Performance Artist Damages Painting

According to Greg Wilson of NBC Southern California, a possible Colorado performance artist, allegedly drunk, “was arrested after scratching, punching and, well, rubbing her butt against Clyfford Still's ‘1957-J no.2’ and causing an estimated $10,000 damage to the artwork at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.”

Mr. Still died in 1980. He was considered, according to the NMBC report, “one of the most influential of the American post-World War Two abstract expressionist artists, although he was not as well known as others such as Jackson Pollock” – until now.

Four of Mr. Still’s paintings were auctioned last year by Sotheby’s and brought in $114 million, a sum that endowed the Denver museum, which opened in November.

The performance artist, Ms. Carman Tisch, “dropped her pants at a museum and rubbed her rear end all over a painting valued at $30 million,” according the NBC report. Tragedy was averted when the lady attempted to urinate on the painting – and missed. Her aim apparently was off.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office told the Denver Post, "You have to wonder where her friends were."

Evidently, they had scurried away, muttering a few words from T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land”:

“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think."

Possibly her friends were in search of a Jackson Pollock elsewhere in the museum.

Ms. Tisch was charged with felony criminal mischief on Wednesday and has been held on a $20,000 bond since the incident in late December, said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney's Office.

There has been no attempt from the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) to snatch Ms. Tisch from the clutches of benighted prosecutors unaware of the Constitutional rights of performance artists.

The story bears watching.

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Obamagod!

My guess is that Barack Obama is a bit too modest to consider himself a Christ figure , but artist will be artists. And over at “ To Wit ,” a blog run by professional blogger, journalist, radio commentator and ex-Hartford Courant religious writer Colin McEnroe, chocolateers will be chocolateers. Nice to have all this attention paid to Christ so near to Easter.

Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway , the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster. “Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia. “’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – e...

Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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