Anish Kapoor Honored As Genesis Prize Laureate 2017, Will Donate $1 Million Prize to Refugees

Anish Kapoor, I Like America and America Doesn’t Like Me. Courtesy Anish Kapoor.

British-Indian, Bombay-born (now Mumbai) artist Anish Kapoor is named the Genesis Prize Laureate 2017, often called the 'Jewish Nobel Prize', awarded to those of Jewish heritage who have excelled professionally. 

"Jewish identity and history have witnessed recurring conditions of indifference, persecution and Holocaust," Kapoor is quoted by The Guardian. "Repeatedly, we have had to repossess ourselves and re-identify our communities. As inheritors and carriers of Jewish values it is unseemly, therefore, for us to ignore the plight of people who are persecuted, who have lost everything and had to flee as refugees in mortal danger."

Kapoor announced that he will use the $1 million prize money to assist the refugee crisis.

The artist recently joined the chorus of dissent against US President Donald Trump, creating a protest work inspired by Joseph Beuys. ArtNet explains:

Kapoor has re-created the poster for Beuys’ performance work I Like America and America Likes Me (1974). Kapoor's image is overlaid with the title 'I Like America and America Doesn’t Like Me' written in a pseudo Antiqua–Fraktur font commonly associated with Nazi German media

Beuys’ 1974 work saw him wrapped in felt upon arriving at JFK airport in New York, and transported to the René Block Gallery in an ambulance, where he spent the entirety of his three-day stay in a room with only a torch, a cane, a wild coyote, and a felt blanket. The performance is seen as a protest work, as Beuys never really saw any of the US, or technically set foot on American soil.

Gregory Locke Leads New York Subway Riders In Scrubbing Nazi Hate From Cars

I got on the subway in Manhattan tonight and found a Swastika on every advertisement and every window. The train was silent as everyone stared at each other, uncomfortable and unsure what to do.

One guy got up and said, "Hand sanitizer gets rid of Sharpie. We need alcohol." He found some tissues and got to work.

I've never seen so many people simultaneously reach into their bags and pockets looking for tissues and Purel. Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone.

Nazi symbolism. On a public train. In New York City. In 2017.

"I guess this is Trump's America," said one passenger. No sir, it's not. Not tonight and not ever. Not as long as stubborn New Yorkers have anything to say about it.

Hillary's #1 Fan Ruline Dies At 103 | Clinton Will Give 2017 Commencement Address At Wellesley With New Book For Fall 2017

Hillary's #1 Fan Ruline Dies At 103 | Clinton Will Give 2017 Commencement Address At Wellesley With New Book For Fall 2017

Fired AG Sally Yates Stands Firm Against Boys Clubs " Conway Agrees "No Massacre" in Bowling Green

Daily: Conway Agrees "No Massacre" In Bowling Green | Sally Yates Stands Firm Against Boys Club

Fired acting attorney general Sally Yates has been nominated for a Profiles in Courage award. And we celebrate her raw courage in taking action against Trump's Muslim ban, announcing Monday night that the US Govt would not defend the ban in federal courts, as numerous individuals and states moved to sue the Trump Administration.

Women's News Archives January 2017

Beyoncé & Jay Z Are Pregnant With Twins

The cultural, political, feminist music powerhouse known as Beyoncé dropped baby news in an Instagram post on Wednesday. The bombshell was just another example of the pop star's strong preference for controlling her own narrative. 

The news comes as 'Lemonade' is nominated for nine Grammy Awards, hosted on Feb. 12. The happy baby mama is also scheduled to headline the second night of the Coachella festival, scheduled April 15 and April 22 in the California desert.  There's no word now if the show will go on. (Updated) Word is that Beyoncé plans on performing two nights at Coachella, in her third trimester with twins. She'll have two special guests with her. And there is an insurance policy in place, in case she can't perform. 

Beyoncé signed her Instagram post 'The Carters', yet another signal of happy times for the couple. Their daughter Blue Ivy Carter, was born on Jan. 7, 2012. The New York Times writes: 

While Beyoncé is famously averse to interviews and rarely discusses her personal life without setting the terms, she put the spotlight on her marriage with the release last year of the album and HBO film “Lemonade.”

It told the story of a struggling relationship, including explicit infidelity and, eventually, reconciliation. Many assumed the songs’ lyrics — which ranged from heartbroken to defiant to forgiving — were autobiographical, though the couple never revealed how much of the story was based in reality.

