365 Days of Art: November 15 – Homer is Published, O’Keeffe is Born, Bernstein Protests NEA, Vandal is Sentenced

Winslow Homer, The Army of the Potomac – A Sharpshooter on Picket Duty, 1862

November 15, 1862

Winslow Homer’s The Army of the Potomac-A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty a wood engraving based on a painting, is published in Harper’s Weekly.

Black Lava Bridge, Hana Coast No. 1, by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1939

November 15, 1887

Georgia O’Keeffe is born.

Leonard Bernstein

November 15, 1989

The composer Leonard Bernstein declines a National Medal of Arts, awarded to him by the White House, in protest of the NEA rescinding a grant for an art exhibition on AIDS. As a gay man and AIDS activist, Bernstein says he cannot stand by without making a statement, especially as the NEA is responsible both for recommending him to the White House and for revoking the grant money.

Cy Twombly, Three Dialogues (Phaedrus), 1977. The vandalized panel was the white one.

November 15, 2007

A woman who vandalizes a painting by kissing it with red lipstick is sentenced in court for the crime. The painting is a panel of the Cy Twombly triptych Phaedrus, of which she says:

It was just a kiss, a loving gesture…I thought the artist would understand…. It was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art.”

Her sentence is to pay €1,000 to the painting’s owner, €500 to the Avignon gallery that showed it, and €1 to Twombly.