PAINTINGS

JOSEPH NECHVATAL

 

John LeKay: Can you please tell me what inspired the Jesus Torture paintings?
 

Joseph Nechvatal: It was a reaction against the Christian right wing in the USA.
 

JL: How was the work received in France and have you exhibited them in the US?

 

Joseph Nechvatal: Thus far I have only shown 2 paintings from this series in The End (s) of Photography: Modeling the Photographic at the McDonough Art Museum in Youngstown, Ohio.

 

The show is curated by Saul Ostrow. No objections registered.

 

 

 

 

JL: When did you start making Ideologues in Fairyland, a series of fairy portraits of some prominent neo-conservatives and what are your thoughts on this political movement?

Joseph Nechvatal: I did this series in the Summer of 2006.  They are to be detested, suspected, and thus investigated; as they practice Machiavellian fraudulence and a delusional philosophy of mass deception as taught to them by their guru Leo Strauss.

JL: How is the neo-con movement generally perceived in France?

Joseph Nechvatal:  Cannot say.

JL: When you say suspected and investigated, do you mean war crimes, or something else?

Joseph Nechvatal: I am saying that all of their motives and actions are suspect and need be scrutinized.

JL: How did you find out about this place called Bohemian Grove and what makes you so certain that this "global ruling elite, which meets there under the designation of Bohemia, forms hidden policy decisions in secrecy and thus outside of the realm of public scrutiny"?.

Joseph Nechvatal: I saw the documentary Dark Secrets: Inside the Bohemian Grove by Alex Jones - where he documented the Bohemian Grove with a hidden camera. www.infowars.com/bg1.html

I then checked other news reports via the internet which confirmed the basic facts.

JL: What part of it do you exactly find insulting. Is it because these are world leaders, wealthy heads of corporations, who are pretending to be bohemian artists.  I heard its just theatre. Its not real.  These people are just having some summer fun in the woods?

Joseph Nechvatal Neither you nor I was there so we can only conjecture. Perhaps Jones may take the fake human sacrifice too literally, but the fact remains that it is an arrogant and elitist coven where public policy is plotted in secret - way off the public record.

It may possibly involve sexual coercion. Surely it is profoundly anti-democratic and anti-progressive. Women are not allowed, for example. How bohemian is that?

JL: Not very bohemian at all. What are your images, entitled a Monstrous Hoax based on?  What is the hoax you are referring to?

Joseph Nechvatal:  How do you interpret them?

 

JL: I see it as also addressing the "Jesus torture", Abu Ghraib,  to the neo cons and their project for a new American century,  What I also see in this is the incident on 911.  These masters of the universe who flourish on deception, mass hypnosis, theft of our individual liberties through wire tapping, suspension of  habious corpus and the rest. The use and corruption of religion and Christian fundamentalism. The hijacking of the media. The psychological and high tech warfare. The destruction of our basic constitution and rule of law. The devastation to the environment etc etc etc.

Is this what you were referring too?

 

Joseph Nechvatal: indeed.

 

JL: Contaminations (a mini series}  Are you referring to some physical or psychological disease of some kind or some kind of an attack?
 

Joseph Nechvatal: The key reference is to computer viruses, but also the meme of Richard Dawkins and lots of other things like the AIDS virus, Africa, tissue culture, DNA.............

JL: The new nOOlOgy : guilt of a nation. Do you think that the entire nation  should feel guilty  about the  incidence at Abu Ghraib?

Joseph Nechvatal: I think that, yes, it works that way.

 

 

JL: Do you think its easier for you to address these issues since you live in France?

 

Joseph Nechvatal: Actually I live half the year in France and half the year in the USA - in NYC. I am in NYC now.
 
I do think travel gives new perspectives.
 
JL: What other projects are you working on?

 

Joseph Nechvatal: I have just created an audo work on CD called "viral symphOny" as an artist in residence at The Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. 

 

I am now remixing it into a surround-sound piece adding a vocal section of Jane Smith reciting a portion of Ovid's poem Metamorphosis.
 
 

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