"Overcoming the Powers of Darkness:" The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Fritz Ascher was born on Oct. 17, 1893 in Berlin and died on Mar. 26,1970 in Berlin
A Holocaust survivor, his work was discovered by Rachel Cohen in the mid-80s and inspired her founding of The Fritz Asher Society in 2014. Ascher, an Expressionist and symbolism artist, is just now being rediscovered, so we are in on the ground floor..

Alice Cahana

  I discovered the Fritz Ascher Society by accident, when I was researching a blog on the artist Alice Cahana. Cahana (1929-2017) was a Hungarian Jew from Sarvar who survived four different concentration camps in the last year of WWII, losing every member of her extended family except her father and her beloved older sister Edith. Edith survived only to perish from illness immediately after liberation. She entered a hospital and Alice never saw her again. Cahana married and came to the US, where she became known for her art of the Holocaust and left a remarkable legacy. Loss is an enduring pain, Nazi terror knew no bounds, and it informed Alice's life and her art. How could it not?

In learning about Alice Cahana, I became interested in the art and the artists who survived the inhuman violence of  Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.  

So did Rachel Cohen, who some years ago discovered the art of Fritz Ascher, whose career, like Cahana's and so many other artists, was motivated, interrupted or destroyed by the Nazi regime. Cohen felt, rightly, that these artists had not received the recognition they deserved.  She writes:

"The strength and artistry of Fritz Ascher's work has driven me to try change that. In 2014 I founded the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized  Banned Art, which researches, discusses, publishes and exhibits artists whose life and work were affected by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. With our work we commemorate their artistic achievements, introduce work that may have been forgotten to a broad audience, and initiate an active dialogue about individuality and artistic integrity in response to conditions of extreme duress and political tyranny."   

This is God's work for sure. 

Fritz Ascher studied art in Berlin and began a brilliant career only to confront the fearful rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Moving from place to place to avoid capture, he, along with millions of others, could not escape the Gestapo's ruthless hunting rampages.  He was found and sent to Sachsenhauser concentration camp and then to Potsdam  Gestapo prison.

"Art interrupted," as art historians remark with sadness about the Jewish artists of these times.

When released Ascher lived in a bombed out shelter with the help of Martha Graftsmann until the war ended.  He resumed his painting, but his oeuvre came to embody the darkness and emotional terror that overcome his life and that of so many other artists then. 

Ascher's Sunset, at Grey's Gallery, in 2019,NYU's fine
arts gallery in Washington Sq.in Greenwich Village.  

His work lay hidden from public view until Rachel Cohen discovered his paintings and vowed to bring them to light. “The intensity, the strong energy, the colors, the forms,” she said, recalling the first time she saw his work in the mid-80s. "It was love at first sight."  After years of study and research, Cohen is finally bringing Ascher's work to the public, and galleries, art auctions, social media sites, public exhibits, and some media exposure is amplifying the Ascher Society's efforts. Cohen's labor of love is expanding our art universe.

The Ascher Society recognizes as well that while the Nazi terror regime "is certainly the blueprint for authoritarian terror," there are other dictatorial regimes that have suppressed individual and artistic freedom during the 20th century. They deserve recognition too. There was the Stalinist terror of the late 1920s through the 1950s; China's long march terror under Mao ZeDong; Pol Pot in Cambodia; Salazar in Portugal; Franco in Spain, authoritarian takeovers in the Middle East, and in fact up to this 2022 International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

The Ascher Society commemorates those who withstood these powers. I believe with the Ascher Society that by showing their work "we can inspire reflection, creativity and resilience in the face of adversity today...and provide today's audiences and society at large with valuable examples of how humanity can overcome the powers of darkness." 

Sources:

1.  https://fritzaschersociety.org/  "Comparing Ascher’s self-portraits from before and after the War equally proves instructive and offers insight into how Ascher’s psyche and his self-conception evolved as a consequence of his persecution. For an artist, the self remains a compositional subject infinitely in play as something to explore, avoid, grapple with, or deny. In this regard, Ascher’s multi-medium and multi-faceted study of himself and the representation of the inner life prove to be a consistent thread throughout his career."

2.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Ascher 

3.  https://francurrocaryblog.blogspot.com/2020/12/alice-lok-cahana-holocaust-survivor.html

4.  https://borislurieart.org/about-boris-lurie  

5.  https://www.artforum.com/spotlight/boris-lurie-art-foundation-83595 

6.  https://300magazine.com/nightmare-art-inspired-by-war-first-us-exhibition-of-fritz-ascher-works/.  

