Source: TomDispatch
by Greg Grandin
“Leon Golub once related a story to a mutual friend. A Chicago artist famous for large canvases depicting crimson torture rooms in Central America, Golub had been asked what it meant to him to be ‘a Jewish political artist’. The painter’s quick reply was that he wasn’t ‘a Jewish political artist’, he was just ‘a political artist’. In the end, though, Golub came to believe that he had let himself off too easily, that his answer was too pat. Yes, he was a political artist. His paintings had focused not just on Latin America but on war-torn Vietnam and racism in the United States and South Africa. But he had consciously avoided Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Golub admitted that what it meant for him to be a successful artist was never to take the ‘horrors inflicted on Palestinians’ as his subject matter. Only then would he be left free to paint his political opinions on anything else.” (05/22/25)
https://tomdispatch.com/the-horrors-inflicted-for-500-years/