Weekly musings on the arts and current events.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Teddy

The National Portrait Gallery put this Andy Warhol silkscreen on display today. It was done in 1980 to help raise money for Ted Kennedy's presidential campaign.

About the time that designers started sewing their labels on the outside of their garments, Warhol explored our cult of celebrities. I can parse, if not really appreciate, his pixieish confluence of medium and message. But it is gratifying that, however much the artist esteemed his subject, and despite the Kennedy family mystique, Ted was not a cult figure. We mourn him this week, purely and simply, because he was the finest man in our government and the greatest senator of our time.


Click on the picture for a closer look.

5 comments:

Erkylurk said...

Yeah, give or take one slowly suffocating girl who lasted up to 12 hours while he exhausted those liberal lion skills trying to find someone else who would say they were driving his car.

Ooops. Not 'sposed to speak ill of the dead, am I?

TallTchr said...

I'll stand pat on this one. I haven't forgotten Chappaquiddick, although I don't know exactly happened there. But my admiration for EMK is based on his service. Thanks for the comment.

Paula Slade said...

Teddy was instrumental in many ways in helping us to bring Sasha home, and our family got to thank him personally at a ceremony in Boston at Faneuil Hall, on February 27, 2001 when 75,000 foreign adopted children, across the nation were granted citizenship. We are forever grateful and mourn his passing.

Erkylurk said...

Not that I changed my mind, but I was rethinking (or THINKING in the first place) of how hurtful my speculative and impulsive comments about Chappaquiddick might be to others, when taken against the full measure of his life.

I'd delete my original if I knew how.

Rest in Peace.

DUTA said...

For me (as a non-american), Edward Kennedy represents Triple Tragedy: tragedy of a man, tragedy of a family, tragedy of a nation.

May his tormented soul rest in peace!