7.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/if-not-for-the-nazis-he-may-have-been-the-next-leonardo/  

SPLC's Civil Rights Museum: Honoring MLK and the Monumental Struggle for Civil Rights and Justice

The newly redesigned Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama, remembers the past and challenges visitors to continue the struggle. The center provides another pillar to support the struggle for freedom and justice in this country. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

The Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC) in Montgomery, located new the church where MLK preached during the Montgomery Bus boycott, was created in 2005, designed by Maya Lin, famous for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) created the museum as part of its long-time commitment to social justice.

  

The SPLC has been looked to as a pioneer in Civil Rights advocacy since its founding in 1972. Its had landmark cases against vicious White Supremacy, the KKK, and all forms of  racial injustice since then. SPLC has had its own struggles and some painful inner turmoil, but it is back to the SPCL we idealist liberals have known and loved since Julian Bond served as president. It's  why I continue to support its work. It's new president, Margaret Huang, formerly head of Amnesty International, is committed to its mission and its legal, advocacy, and educational goals.    

The renovated Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC), given added weight as the Black Lives Matter movement ricocheted across the country, embodies this mission. It embodies the passion and commitment of Martin Luther King. It emphasizes the civil rights movement "as a continuum, weaving together the US's history of racism with the ongoing activism in pursuit of equity. Like the work of the SPLC itself, the museum challenges visitors to be catalysts for justice." Its new exhibits, videos and hands-on materials sound fascinating and moving, its educational mission as important as SPLC's legal advocacy. 

“The reopening of the CRMC comes precisely at the right moment as our country grapples with efforts to prevent the teaching of an honest history about race and racism in our schools,” said Margaret Huang. "The CRMC and museums across the country can help fill those gaps. I’m thrilled that the CRMC is reopening to once again help visitors understand the truth about the history of civil rights advocacy in this country.”

Martyrs of Civil Rights movement engraved on black granite wheel.

Photo Haraz Ghanbari/AP

The SPLC's recognition of and commitment to lifting up the work of activist and community organizers on the front lines of the fight for racial justice resonates especially with historians of the movement. People like Fannie Lou  Hamer, who fought for voting rights from the ground up in Mississippi when the KKK rode roughshod over the lives of African Americans and lynching darkened the Southern landscape with violent deaths 

The Museum honors them all, and all those who fought and died for the monumental struggle. The names of civil-rights martyrs from 1954 to 1968 are engraved on the Memorial's circular black granite table. It honors those killed, terrorized, and buried in the darkness of tragic loss. It reminds us that the work for equality and justice never stops.  

Tragically, the fight for voting rights, the basic rights in a democracy,  is with us again. It is shattering. That no elected Republicans in Congress will vote for the current voting rights bills passed by the House is criminal; it's treasonous. That's why we need the continuing educational and legal advocacy of the SPLC and its Civil Rights museum, as well as other museums and memorials in Montgomery, and in several other Southern cities.

Martin Luther King's dream remains unfulfilled. It's up to us to make it a reality, to continue the monumental struggle for civil rights for all Americans, "until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." . 

A story of one victim of White Supremacy, Johnnie Mae Chappell.
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/02/12/remembering-johnnie-mae-chappell-jim-crow-era-injustice-resonates-period-black-lives-matter

Some Sources:

1.  https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/01/14/redesigned-crmc-encourages-fight-social-justice?

2.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center good descriptive article, with a good list of the cases SPLC has litigated.

3.  https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-alabama-mississippi-museums-20180722-story.html

4.  https://www.goworldtravel.com/tragedy-triumph-civil-rights-sites-alabama/. There are several Civil Rights museums in the US. I'd like to take a tour of all of them. It would be good to take high schoolers on a tour especially now. 

5.  https://www.cleveland.com/travel/2021/04/montgomery-alabama-confronting-americas-painful-past-at-the-legacy-museum-along-the-us-civil-rights-trail.html

6.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/arts/civil-rights-trail.html 

7.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-16-2022 A brief and important history: 

"Republicans say they oppose the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act because it is an attempt on the part of Democrats to win elections in the future by “nationalizing” them, taking away the right of states to arrange their laws as they wish. Voting rights legislation is a “partisan power grab,” Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) insists. / In fact, there is no constitutional ground for opposing the idea of Congress weighing in on federal elections. The U.S. Constitution establishes that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”

There is no historical reason to oppose the idea of voting rights legislation, either. Indeed, Congress weighed in on voting pretty dramatically in 1870, when it amended the Constitution itself for the fifteenth time to guarantee that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In that same amendment, it provided that “[t]he Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” /   It did so, in 1965, with “an act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution,” otherwise known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law designed to protect the right of every American adult to have a say in their government, that is, to vote. The Supreme Court gutted that law in 2013; the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act is designed to bring it back to life."

