For Immediate Release (6/8/98):
Press preview Wednesday 6/10/98 starting 9 A.M. #437 Madison Ave. (corner 49th St.) Contact# (718) 369-2111; <ARTISTpres@aol.com>.
provided through OPENAIR-MARKET NET
You've seen them carried past City Hall by hundreds of striking taxi drivers. Last week they appeared extensively on television news shows and in virtually every newspaper as part of the street artist and vendor protest. Now a series of satirical portraits of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani by street artist Robert Lederman are about to be shown in a Madison Avenue office building in the heart of Midtown.
The artist was offered a space to display the paintings after he appeared on morning news shows last Wednesday as a spokesman for street artists and vendors. Lederman is President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) and has been an outspoken critic of the Mayor's for years.
Arrested 33 times for selling his art, leading protests, organizing street artists and vendors and most recently for painting unflattering portraits of the Mayor, the artist is currently awaiting trial on 25 separate Criminal Court cases. All of the current cases stem from arrests for protesting against Mayor Giuliani at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at City Hall, at the pedestrian barricades and at the Mayor's recent art show at the Leica gallery. The Giuliani portraits have been repeatedly confiscated by high level police officials in an attempt to keep them from being shown.
Lederman is also a plaintiff in a $200 million Federal lawsuit against the Mayor that charges him with repeatedly ordering the artist arrested in order to censor his speech.
The following statement was issued by Lederman in connection with this show:
"I began making these paintings a few years ago after the Mayor had police officers repeatedly confiscate and destroy my own and other street artists' paintings, repeatedly arrest us and then had every case dismissed to prevent us from getting our day in court. When we finally won our initial Federal lawsuit against the Mayor in 1996 he attempted to get the U.S. Supreme Court to eliminate First Amendment protection for visual art in order to eliminate us from the streets. His appeal to the court claimed that art was not expressive, that it didn't communicate ideas and that allowing visual art full First Amendment protection was somehow dangerous. I decided to show Mr. Giuliani just how expressive and communicative art can be. Until recently most people thought I was being too hard on Mayor Giuliani. Recently there's been a dramatic change in the public's perceptions about the Mayor. Now, everyone wants to buy one of these paintings and even the police are encouraging me to keep painting and displaying them. The paintings, which are on corrugated cardboard, were created to be carried in protests rather than to be viewed hanging on a wall. For an artist nothing could be more exciting than for their paintings to be carried through the streets by a crowd of chanting protesters standing up for their rights, but it's nice to know that this time they won't be confiscated by the police."
For information on this issue go to: <http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html>.
Also see: "Chronic Offender", Village Voice 2/24/98; Newsday 4/20/98 cover story "Under Giuliani City Has Repeatedly Stifled Dissent"; N.Y. Times 5/7/98 pg B4 "For Giuliani, A Different Big Picture"; Editorial: "the Big Chill" by Bob Herbert NY Times 5/31/98.; NY Times 6/2/98 "Vending Ban Widens: not Just Food But also Books and Art".
For information on the Federal lawsuit [Lederman et al v Giuliani] contact Andrew Miltenberg (212) 481-4242, attorney for the plaintiffs.