Some of My Best Friends are Modernists

"Hello, I'm Peggy Jones, and this is New Breeze"

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"On today's show we talk with painter Colin Palmer, whose new exhibit at the Harper Museum has created a firestorm of controversy over it's irreverent depictions of historical world figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa. The exhibit ends its run at the Harper next week, and then will be moving on for a 6 week showing at the M.W. Simpson Museum in Chicago. Colin Palmer, welcome to New Breeze."

"Thank you Peggy. It's a pleasure to be here."

"Tell me about the exhibit. Were you suprised by the amount of controversy it's created?"

"Yes I was. As an artist, of course, I always want to try to provoke the audience and really get them to think about my paintings and the issues surrounding them, but, frankly, I've been a little overwhelmed by the amount of criticism and really nasty things that people in the media have been saying about me. I just never expected this kind of hostility."

"Do you mean hostility in any kind of a physical way, or..."

"No, not physical. Just a very outspoken kind of backlash, I guess."

"One of the paintings that has been the subject of a lot of criticism is your 'Lincoln Taking a Leak'. Why did you paint that, and why do you think people are so upset by it?"

"Well, people like Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa have become so iconic..."

"You're referring to 'Mother Teresa Gets Her Colonoscopy', another one of your paintings on exhibit?"

"Yes, that's right. These historical figures have become so iconic that they've become almost meaningless in modern society. As an artist, I wanted to shatter these icons and try to find a new perspective and insight into who these people really were. I didn't want to just be a portraitist, but really change the entire way we think of them."

"So, by painting Abraham Lincoln urinating in the bushes, you think people will, I don't know, re-examine their attitudes and beliefs?"

"Sure. Lincoln wasn't just the man who abolished slavery and preserved the union, but he was also a person; a person who eats and sleeps and has to go to the bathroom. When I concieved this painting I found that idea very deep."

"But tell me, don't you think people know that Lincoln had to go to the bathroom? Are there people who assume that he just held it in?"

"On a certain level, sure, people know that. But what I'm interested in is raising people's consciousness and forcing them to confront subjects that they might otherwise want to avoid."

"The Reverend Johnny Tripgood of the conservative religious organization Citizens for a Decent America has called you're exhibit obscene, and does not think taxpayer dollars should be used to fund exhibits that are patently offensive to decent church-going folk. What do you say to that, and how much influence do you think the taxpayers should have over what and what doesn't recieve funding in the arts?"

"I don't think the taxpayers or anyone else is qualified to say what is and isn't art, or what and what shouldn't recieve funding. It's hard to judge what is good art and what isn't, and I think that's why it's so crucial nowdays for artists like myself and others to be opposed by the religious right. It helps the public sort out the really important art from the mediocre."

"In other words, criticism from the right sort of sets the agenda for what is important art as opposed to what is unimportant?"

"Exactly. If a piece of art is being criticized by Reverend Tripgood, for example, then that attracts the media and let's the public know that 'Hey, this is something I should be paying attention to.' It's very important for an artist to get that kind of reaction from the right in order to legitimize his or her efforts. We consider it a kind of Merit Badge in the arts community."

"I'd like to ask you a personal question now, and if it's too personal then please don't feel like you have to answer it. But, your wife left you soon after you were married. Is that right?"

"Yes, on our wedding night."

"On your wedding night? Did she ever tell you why?"

"No, we were getting ready for bed and she told me she had to go get a pack of cigarettes, and I haven't seen her since. I should have known something was wrong because she didn't smoke."

"You haven't heard from her at all?"

"Not a word."

"What kind of effect did that have on you? It must have affected your art?"

"It taught me never to trust anyone ever again. People are all a bunch of scumbags anyways, Peggy. That's how it seems to me, and that's why I like to demean and degrade people in my paintings. They're all just scumbags. Abraham Lincoln? He was a scumbag. Mother Teresa? She was a scumbag too."

"Well, Colin Palmer, thank you so much for talking with us today."

"Thank you for having me."

"Coming up after the break, we talk with Darlene May, an avowed atheist who has just been ordained by the U.S. Diocese of the Episcopal Church. Does a person have to believe in God in order to be an Episcopal priest? We'll talk with Darlene May, plus, classical music critic Lawrence Cooper reviews the new CD by hot Latvian violinist babe Baiba Skride. That's all coming up on New Breeze."

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And now this...


If there's one positive thing you can say about the seventies, it's that we knew how to rock and roll back then. If you're old to enough to know what I'm talking about, then you probably remember a time when rock and roll was upbeat and all about having fun.

Anyways, that's what came to my mind when I saw Peter Frampton on the TV the other night. He wasn't singing about guns and violence and sexin' up his bitch. He was just playing his guitar and turning the amp up to eleven and having a good time.

That's the seventies I remember - all that great guitar rock, and it was great seeing Peter Frampton get up there and do some old time, seventies style jamming. So today I just had to get out my old MP3 player and crank up some of those old tunes, and man, they sounded great. True, I'm not fifteen anymore. My tastes have changed and my musical horizons have definitely been expanded, but every now and then it's great to go back and be fifteen again, if only for a little while.

The only reason I'm mentioning this is because I put together a little mix for myself, and I thought maybe some other people might enjoy listening to it too. It's all old seventies guitar rock and it's not something I'm legally supposed to do, but what the heck. If you want to rock like it's 1975, then here's my 70's mix. It's about 35 minutes long and about a 33 meg download. It has Johnny Winter doing "Johnny B. Goode", Robin Trower's "Day of the Eagle", Montrose with "Space Station No. 5", Pat Travers' "Rock 'n Roll Susie", Lou Reed singing "Rock and Roll", Journey saying you can go home again and travelling to "Mystery Mountain", and ends with a nice mellow "Song of the Wind" by Carlos Santana. Enjoy.