NY POST, Friday, July 24, 1998
by Gersh Kuntzman
provided through OPENAIR-MARKET NET
THIS may sound strange, but the high point in artist Robert Lederman's career came when he watched angry men pounding his cherished paintings with their shoes. This was back in May, when Lederman donated some of his less-than-flattering portraits of Mayor Giuliani to cabbies angry at new city restrictions. They vented their anger all over Lederman's labor - and he couldn't have been happier.
"They were carrying the portraits around like they were icons at a church parade," said Lederman. "And then they began beating them up with their shoes. It was great."
This from the street artist who used to bark at anyone who accidentally bumped into one of his creations when he hawked them on SoHo streets.
"This was such a different use of art," he explained. "In New York, art is about people sipping wine in a gallery and saying, "Oh how nice.' But this was people actually using art to express their feelings. The art actually stirred them up."
That elevated Lederman's acrylic-on-cardboard works to something beyond mere aesthetics. In a city where people buy art to show off their taste or their wealth - or, worse, because it matches their new couch - Lederman had realized every artist's dream: He mattered.
And this was a shock to a once proudly apolitical painter of street scenes and jazz musicians, who found his political voice when the Giuliani administration's quality-of-life net started ensnaring artists.
Since 1993, painters have been arrested, and their work confiscated, on the grounds that visual art is not protected by the First Amendment - a position repudiated by a federal court ruling.
Lederman, who has been arrested 33 times, started painting his ghoulish portraits of the mayor as a lark, one man's Quixotic campaign against an aggressive city boss.
But when Giuliani appealed the street artists' victory to the Supreme Court, Lederman began the crusade in earnest, using the mayor's own words against him.
"An exhibition of paintings is not as communicative as speech, literature or live entertainment, and the artist's constitutional interests are thus minimal," the mayor wrote last year in a brief to the high court.
The artist vowed to demonstrate that paintings could be just as communicative as speech. That's why he started lending his work to add color to marches by cabbies, food vendors and CUNY students. Now he's the artist laureate of the anti-Giuliani generation.
All of the works feature hizzoner as a gaunt, ghost-like character with sharp features, deep shadows and the occasional Hitler mustache - a film noir Giuliani that only Orson Welles could love. "I'm not looking to flatter the guy so I do exaggerate his nastier qualities," the artist said. "He actually has a bone structure similar to Hitler."
Most posters feature the oppressive elements of life under this mayor - pedestrian barricades, aggressive policing, Disney - and bear captions such as "Mayor Ghouliani," "Mayor Squeegeeiani" or "Mayor Jailiani." One popular painting has the mayor mumbling, "So many to arrest, so little time."
When they're not being carried by protesters, Lederman's artwork can be seen at 437 Madison Avenue in space donated by building owner Melvyn Kaufman, who's still fuming over the mayor's pedestrian barricades, which prevent people from getting to his building. They sell for hundreds of dollars apiece.
But Lederman gets the biggest kick out of watching the city's hard-working cabbies and vendors carrying his paintings to the City Hall steps.
"These last few weeks have been the greatest art show I could ever hope for," said Lederman. "The mayor has made me the most famous artist in the city and I'll keep making him the most famous dictator."
(c) New York Post 1998
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You can contact Mr. Lederman at phone: (718) 369-2111; Email: <ARTISTpres@aol.com>. Learn more about this struggle for free speech and justice by visiting the ARTIST website <http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html>.