Can art still be just art?
Can we talk about it?

	Contributed photo The now infamous painting by Parksville artist Franciszek Kulon. What do you think? (Click for larger image)

A painting by Parksville artist Franciszek Kulon portrays three cherubs; one holds a pirate flag, another holds the pin of a grenade about to land on two children who lie on a dark cloud, and the third, apparently discouraged angel, grasps a torn American flag and watches the grenade fall.

For less than a day, the painting hung in the Sullivan County government center’s concourse with other paintings, many of which were collected by longtime curator Sandee Pointer.

County Manager Dan Briggs said complaints prompted the painting’s removal while Briggs was on vacation. He said that it was safe to say that the painting was removed because it was antiwar, though he stressed the only adjective he used was “inappropriate.”

Why the painting is considered inappropriate remains unclear to many, including Kulon, who is not entirely comfortable with the antiwar label attached to a picture he painted a month before the current Iraqi war began. Involved parties at the government center have become reticent since Kulon and his lawyer, Stephen Bergstein, filed for a civil lawsuit against the county that will be heard on June 5.

I look at the painting and I see characters used to represent ideas in a contemporary story, which could be the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq, since the American flag is a prominent symbol and a faint middle-eastern city sits at the bottom-left corner. The two children, who lie at the mercy of their “heavenly” resemblances, one fallen and the other shivering, arouse a response that many Americans have felt, and, in many cases, dreaded since it exposes us as bystanders who, for all intents and purposes are incapable of stopping the violence.

Is it antiwar?

In part, yes, but it also exercises the American artist’s First Amendment right to tell the story that leaders like George W. Bush would rather keep under his hat. In his first State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002, Bush said, “The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” This ultimatum set forth the administration’s intention to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and at the next address came Bush’s warning that Americans should “fear a day of horror like none we have ever known.” These statements compounded an already strong antagonistic tendency, which left little room for hesitance or even debate about invasion of Saddam’s Iraq.

Dialogue is what Kulon accomplishes in his unnamed painting.

Briggs says the government center is not an exhibit hall. His earlier reasoning suggests that public administration buildings are exceptions to the First Amendment since people must visit them to obtain services like drivers licenses.

As a result of all of this, discussions of antiwar thoughts and stories about the anguish in Iraq have been discouraged at the county government building, a place where open conversations in the name of patriotism should take place.

And as a result, Sandee Pointer, a curator who worked for the Office for the Aging Senior Art Program, quit. Like the cherub with downcast eyes (the one who holds no symbol of violence), Pointer’s will to discuss her response to the atrocities of war has been discouraged by a freedom of expression infringement, accomplished by the removal of Kulon’s painting.

On a more expressive note, at her 20th anniversary speech, when Pointer announced that she would resign and remove 100 paintings that she had collected, she asked the crowd of some 100 people if they would like to see the painting.

The crowd stood up, applauded, and she showed them.

Charlie Buterbaugh, Assistant Editor