Editorial: Seeing gang signs everywhere is an art
Editorials February 10, 2012 12:44AM
Artist Georgia O'Keeffe's hands in a photo by her husband Alfred Stieglitz.
Article Extras
Updated: March 11, 2012 8:45AM
We’d like to thank Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza and an obscure blogger for tipping us off to all the outrageous street gang symbolism hidden in art.
The stuff, we see now, is everywhere.
All it took was the humiliation of a 15-year-old kid, his design for a new city sticker dumped because Mendoza decided the heart and hands could be construed as gang symbols, for us to see the light.
Gee whiz, Chicago may have to dump half the art in the Art Institute, and Paris should do the same with the Louvre.
Have you really looked at the Mona Lisa recently? Check out the hands in the photo gallery accompanying this editorial and don’t be fooled by the smile. See how the first finger of her left hand bends while the others point down? Whoa! Who knew Leonardo da Vinci was hanging in the ’hood with the Insane Unknown Medicis?
And look at the Edvard Munch painting, also in the photo gallery, called “The Hands.” What’s with the hand on the lower right? Looks to us like a pitchfork. You know who likes pitchforks? Chicago’s Maniac Latin Disciples, that’s who. Granted, Munch lived in Oslo and Paris and never once stepped foot in Chicago, but gangs have affiliates.
And look at this photograph above of the hands of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, taken by her husband Alfred Stieglitz. She’s definitely signifying something to somebody. O’Keeffe did live in Chicago, for two whole years, which can’t be coincidental.
And look at the seemingly innocent piece of clip art in the photo gallery, of the sort children download for Valentine’s Day cards, of two hands forming a heart. Hands, heart and pitchfork fingers — it’s the whole MLD package. Can there be any doubt?
There are those who say anybody can read anything into anything and it’s plain stupid to take that kind of thing too seriously. But why stand up to stupidity when, politically speaking, it is so much easier to bow?
And if that means the reputation of a teenage boy who drew a sweet city sticker — whatever his past mistakes — has to be trashed, well, welcome to the mean little world of adulthood, kid.