Favorite Memes of 2021 & Doing my Bit

A picture says a thousand words. A meme gives a message in as few words as possible. It's like folk art. Words and text with a message from the heart.

Another year comes to an end, and lots of great meme's tell the story of how it went. Issues captured in one little message that carries a lot of meaning.

For fellow Democrats, a meme actually makes our ranting less noisy, . In a few words it can save a thousand words.  

No gun shops in Sylvania

Used this one a lot. Historian
Chris Browning on the "gravedigger
of democracy." 

There are lots of memes on the other side, sure, on the dark side, lots of propaganda in my view, in support of sedition, lies, gaslighting. But I spot the ones that mean the most to the millions who voted for Biden and want to save our democracy in these unhinged, twisted time.

What the memes on the progressive side of the political spectrum tell us is that the resistance to tyranny, betrayal of rule of law, dereliction of duty, and sedition is alive and well.  

Toledo's Resist Portman Indivisible group meets on Zoom 
on Tuesdays. The R Senator, who voted tRUmp all the way, every time,
 is not running. Hope to turn his seat Blue with Rep.Tim Ryan (OH,D). 

The Sisters of St. Francis
hold BLM protests every
week. I'm happy to join.
them.          

 

Thanks to Indivisibles across the land, local and state action groups, progressive media organizations, and voter rights advocates everywhere who have been on the front lines since the Women's March on Washington in January 2017. It's been over 6+ years. We've been marching and protesting ever since. I've done my bit, and whenever I'm on the streets with my signs, I feel better. I'm considered an old warrior, which is fine by me. 

Thanks also to the Southern Poverty Law Center, CREW and like-minded organizations for exposing corruption and going after the dark $ unleashed by Citizens United against our politics and our culture. I was with the resistance 100%, and did my bit for saving our democracy.

Here are some of my favorite memes that tell a larger story in a few words and images. 

We know the state of our Judiciary branch from SCOTUS on down is precarious. With millions of dollars from Koch networks and  dark money funders, the Judiciary branch has been loaded with far-right wing zealots from top to bottom. SCOTUS stands on the precipice of irrelevance. We have lost confidence in the highest court in the land. Chief Justice Roberts has joined Justice Sonia Sotomayer in sounding the alarm.  

"Gravedigger" of democracy

Mitch McConnell has played a major role in corrupting the Judicial branch, cramming over 260 far-right, unqualified, unapproved by the Bar, without judicial experience  on the courts. It is rank dereliction of duty to obstruct Senate legislative activity, deliberately rig Senate "juries"  to vote against impeachments, to pack the courts. Liar Kavanaugh? Dancing on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's grave?  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is on it. I'd like to assume the FBI is on it too. A real investigation this time around.

Voting Rights protest with
friend Janice. . 

While I'm on McConnell, it is still a question how one person, plus one (Manchin) since 2020, can get away with obstructing action on the VOTING RIGHTS BILLS that have been passed by the House.  How is it that Mr. Filibuster McConnell gets away with no action on bills piling up his desk?  Doesn't the Senate have a constitutional duty to act on them?  Isn't it dereliction of duty? 

And what about accountability for all those involved in the insurrection against the US government and all those Republicans who voted the Big Lie on the presidential election, with tRUmp watching it on TV with glee?  Extreme dereliction of duty again, and again, since the former guy lied about crowd size and committed over 92,000 lies thereafter.  

If the January 6 committee keeps working full steam ahead, as it is doing now, I predict that there might very well be some 100 Republican seats open in 2022 and 2024. Public hearings are planned, evidence is piling up, cases are being made. It looks like tons of information will be revealed. Liz Cheney has made that clear.  A sea change could be upon us.  "The times they are a changing,"  as Dylan sang. Liz Cheney might very well get the GOP back on track, and maybe run for president too.  

It would help a lot if we could get money out of politics by legislating transparency and safeguards, putting limits on corporate lobbying, making it illegal for Congress members to own stock, ending Citizens United. Senator Elizabeth Warren has drafted some excellent legislation to address these issues. Lots of good memes advocate for change. Get money and greed out of politics. 

And while we're getting money out of politics, we need to tax the rich, too.  Robert Reich, public economist #1, is on these issues. His memes are the best. Reich can pack a message better than just about anyone! He kept them coming in 2021.

This is what Reich preaches. Wisdom
from a great President. When will this
message sink in to all voters?

I also like the progressive memes on getting Putin out of Ukraine.  Ukraine has been in the center of the Cabal's corruption at least since Paul Manafort became head of the fool's campaign. Putin is threatening again, amassing some 90,000 troops on the border, saber-rattling. He gets off on it. But it's exactly where I served, in Starobilsk, Lugansk oblast, far-eastern Ukraine close to the Russian border.  It's complicated, but my friends are in harm's way, and I care what happens.  