Whatever are these celebs drinking these days. Pharrell Williams and his wife, Helen Lasichanh, are reported to have recently welcomes triplets. 

Vanity Fair posits Beyoncé in a historical perspective with 'Where You've Seen Beyoncé's Pregnancy Reveal Photo Before Vanity Fair

Trump's Shock & Awe Campaign On America's Psyche Is Only The Beginning In A Society Dominated By Technology & AI

Trump's Shock & Awe Campaign On America's Psyche Is Only The Beginning In A Society Dominated By Technology & AI

Reflecting on the first two weeks of the Trump presidency, I've come to the same place as TA Frank, writing for Vanity Fair. Trump's approach, advocated also by his close advisers, is to completely stun us with his actions and also own the media narrative. I'm sick of him taking over the evening news cycle; I don't want to see his sorry-ass -- now sandy-brown instead of his bleached blonde mop -- combed-backward tresses. Still, I see the Trump administration's shock and awe strategy, and we must not fall for it.

It occurs to me that people like our veterans of wars and even people who come from abusive relationships are better able to withstand the Trump assault without losing our minds. Instead of losing our minds, reflect back on the times in your life when were under assault -- whether on the battle field or in the bedroom. If you were a battered child, how did you become the successful, thriving person you are today?

Did you lose your mind and go running around like some beheaded creature? NO. You sucked it in, steeled your nerves and faced the enemy. You calculated not only how to survive, but also how to regain control of the situation. Citizens across the spectrum from far-left progressives to centrists to old-fashioned Republicans must stay calm, deliberate and focused. The new marches are fantastic in their lack of violence and self-discipline.

US Holocaust Museum Clearly Defines Holocaust For Trumpsters

“Millions of other innocent civilians were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, but the elimination of Jews was central to Nazi policy. As Elie Wiesel said, ‘Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.'”

Millions of Americans were astonished that on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Trump made no mention of Jews. The position of the new administration seemed to be that many suffered under the Nazis and there is no reason to highlight the suffering of the Jewish people. 

Washington DC's US Holocaust Museum felt compelled to issue a statement. “The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators … Nazi ideology cast the world as a racial struggle, and the singular focus on the total destruction of every Jewish person was at its racist core,” the statement reads.

Opening Ceremony NYCB Collab With Justin Peck Was Perfectly-Timed Trump Protest

Opening Ceremony NYCB Collab With Justin Peck Was Perfectly-Timed Trump Protest

Opening Ceremony designers Humberto Leon and Carol Lim have always politicized their fashion. Six months ago, they registered people to vote at their New York Fashion Week show. We knew that the designers intended to present their new collection in advance of New York Fashion Week, working on a third collaboration, choreographed by Justin Peck of the New York City Ballet and titled 'The Times are Racing'. 

Little did the artists know that at the same time protesters were fighting their way towards New York's JFK airport to protest the Trump administrations poorly-executed ban on refugees and even green card residents from seven primarily Muslim nations, their show would hit the Lincoln Center stage in a resounding third ballet, uplifting style chorus designed to support the protesters with slogans reading 'Defy,' 'Protest', 'Unite' and 'Fight'. These pieces make up the brand's Action capsule, presented as a see-now, buy-now collection and they served as a celebration of New York City's melting pot status.  Read on in AOC Salon. 

Kate Gilmore & Karen Heagle Depict Women's Power Structure Anger In 'Stomp'

Writing for Artnet, Blake Gopnik stopped by New York's On Stellar Rays gallery to catch Kate Gilmore's Stomp, performed Saturdays and Sundays, 4 to 6 pm. until February 19, 2017. Dressed in red sweatsuits and Kodiak construction boots, every few seconds three young women stamp and slap and punch out out their anger at the status quo. The sounds of their anger make the entire gallery echo with their ritual designed to dismantle the power structure. 

The stompers are juxtaposed against the backdrop of Gilmore's friend artist Karen Heagle's works on paper that "depict still life, landscape, portraiture and animal subjects. Her work often reflects autobiographical symbolism thematically focused on memento mori, feminism, sexuality and queer identity."

The New Yorker writes that the women's combat boots and brass knuckles had succeeded in chipping away only small bits of red enamel; Gilmore herself spent a week "attacking a fourth cube with a sledgehammer", on view in an adjacent room. The artist and her performers are protagonists, channeling the emotion, fury, and frustration in America's unsettling political moment -- one that threatens to dismantle political rights for women, the LGBTQ community and people of color gained over the last 50 years. Meanwhile, Heagle summons her "inner Ovid", comments New York Magazine, "giving us a scary menagerie of birds tearing at flesh".

