(no subject)

"Part of protecting rights is committing to protect them without caring too much whether the rights are held by people who are awful or wonderful. It means vindicating Rodney King’s rights to be free of excessive force without particularly caring whether or not King was a good person. For that matter, it means criticizing hallmarks of state power like the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine — even if that doctrine was what allowed King’s attackers to be convicted by the federal government after they were unjustly acquitted by the state. It means giving up the notion that deserve has anything to do with it."

- Deserve's Got Nothing to Do With It

(no subject)

John Koch (1909-1978) The Sculptor, 1964.

“Ernest Ulmer posed for Koch’s “most self-revealing painting”, The Sculptor (1964, oil on canvas, 80” x 59 7/8", Brooklyn Museum). Its original title was Prometheus, the god who stole fire from Mount Olympus. A full-length standing male nude seen from behind, Ulmer towers over the seated Koch and holds a cigarette lighter at hip level, while the artist leans in to get a light. The lighter illuminates Koch’s face and its flame is vividly reflected in his glasses, “a sexually loaded reference to Prometheus’s gift of fire to mankind”.

 

As punishment for the theft of fire, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock and sent an eagle each day to tear out his liver. Koch was an occasional sculptor, and modeled Prometheus and Hercules, a work depicting Hercules wrestling with the eagle to rescue the chained Prometheus. A large version of this appears in the background of The Sculptor, and Ulmer may have posed for the sculpture as well as the painting.“ (source: wikipedia)

(via neotula)