The San Francisco Chronicle
Fernando Botero's view of Abu Ghraib atrocities
Dec 17--In 2007, UC Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies displayed most of the pictures that Colombian artist Fernando Botero made in response to atrocities committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
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Public reaction to Botero's paintings and drawings here, as with their earlier New York showing, ranged from sympathetic fascination to derision. Their exhibition at the university occasioned lectures and symposia on war, international and constitutional law and other related topics.
But the Boteros presence in the Berkeley Art Museum, where they have filled the top-floor galleries since mid-September, has barely registered in the media or in offhand art world conversation.
Why?
Has their damning power dimmed so soon?
Have we made peace with the Bush-Cheney regime after the repudiation symbolized by Barack Obama's election to the presidency? What of the new president's plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan, where "black sites" reportedly still exist? What of the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay prison, which exported the brutalities that the name Abu Ghraib now shorthands?
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