevent a handful of painters, printmakers, photographers and sculptors from displaying art around Central Park .

He cut City funding to arts institutions that help low-income artists while continuing to fund David Rockefeller's Museum of Modern Art renovation.

He donates millions to arts organizations which are fronts for the City's wealthiest corporate interests while having First Amendment protected street artists' displays crushed in garbage trucks.

Mike Bloomberg made his billions as part of the media, but he seems to have zero tolerance for the rights of artists.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)

* Click Here for ruling on street artists.

The NY Post 4/30/2002
By JAMES GARDNER

'ART' VS. THE PARK

April 30, 2002 -- IT was dumb for Christo, the internationally hyped conceptual artist, even to propose wrapping Central Park in giant swaths of yellow fabric. It is even dumber that our municipal custodians may very well let him get away with it. Christo has been out to disrupt our use of the park for years now, only to be deterred by certain hard-headed people in power who know self-promotion when they see it. They have taken to heart a study from the '80s that concluded that the project, known as "The Gates," would cause lasting damage to the park.

But now, with a change of administrations and a mayor who describes Christo and his wife and collaborator Jeanne-Claude as "friends," the project is closer than ever to becoming reality.

The plan is to cover every path in Central Park, for a period of two weeks, in cloth suspended on metal rods. And it's every bit as cockamamie as it sounds. Just what New York needs, more scaffolding! Indeed, 23 miles of it, and in the one part of the city that has not yet been disfigured by this contagion!

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have a history of wrapping up national sites: The Reichstag in Berlin, the Pont Neuf in Paris and part of the coast of Australia have all been defaced by their interventions. In Japan, a few years back, one of their projects was so ill assembled that it fell over and people died.

We have yet to hear a plausible or even sane reason for any of Christo's works: wrapping monuments in cloth, after all, is not only pointless and expensive, but uninteresting to look at. The real reason behind them, one suspects, is that each project is a massive advertisement for Christo himself, a way for him, by invoking art, to insert himself into, and thus to disrupt, the lives of a whole lot of people.

His offer to pay for the project out of his own pocket is a distraction and a joke. This massive ego-trip will reap him a bonanza of free publicity, not to mention ample recompense through sales of signed documentation and photographs, which is where conceptual artists traditionally cash in.

Egotism on such a titanic scale is endurable if the maniac in question is, say, Richard Wagner. In the case of a talent less dullard like Christo it is quite intolerable.

In the months to come, you will hear two arguments for why "The Gates" should go up. One is that they will generate interest in the city as well as a great deal of publicity. That line of reasoning may do for Cold Springs, Mont., but New York is already universally acknowledged as the cultural center of the world.

More insidious is the argument, implicit or otherwise, that Christo represents KULCHUR and that anyone who opposes his latest whim is a Philistine.

Such reasoning might have made sense regarding Pollock or Van Gogh. It's positively laughable in the context of Christo's opportunistic hustle.

And though it might have gotten him somewhere half a century ago, when Americans were still insecure about their standing vis-à-vis European culture, today no New Yorker feels that way or should feel that way.

Far more pressing is that New Yorkers, who have always had a reputation for being the toughest customers around, should not expose themselves to the ridicule of the world by falling for Christo's transparent scam. Nor should they allow themselves to be deprived of the finest park in existence simply because a few people in power didn't have the character or the spine to oppose this faker.

James Gardner is The Post's art critic.

From:
Story source

NY Newsday CITY INC. Business Section
By Julie Claire Diop STAFF WRITER
May 20, 2002

Street Artists Refuse
to Be Curbed

SoHo art vendors complain
of police, gallery harassment

Since he arrived from Ecuador six years ago, seeking the city's art lovers and community of artists, Amaru Chiza has gone to jail four times for selling his prints and acrylic paintings in SoHo without a permit.

So as another painter handed out fliers decrying city officials in an effort to open SoHo's sidewalks to street artists, Chiza discussed his good fortune. "I sold four prints and one original today," he said, smiling broadly under his red cap. "I can pay my bills."

Chiza spends his weekends on West Broadway between Spring and Prince streets, selling framed prints for $30 to $35 and acrylic paintings for $300 and up. He studied art in Ecuador, and the pictures he displayed on a recent warm Saturday ranged from an abstract acrylic painting with an orchestra of blues to a watercolor of a nude shrouded in red. (The city no longer requires artists to have permits.)

Chiza said he was one of six people who sold art on SoHo's streets in 1996. Now on weekends, he leaves his uptown apartment before 5 a.m. to secure "his spot" in front of a Dolce & Gabbana boutique on West Broadway, though customers do not show up until 11 a.m.

He said the 100 artists who show up on nice weekends owe their opening to his friend Robert Lederman, who's fought the city in court, and landed in jail 41 times. Although they've won five court victories, the artists still fight with galleries, police and others who resent them taking over the neighborhood's sidewalks and competing for shoppers' money.

Lederman, who sells caricatures of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani with Mickey Mouse ears, became an activist in 1994 when the city began arresting artists. "The false arrests made me look into the laws, the need to organize protests and to alert the public to the arrest policy," he said.

During the last three decades, SoHo has changed from blocks of brooding warehouses, to a community of artists, to a neighborhood of galleries, to today's mix of high-end boutiques and upscale restaurants. Some say the changes have made the neighborhood less hospitable for less-established artists.

On a recent Saturday, one artist called the police when a latecomer wedged into an open spot (the city mandates 3 feet between vendors). Lederman, who hates to see artists fighting, stepped in and offered the latecomer his space, which she accepted.