'The Grief Which Has Not Yet Come May Be Avoided' by Karen Heagle

Picasso's Le Rêve Headlines Blockbuster UK/France Marie-Thérèse Walter Years Exhibit

Pablo Picasso, Le Rêve (The Dream) (1932). Private collection, image ©Succession Picasso/DACS 2017.

Tate Modern has joined the Picasso Museum in Paris in a "once in a lifetime" exhibition that will focus on some of the biggest masterpieces created by Pablo Picasso at the height of his passionate and psychologically challenging love affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter.

Picasso met Walter during his marriage to his first wife Olga Khokhlova, a Russian ballerina and mother of his son Paulo. In a chance encounter in front of Paris' Galeries Lafayette department store, Picasso, then 45 first saw the model at age 17. Their relationship lasted nearly a decade, and in 1935, Walter gave birth to their daughter, Maya Picasso (later Maya Widmaier-Picasso). 

The exhibition featuring more than 100 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper will launch at the Paris museum in October and move to London in March 2018. 

A show superstar will be the 1932 masterpiece Le Rêve (The Dream), in which "a luminous Walter sits on a red armchair with her left breast exposed; her eyes closed and her head titled to one side, she’s smiling in reverie, writes ArtNet. 

Le Rêve has never been shown in the UK. It was sold in 2013 by Las Vegas casino powerhouse Steve Wynn to hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen at a price believed to be the highest price paid by a US collector for an artwork. 

Previously, AOC explored Picasso's relationship with women -- and its intersection with global politics, including the Republican War on Women in America. With the arrival of President Trump, this essay is more timely than ever. It was inspired by comments a 61-year-old Picasso told Françoise Gilot in 1943, and I wrote it a few weeks before heading to Washington DC on April 7, in a rally that supported Planned Parenthood. 

"Women are machines for suffering," Picasso said. "For me there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats." 

Picasso Believed Women Were Goddesses Or Doormats | Sound Familiar? AOC Women's News

‘LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON’ BY PABLO PICASSO

TrumpTracker: Melania Trump Fronts Vanity Fair Mexico As Mexicans Demand Boycott of American Goods

TrumpTracker: Melania Trump Fronts Vanity Fair Mexico As Mexicans Demand Boycott of American Goods

As part of her Dujour interview with Mickey Rapkin, Melania Trump was aggressive in batting down comparisons with her then presidential candidate husband with Adolf Hitler, prompted by her GQ interview:  "We know the truth. He's not Hitler. He wants to help America. He wants to unite people."

The people of Mexico don't agree, as they launch a boycott against American-made products in protest against Trump's executive order to start building yet another wall on America's southern border. The administration made news yesterday, threatening to impose a 20% tariff on goods made in Mexico entering the US. 

Circulating back to America's new First Lady Melania Trump, Mexican author and columnist Guadalupe Loaeza said: "It's a lack of sensitivity on the part of the publisher. I started reading this and I couldn't finish. I didn't want to know anything about the wife of our country's No 1 enemy."

Step 2 For Pussyhat Power: How About Yarnbombing America From Sea To Shining Sea?

Step 2 For Pussyhat Power: How About Yarnbombing America From Sea To Shining Sea?

Put the word 'resistance' into Google News this morning and the headlines tell a vivid story:The #Resistance and Russia; National Parks and NASA 'Resistance' Launches on Twitter; The Resistance will be Tweeted; Protesters Climb DC Crane, Call for Resistance to Trump.

In the ultimate accomplishment -- a salvo to US President Donald Trump, who insists falsely that he's had more TIME magazine covers than anyone (Nixon wins) -- pink Pussyhats are on the move, straight on to the cover of this week's TIME. 

Natalie Portman Channels Demi Moore With Hew Own Pregnancy Photo For Vanity Fair's Hollywood Issue

In what will surely become an iconic photo, a pregnant Natalie Portman channels the 1991 photo of a naked and pregnant Demi Moore, shot for Vanity Fair's August issue. Portman joins Emma Stone, Lupita Nyong’o, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Aja Naomi King, Janelle Monae, Greta Gerwig and Dakota Johnson on the cover of Vanity Fair's March 2017 Hollywood issue, also shot by Annie Leibovitz.

Vanity Fair acknowledges the inspiration, writing that while "the reference is clear, the moment is Portman's alone."

