re: #164 Charles

By the way, I strongly suspect that the real reason for all this fake outrage is because the Obamas chose a painting by an African American artist — instead of the “original” by a European white man.

I think there’s a little bit of “That’s not art!” going on too. Matisse was an impressionist and fauvist and got really abstract toward the end. It’s been my experience that ignorant people really do not “get” abstract art and have a visceral reaction to it. I can almost understand this with some of the products of the Dadaism Movement, but still it is art whether you like it or not.