Chiza, whose unfading optimism seems to inspire the artists around him, comes for its heavy foot traffic, and for contacts. A Michigan gallery will host a show of his paintings in June. The gallery's owner first met Chiza on West Broadway.

The Manhattan resident also has made valuable friendships with customers. An Italian prince bought two of his paintings in 1998 and invited Chiza to his residence in Milan. The prince bought two more in 1999 and renewed the invitation. Chiza is planning a trip after his Michigan exhibit.

"I meet so many beautiful people in SoHo," he said.

Phebe Carter, director of the Franklin Bowles Gallery at 431 W. Broadway, said several staff members buy pieces from the artists who exhibit outside the gallery.

Inside, the art ranges from $500 prints to $100,000 originals. The gallery rarely represents new artists, and customers come for pieces they cannot find along West Broadway. "It tends to be a different aesthetic between the artists outside and in the gallery," Carter said.

Although she admires some of the works she sees along the sidewalks, Carter meets most of the artists she represents through referrals. "It's about looking at artists over time, the amount of work they have done and their background," she said.

Her place is one of the friendlier galleries to the street artists, according to Lederman, who said other galleries' staffers and residents sometimes throw buckets of water at displays, call the police every weekend and even threatened to shoot him. He does not consider the police a resource. Officers refused to file a report when two residents came after him with knives because the men did not cut him, according to Lederman.

He has spent eight years waging legal battles against the city through Artists' Response to Illegal State Tactics (ARTIST), which has about 800 members, 200 of whom are active. Lederman said the Bloomberg administration has been even more difficult to work with than the Giuliani administration.

He is outraged that police brought garbage trucks April 6 and destroyed artists' displays, calling the displays abandoned property. Lederman has asked artists to bring tape recorders and cameras with them to document run-ins with the police. "Police are stealing art displays all over the city," he said.

Brian Burke, a spokesman for the police department, said the police responded to ongoing community complaints that day. He said artists are leaving display cases in SoHo Friday nights to reserve spots. "You can only give so many warnings," he said. "At some point you have to take action."

He said garbage trucks are "a means to temporarily rectify the situation." Police did not take art April 6.

"The most fair resolution we believe is to display merchandise when the artists are physically available," Burke said.

Painter Manuel Servin cringes whenever he sees the police. "It's just inexcusable to keep giving us a hard time," he said. "They're abusing us."

The Alliance for Downtown New York has run up against artists and vendors below Canal Street, according to Lederman. Carl Wiesbrod, its president, said street vendors create congestion downtown, and his group is seeking a balance among the rights of vendors and of pedestrians and stores. "We have proposed vendors be limited to specific locations," he said. "How many street vendors can be on any given street?"

Long-time residents give the artists a lukewarm reception. "I don't find them objectionable," said John M., who didn't want his full name used. "They have to have a means of earning a living."

He prefers "true artists" to people who sell mass-produced pieces, some of which he considers junk. Still, he said, "A couple of years ago I bought two watercolors from a Chinese artist [on the corner]. I still have them up."

John Iklae plans to move from Sydney to be part of a vibrant art scene. He is following the path of many of the immigrant artists from all over the world who sell in the neighborhood, eager to make their break in the Big Apple. As a newcomer he marvels at the number of artist stands. He will soon learn that selling art on the street has downsides.

Painter Christian Landier, who tries to make a living from his art, said his pictures sell better at art fairs, but weekends when he does not have a fair, he comes to West Broadway. "I like people to compliment me on my work," said the Manhattan resident. "It inspires me."

After the court cases brought by Lederman's organization, the city allows artists up to 8 feet of space as long as they do not block pedestrian traffic. When Landier noticed three police officers walking by recently, he adjusted his stand to make it appear smaller. "You just have to worry about the cops," he said. "They used to confiscate the artwork." Like Chiza, Landier has gone to jail for selling his paintings in SoHo.

He sells large abstract pictures with blocks of bright colors as well as city street scenes for $300 to $500 - higher than most people will pay. "I could go several months without selling anything," said the 64-year-old Slovenia native. "Sometimes I don't get by. I beg friends for food. I live from week to week."

So Landier has become flexible on prices. "No matter how cheap it is, they always want it for less," he said, frowning. "That's all right. I'm used to it."

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Robert Lederman is an artist, writer and activist and is also the President of the street artist advocacy group, A.R.T.I.S.T.
Click here for an archive of A.R.T.I.S.T. related news articles on the Freedom Forum website

His essays and Op-Eds have appeared in hundreds of alternative publications as well as the Daily News, Penthouse, Africa Sun Times, Street News and The Shadow.
Lederman was falsely arrested 41 times for his anti-Giuliani activities and was never convicted of any of the charges. As a result of the arrests, he's won four Federal lawsuits and overturned three laws.
He is best known for having created hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator which were carried in demonstrations throughout the eight years of the Giuliani administration. Images of his paintings and articles about his arrests and lawsuits have appeared on all of the major television networks hundreds of times as well as frequently appearing in the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, LA Times and NY Magazine.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

For a detailed exposition on the West Nile issue
http://www.nospray.org/
For an article on the Manhattan Institute go to
http://www.konformist.com/2000/rudyg.htm

If you would like to help oppose the spraying,
please write to the
No Spray Coalition
PO Box 334
Peck Slip Station
NYC, NY 10272-0334
or call the No Spray hotline at (718) 670-7110.

Any funds you can send to help continue the lawsuit
and this work are greatly appreciated.

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

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