How sad that this cover was shot before the November 21 March for Women. Imagine if we had one or two Pussyhats anchored by those vivid red and pink hues.  Read my new article: Step 2 For Pussyhat Power: How About Yarnbombing America From Sea To Shining Sea?

Did Trump Affect Cuba's Decision To Cancel Collaborative Show With The Bronx Museum

The National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana has -- for the present -- pulled out of a collaborative exibit with the Bronx Museum. The planned initiative called 'Wild Noise', opening February 17, was to include works from the Bronx Museum that traveled to its sister Havana institution in 2015, coupled with 60 works by Cuban artists coming from Havana to the Bronx.

The Bronx museum's executive director, Holly Block said: her Cuban counterparts at the National Museum did not say whether their hesitation stemmed from fears about possible diplomatic uncertainties under a Trump administration. “We didn’t get a no from them but we also didn’t get a final yes,” Ms. Block said. “So we decided that in good faith we’re going to do this exhibition instead.”

There is a high probability that the Cuban government is concerned about whether state-owned art works from Cuba could be endangered with a possibility looming of a seizure of them by the US federal government. Such an action might be taken to satisfy legal claims by Cuban Americans seeking payment for unsatisfied judicial claims connected to property confiscated in Cuba after Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.

Angelina Jolie Named Beauty Ambassador Of 'Mon Guerlain', Will Donate Salary To Charity

Angelina Jolie stepped out of the shadows on Monday, as Guerlain Parfumeur announced that the actor would be the face of its new fragrance, Mon Guerlain. The contract was actually signed back in December 2015, while Jolie was directing 'First They Killed My Father' in Cambodia, birthplace of Jolie's first son, Maddox.

The partnership is Jolie's first beauty ambassador contract in 10 years, and Angelina will donate all the profits of her contract to unspecified charities. 

“We create perfumes for the women we admire,” Jacques Guerlain said in a statement, whilst the brand’s master perfumer Thierry Wasser said he drew inspiration from Jolie to create a fragrance expressing the “notes of a woman”.

Besides her work as an actor, filmmaker and mother of six, Angelina Jolie is a special envoy of the UN Refuge Agency and co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative.

Women of Color Deliver Staggering Turnout For The Women's March & Strong Intersectionality Message

Women of Color Deliver Staggering Turnout For The Women's March & Strong Intersectionality Message

There is no doubt that Saturday's global Women's March events were the largest one-day demonstration in political history. The stunning turnouts worldwide made it clear that women -- and in particular women of color -- will be leading the opposition to President Donald Trump.

Veteran feminist writer Rebecca Traister pegged the crowds in America: it drew somewhere north of 680,000 to Washington, D.C., 750,000 to Los Angeles, 400,000 to New York City, 250,000 to Chicago, 100,000 each to Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, the Twin Cities, and Portland Oregon; and crowds of thousands to smaller cities, including 11,000 to Ann Arbor, 5,000 to Lexington, Kentucky, 8,000 to Honolulu, and 20,000 to Houston. There were 2,000 protesters in Anchorage, Alaska, and 1,000 in Jackson, Mississippi. Demonstrations took place on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

Record-Breaking Turnouts For The Women's Marches Had No Arrests, No Violence

Record-Breaking Turnouts For The Women's Marches Had No Arrests, No Violence

Protest Events Send Trump To Inauguration As We Prep For Saturday Women's March

Protest Events Send Trump To Inauguration As We Prep For Saturday Women's March

January 19 National Mall Peace Ball

It's difficult to get coverage on pre Saturday Jan. 21 marches with the Inauguration of Donald Trump dominating Friday's coverage. A major event happened in Washington last night, one with many more celebs and performers than any Trump event. The Peace Ball was hosted at the freshly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture was organized as a progressive alternative to Trump events around the city.

Overwhelming Crowds Turnout For Women's Marches Across America

Massive crowds at the Washington, DC Women’s March

Overwhelming Crowds Turnout For Women's Marches Across America

March portion of Chicago Women's march canceled after 150,000 pack event; march will go on Chicago Tribune

Safety concerns have closed the march portion of the Chicago event. An original crowd estimate of 20,000 was raised to 50,000 this morning. At about 11 am this morning, 150,000 had already reached the rally and Chicago police notified organizers that they were not prepared to protect a marching crowd this size. The rally will continue.

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC at 2pm Saturday, the size of the march is estimated to be 500,000 against an original estimate of 200,000. Currently the march is still scheduled to move, but safety concerns are rising.