PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST WITH DONORS
1990
Newsprint collage, gesso, and oil on canvas
70" X 40" / 177.8 cm. X 101.6 cm.

An artist (self-portrait) stands bound with red, white, and blue cord and gagged with an American flag. In his left hand he holds a miniature "Lady Liberty"; in the other, brushes dabbed in red, white, and blue.

He stands before an empty canvas surrounded by a collage of newspaper accounts of recent incidents of censorship of the arts in America. Over his left shoulder George Orwell's 1984 has been updated to 1989.A notice received by the artist from an arts organizationwarning him of the dire consequencespolitical content will have on his career hangs pinned to the easel.At the lower right three inquisitioners are visible through the darkness.

Three donors are portrayed onthe lower left. Sporting a green miter decorated with crossed golden dollar signs is the most righteous Senator Jesse Helms who, torch in hand, ignites the pyre of censorship. Over his head float amidst the flames words of another painter, Adolf Hitler, on the purpose and financing of Art. By his side, a pious Senator Alfonse D'Amato bows his head in reverential assent. Smiling before them, former Corcoran Gallery director Christina Orr-Cahall plays with a tricolor pinwheel, symbol of idiocy. Once intimidated into canceling a retrospective of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, when last heard of she was cloistered in the decor and safety of Impressionist art at the Norton Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida.

On the night of 14 September 1990 Portrait of the Artist with Donors and seven other pieces were viciously slashed in the artist's New York studio allegedly by one Hy Fenster, a crude reminder of the price of freedom of speech in America.