Critics Trash First Official Portrait of Kate Middleton: VIDEO

Artist Paul Emsley was commissioned to do the first official portrait of Kate Middleton which will hang in the National Portrait Gallery, but nobody likes it.

The Daily Beast writes:

Believe it or not, this is not some provocative project cooked up by an attention seeking art student (or Morrissey) aiming to show us what Kate would look like if she was twenty years older, smoked, never washed her hair and ate junk food, but her first official portrait.

The Telegraph called it 'an aesthetic disaster":

For the Duchess of Cambridge, however, he has produced what looks like a piece of mawkish book illustration, a work that could be read as an almost comical pastiche of a certain kind of ‘sensitive’ painting – that might pass muster on the cover of a Catherine Cookson novel, but will hardly bear sustained scrutiny in a major art gallery. If Kim Jong un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, had a portrait painted of himself in a similar idiom, we’d all be crowing from the rafters about the pitiful taste of foreign despots.

And Twitter appears not to be on board.

The Royal Channel released a video about it. Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Model Dogs: VIDEO

The NYT follows artist William Wegman and his adorable Weimaraners to Maine.

Check it out, AFTER THE JUMP...

Should Maurizio Cattelan's Hitler Pray In Warsaw Ghetto?

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's 'HIM,' a 2001 sculpture of Adolf Hitler praying on his knees, has shown all over the world, including New York City's Guggenheim and Venice's Palazzo Grassi, eliciting emotions everywhere it appears. And that's precisely the point.

Cattelan, also infamous for creating a sculpture of Pope John Paul II getting hit by a meteor, deceives the viewer into believing the small body, typically approached from the back, is a school boy.

When they approach and see the big reveal, they're jolted.

"When people see this piece, they react with gasps, tears, disbelief. The impact is stunning," collector and Holocaust survivor Stefan Edlis told The Economist in 2009. "Politics aside, that is how you judge art.”

But should the likeness of the most vile anti-Semite be placed at the site of Poland's Warsaw Ghetto, home to so many Jewish people killed by Hitler's Nazi armies?

Vanessa Gera offers details:

The Warsaw ghetto was an area of the city which the Nazis sealed off after they invaded Poland. They forced Jews to live in cramped, inhuman conditions there as they awaited deportation to death camps. Many died from hunger or disease or were shot by the Germans before they could be transported to the camps.

The Hitler representation is visible from a hole in a wooden gate across town on Prozna Street. Viewers only see the back of the small figure praying in a courtyard. Because of its small size, it appears to be a harmless schoolboy.

"Every criminal was once a tender, innocent and defenseless child," the center said in a commentary on the work.

HIM was installed there by Warsaw's Center for Contemporary Art last month, but growing outrage is gaining traction this week.

"As far as the Jews were concerned, Hitler's only 'prayer' was that they be wiped off the face of the earth," said Efraim Zuroff, director of US-based Jewish rights group The Simon Weisenthal Center's Israeli outpost. Zuroff described the installation as "a senseless provocation which insults the memory of the Nazis' Jewish victims."

CCA's director, Fabio Cavallucci, insists HIM isn't mean to insult the memory of the dead. Rather, it's a reminder of "hidden evil" everywhere.

"There is no intention from the side of the artist or the center to insult Jewish memory," he said. "It's an artwork that tries to speak about the situation of hidden evil everywhere."

Michael Shudrich, Poland's chief rabbi, supports HIM, and even wrote an introduction to the exhibition's catalogue. Art "force[s] us to face the evil of the world," he wrote, according to the AP. He also said, "I felt there could be educational value to it."

Do you agree?

Mosaic Artist Completes Honey Boo Boo Portrait Made of Trash: VIDEO

Mosaic portrait artist Jason Mecier has completed 50 hours of work on a Honey Boo Boo Portrait made from trash.

*Highlights include two cans of hair spray, three tiaras, make-up, mascara, fake eyelashes, coupons, sketti, butter, ten cheese balls, two Red Bulls, one Mountain Dew, a McDonald's chicken nugget, a pink Snuggy box, an empty toilet paper roll, one cabbage patch doll and a jar of Pigs Feet. No roadkill was injured during the making of this portrait!

Watch him assemble it, AFTER THE JUMP...

Some of Mecier's other work here. Remember, everybody's a little bit gay.

Coloring His World: VIDEO

All footage in this video was captured in color. It looks like black and white  in the still above because Eran Amir painting the whole room (including himself) that way.

Watch what happens (and the making of video), AFTER THE JUMP...

(via reddit)

Mitt Romney Will Eliminate National Endowment For The Arts

In an interview for the forthcoming issue of Fortune Magazine, Mitt Romney explained (finally!) some specific things he'd do as president of the United States. Some of his plans were excellent, though outside the actual bounds of presidential power. (Presidents cannot, say, single-handedly will an American return to industrial dominance.) Presidents really do have extraordinary control over the United States' federal budget, however, so it's worth taking Mitt seriously when he says:

... there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs -- the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to strand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf.

At WashPo, Ezra Klein why this won't actually save very much money, though it'll certainly delight math-impaired deficit hawks.