STATEMENT ABOUT "TV COCKFIGHT"

by Jeff Whipple

I began painting “TV Cockfight” in 1991, while the bombs were still falling in the first Persian Gulf War. There were many aspects of the conflict that I found very disconcerting. Most of all was the root of the problem, which is the imbecilic fossil fuel dependency that has been perpetuated by all the Congresses and Presidents who’ve sucked on the gas nozzle of the oil companies since the early 1900s. If the US Government had put an effort into alternative energy research, mass transportation and fuel efficiency since WW II, there would never have been an energy crisis in the 70s, there would never have been Gulf War I and there wouldn’t have been the anti-American Imperialism hostility that led to the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the September 11 attacks. And now, of course, as 200,000 American troops assemble on the borders of Iraq, George Bush the 2nd is leading America to once again kill thousands solely for the profits of the oil companies.

The first Gulf War was a television spectacle and that inspired the TV format I used in this painting. The American public watched that war in their living rooms, white-knuckled grips on the vinyl of their easy chairs. Viewed from high in the sky, “smart” bombs chased the enemy across the TV screen and smoked them without any of that messy war stuff like blood, screams and bodies. Opinion polls flashed their patriotic percentage points informing tens of millions what their opinions were. The Iraqi people suffered twice as many deaths in two weeks of the American led onslaught than the US suffered in the ten year long Viet Nam War. I was appalled by the mainstream media’s virtual censorship of the considerable opposition to the war and any negative information about Operation Desert Storm.

THE IMAGES:

In the painting, a concerned citizen blindly aims two remote controls at war filled TV screens attached to a body with a video president head. The viewer is torn between trying to find untainted news and getting the best action coverage. Another citizen desires to saw off the oil company hose that fueled the war flames. The war flames burn American TV antennas, heating up the citizens attached below. Fighting cocks face off for the benefit of gambling spectators. Macho-scrotum-driven “smart” bombs are fondled by the hands of power. On one TV screen a gilded percentage symbol (%) conveys slanted opinion poll results. After the American troops were sent to the gulf, corporate media opinion pollsters asked, "Do you support our troops?" They never asked, "Do you support this war?"

EXHIBIT HISTORY:

“TV Cockfight” was first exhibited in the faculty exhibition at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota in 1991. (A week after that exhibit, I was fired from that school.) It was exhibited the next month at an art center in Sanibel Island, Florida where the gallery directors debated about how to take it out of the show. They feared a backlash from censorship after I refused to remove it so they covered it with a portable chalkboard. I wouldn’t have known except a photo of that set-up was put in the local newspaper. In 1992, the painting was juried into a Florida artist survey at the Orlando Museum of Art where it won a Best of Show award. In 1997 it was included in a national survey exhibition about the Gulf War called Lest We Forget at the Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach, Florida. That show title, Lest We Forget, is sadly poignant now. In February, 2003, the new version with Dubya was exhibited at Gallery Enormous in St. Petersburg and it received many positive responses.