Johnny Peres Bruno. Surprise, Surprise. Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in.
This painting was the most objectionable piece to actually enter the group show American Seven at Works/San José (August 22-September 16 2006), a non-profit space in downtown San Jose. At the time, the gallery was housed in a lovely mission-style building that had been a former flour factory at 451 South First Street. Co-curators Fanny Retsek and Sandra Starkey were unsure about its inclusion. I understood reservations about this piece: it is extremely crude, both in content and technique. But it is what Bruno was all about at the time, combining a visceral assault on the senses with a passion for social justice issues. Exploring the Seven Deadly Sins through this exhibition, I found in Bruno’s work a compelling portrait of the gluttony that characterizes American life, not just in terms of personal freedom and consumption, but the implied violence that has always been a feature of life in this country.
I discovered Bruno in a short article in enparalelo, a magazine on social concerns produced in Brooklyn, New York. After seeing the painting, You say tomato…I say tomato, reproduced with the article, I knew he was right for the show. We met at his studio and I just fell in the love with the guy, his passions, his convictions, his sincerity. In an e-mail message to me during October 2005, Bruno wrote of “turning Surprise Surprise into a twenty foot gluttonous psycho pig.” That ambition, or whim, was never realized. We included Surprise, Surprise and a second painting in the show. Sometime thereafter Bruno returned to his home in Nashville and his former vocation as a stained glass artist. I was sad to see him go.
Our preamble for the show nuanced the traditional concept of the Seven Deadly Sins with the following interpretation: 1) Pride/Nationalism and Religious Fundamentalism: the social agenda of placing one religious view in a dominant position and removing all others from that view; the belief that the world must follow suit and the manipulation of the engines of war towards that purpose. 2) Envy/Image Culture: the competition for fashion; competition for possessions that confer social status; body reconstruction; celebrity glamorization and consumption of the celebrity image. 3) Anger/Social Punishment: criminalization legislation, like the Rockefeller drug laws, that overcompensate for social ills; gun culture; social intolerance aimed at specified groups (hate crimes and hateful legislation); crimes of passion. 4) Avarice/Corporate Culture: manipulation and control of the social body through market consolidation, legislative lobbying, and secret power-broking with elected officials. 5) Sloth/Television Culture: the reluctance, disinterest, or inability to seek knowledge and answers to the world’s complexity and problems; sound-byte satiation. 6) Gluttony/Consumption: the consumption of fast foods and retail goods; a culture of excess; growing disparity between the rich and the poor; a nation’s craving for want. 7) Lust/Acquisition of Wealth: money laundering, graft, fraud; game show competition; gambling.
I have decided that it is time to quit Facebook. After learning of the news that co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced American citizenship in order to reap maximum profit from an initial public offering of Facebook on May 17th, I considered the immense profit that he will make and what he will not give back to the supposed community he represented at one time. I do understand that Saverin sued Mark Zuckerberg over his ownership in the company and that American citizenship does represent only one part of a global network of Facebook users. In fact, community may be a meaningless term in this context. But, considering that 1,780 top earners in this country gave up their citizenship last year ahead of pending legislation that would raise taxes for those same earners, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010, to be phased in starting January 1, 2013, I would rather find true community with others where excessive greed is not realized through the free content of my social networking activities (Danielle Kucera, Sanat Vallikappen and Christine Harper, “Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO,” Bloomberg, May 11, 2012; http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-11/facebook-co-founder-saverin-gives-up-u-s-citizenship-before-ipo.html). I did see the 2010 film The Social Network and found it disquieting. Nevertheless, I retained the Facebook account.
It is important to note that “well-educated people who actually have a great deal of affection for America,” so characterized by Richard Weisman (Kucera et al), would make the choice to leave this country rather than contribute to it, but I cannot agree with the sentiments of Cato Institute’s Daniel J. Mitchell, who places blame on the tax system. Mitchell does not believe in social responsibility, citing Saverin’s exit as “evidence of taxpayers escaping countries controlled by politicians who get too greedy” (“Facebook Co-Founder Renounces US Citizenship For Tax Reasons,” redOrbit, May 13, 2012; http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112534043/facebook-co-founder-renounces-us-citizenship-for-tax-reasons/). Mitchell’s peers believe in a bloated Federal budget because they can funnel contract money from a bloated military budget into their coffers. Mitchell is disingenuous at best.
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