Other issues that matter include Voting Rights, gun violence, and Black Lives Matter (BLM ). There are tons of them but these remind us that White Supremacy is alive and well, and poisoning our social fabric the same way it's done since the beginning of time.  I've never been so aware of White privilege.  

And finally there's a lot of unfinished business on the 2022 political agenda. These memes point the way.

America awaits real action on climate change, addressing the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic to reduce incidents and deaths, and bringing final accountability for those who planned, organized, and funded a coup to overturn a presidential election in gross violation of Rule of Law, the worst case of treason and dereliction of duty this country has ever seen. . 

 "There’s is no Law and Order without Justice. There is no Justice without accountability." 

Lots of unfinished business. This is tip
of the iceburg in the foreign relations department.
There's Ukraine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, what Kushner did in 
Israel, secret deals with Russia, North Korea, enemies of the US.   the role of transnational networks, and extreme dereliction of duty to protect and preserve the USA. 

A new year's wish. 

Interesting Guardian article on memes: 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/04/political-memes-2016-election-hillary-clinton-donald-trump. The good, the bad and the ugly use of memes. Pure propaganda? 

https://www.justsecurity.org/79654/the-path-to-real-accountability-the-timetable-and-track-record-of-the-jan-6-select-committee/

Another Florida Road Trip To Begin a New Year

We happened upon Mary L. Proctor's roadside Folk Art Garden, on Route 319, Crawfordsville Highway going South, and gloried in her art with her husband Tyrone.  

I had a fabulous Trish Collins moment today. She's the Tallahassee native who happened upon Missionary Mary L. Proctor's doors, bought them for $5,000, took them down to her SOHO New York gallery, bought lots more, and had a huge exhibition at which Mary witnessed her art go out the door at $7,000 a pop. (https://francurrocaryblog.blogspot.com/2021/12/mary-l-proctor-folk-artist-tallahassees.html)  A folk artist was born.

Andy and I  were on another Florida road trip, going through Wakulla
County to catch a sight of Ochlockonee Bay and put our feet in Gulf waters. The weather turned cloudy, then sunny, then cloudy; rain was coming, but we took our chances. We're glad we did. 

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Mary Proctor's doors and paintings on the side of the road. No doubt about it. "Sis, those are Missionary Mary's paintings!" Andy sped past but I made her turn around. "Really, sis?" "Yes, positive." Sometimes writing blogs can be helpful.

And that's how we got to spend a glorious time talking with Tyrone Proctor, Mary's husband, at the roadside "Folk Art Garden." A big board with Mary's face on it welcomed us. How absolutely uplifting to go through some very fine genuine Missionary Mary art. We walked around the crowded space that looked more like a junk yard than an art garden.  It was filled with treasures. We admired this piece and that, taking photos, wishing we could buy four or five pieces. Alas, the $5,000  art was out of our price range, and the $750-$1,000 ones, too. Tyrone understood; he was kind, helpful. He said he could bring out some lower-priced ones, and he did.  

My Missionary Mary

I am now a proud owner of a  Mary L. Proctor. Not the big ones, a little one, authentic, wonderful. It's about music, and I love the message: "Music heals the body mind and soul." Pure Missionary Mary.

Happy as a lark, filled to the brim with girlish glee, Andy and I continued on our journey to Panacea and the Gulf.  First stop, Oaklockonee Bay. 

Andy knew the way. Before the Panacea bridge she took a left onto a dirt road and got us there. We stepped out and felt the Gulf air. We got some selfies in front of the Bay. The two of us together. We stood still. Enjoyed the view. Peaceful. Calm. A lovely way to begin a New Year. 

Ochlockonee Bay, so pretty and calm.

We then drove over the bridge, so familiar from the days Andy went to St. Theresa. Andy was nostalgic, wistful. I could see her mulling things over. We made it to a little corner of the Gulf. "You okay, sis?"  "I'm okay, just remembering." We walked to a small sandy beach, enjoyed the view,  the smell of the water, the sight of folks fishing off a small dock.  It was enough for us.

 We had a special moment. 

We reminisced over the sands of time, the highs and lows, the changes.  Lots of changes. Andy got a photo of me with my Mary Proctor. A gift from the God who speaks to Mary. But I knew in my heart that the best gift in my life is not a piece of art, not something you buy.  It's my sister Andy. Thoughtful, compassionate, beautiful inside and out, and a great cook. I count my blessings. It's these times together with my beloved sis that matter the most. 

A garden of art.

"I refuse to let hate in my garden."

        The Tallahassee Capital building                    

Pure Missionary Mary

Not sure if this is a Mary L. Proctor but it's her message:
 you can make art out of anything.