Clinton Fein

Last updated

Clinton Fein (born 1964 in South Africa) is an artist, writer and activist, noted for his company Apollomedia and its controversial website Annoy.com and its Supreme Court victory against Janet Reno, United States Attorney General, regarding the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act in 1997. [1]

Contents

This victory, a landmark for First Amendment rights, won Fein's right to disseminate his art. [2] Fein won another federal First Amendment lawsuit to remove a government-imposed gag order. [3] As recognition, Fein received a nomination for a PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award in 2001. Fein now presides the board of First Amendment Project, [4] a nonprofit organization that protects and promotes freedom of information, expression, and petition.

Early life and career

Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, Fein graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1986, with a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Psychology. After living in New York for a couple of years, Fein moved to Los Angeles, where he began reporting directly to the President of Orion Pictures, as part of the creative team for numerous films, among them Academy Award-winning Dances with Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs .

From the outset, Fein's work has led him into some high-profile confrontations. In 1994, his CD-ROM Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military , based on the book by renowned investigative reporter Randy Shilts that examined the issue of gays in the military, used digital technology as an art form. When the US Navy unsuccessfully attempted to block its release, [5] it became the first CD-ROM to triumph under First Amendment protections. [6] Conduct Unbecoming won the Critic's Choice Award, was praised by Wired Magazine as "a tantalizing peek at the potential of CD-ROM publishing," and dubbed "evolutionary" by Rolling Stone Magazine. [7]

Art and law

Fein was the first South African-born American to challenge government restrictions on technological communications when he filed a federal lawsuit 30 January 1997. [8] Fein, represented by Michael Traynor of Cooley Godward LLP and by William Bennett Turner of Rogers, Joseph, O'Donell and Phillips, filed a lawsuit against Janet Reno, former United States Attorney General, challenging the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). [9]

The CDA made the communication of anything "indecent with the intent to annoy", a felony punishable by a fine and up to two-year imprisonment. President Bill Clinton signed the CDA into law in February 1996. Fein filed the lawsuit, Apollomedia v. Reno, [10] the same time he launched his Annoy.com web site. [11] A three-judge panel in United States District Court for the Northern District of California made a divided decision on the lawsuit. [12] Fein filed a Supreme Court appeal, which he won in 1999. [13]

In June 1999, the U.S. government sent Fein an order to reveal a user of Annoy.com's e-card service. [14]

Earlier, in April 1999, the University of Houston tried unsuccessfully to obtain the website's records. The government later ordered Fein to stop discussing details of this investigation, its existence or its application. In United States v. ApolloMedia , Fein argued that this gag order violated the First Amendment and the statutory requirement that it have a definite duration. [15]

The case moved from a Texas magistrate court to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas and then to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. [16] The Fifth Circuit granted the appeal. The District Court then unsealed the website's records and all related proceedings and lifted the gag order.

Art, politics and censorship

As an artist, Fein is represented by Toomey Tourell in San Francisco and Axis Gallery in New York, and his shows have been dogged by controversy. In 2001, Fein was scheduled to open a solo exhibition, Annoy.com, (based on his critically acclaimed [17] web site of the same name), in San Francisco in October. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Artforum Magazine pulled an advertisement for Fein's show from their October issue. The advertisement displayed an image of a purse-lipped former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, sitting naked in a urine-filled glass, referencing the technique used by artist Damien Hirst, in which animate objects are soaked in formaldehyde and encased in a glass containers. Fein's advertisement, designed to link Mayor Giuliani with mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg, incorporated imagery from the exhibition Sensation that resulted in mayor Giuliani withholding funding from the Brooklyn Museum. Clutching a crucifix with a nod to artist Andres Serrano and with another Giuliani targeted work, Chris Ofili's Virgin Mary forming the backdrop, copy on the top of the image reads: "Mike for Mayor" and at the bottom, "Start Spreading the News."

Artforum Executive Editor Knight Landesman stated that the magazine was understaffed and that the editors did not feel comfortable publishing a disparaging image of Rudy Giuliani. [18]

In October 2004, Palo Alto-based printing company Zazzle destroyed two of Fein's giant images. [19] just before the opening of a solo exhibition at Toomey Tourell Gallery. [20] The first of the images, reviewed at Chelsea's Axis Gallery by The New York Times' Ken Johnson, [21] was described as "an American flag with the stars and stripes made from the text of the official Abu Ghraib report ... accompanied by fifty representations of the iconic image of a hooded man teetering on a box with wires trailing from his arms comprising the stars." The other depicted President Bush on a crucifix and was entitled "Who Would Jesus Torture?" The printing company told San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker that it had "destroyed the images"; [22] company spokesperson Matt Wilsey claimed the image might "offend Christians," and threatened to sue Fein for defamation if Fein publicly criticized the company's actions.

"Who Would Jesus Torture?" was published in Art of Engagement, Visual Politics in California and Beyond, by Peter Selz, released in November 2005, and exhibited at the Katzen Arts Center at American University in 2006. (Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum, and a former curator of New York's Museum of Modern Art.) In November 2006, "Who Would Jesus Torture" accompanied an article about Fein in American Protest Literature by author and Harvard University lecturer Zoe Trodd, published by Harvard University Press. It was this interview that Fein cited as a catalyst for his exhibition Torture, which opened at Toomey Tourell gallery in San Francisco in January 2007, [23] featuring gigantic, high-resolution photographs [24] that reenacted infamous scenes from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq .

Fein's Torture series was exhibited in Beijing [25] in September 2007 [26] and in London in October 2007. [27] A review in the December 2007 issue of Art in America magazine, summed up the impact of Fein's Torture series, stating: "Torture of detainees or their rendition to countries with even more abusive torture regimens has become semi-legal under the Bush administration. Fein reminds us, however, that these practices can never be anything less than intolerable." [28]

Fein is the current editor of First Amendment Project's web log and writes a blog, Pointing Fingers for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saatchi Gallery</span> Physical and online contemporary art museum in Chelsea, London

The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and begun a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry McGee</span> American painter

Barry McGee is a contemporary US artist. He is a well known graffiti artist, pioneer of the Mission School art movement, and is also known by his monikers: Twist, Ray Fong, Bernon Vernon, and P.Kin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tabitha Soren</span> American television journalist

Tabitha Soren is an American fine art photographer and former reporter for MTV News, ABC News and NBC News.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rafał Olbiński</span>

Rafał Olbinski is a Polish illustrator, painter, and educator, living in the United States. He is considered one of the major representatives of the Polish School of Posters.

Sensation (art exhibition)

Sensation was an exhibition of the collection of contemporary art owned by Charles Saatchi, including many works by Young British Artists, (YBAs), which first took place 18 September – 28 December 1997 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The exhibition later toured to the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. A proposed showing at the National Gallery of Australia was cancelled when the gallery's director decided the exhibition was "too close to the market."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathan Oliveira</span> American painter

Nathan Oliveira was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions, in addition to having been included in hundreds of group exhibitions in important museums and galleries worldwide. He taught studio art for several decades in California, beginning in the early 1950s, when he taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. After serving as a Visiting Artist at several universities, he became a Professor of Studio Art at Stanford University.

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from 2008, succeeded by Julie Rodrigues Widholm in August, 2020. The museum is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museums program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political positions of Rudy Giuliani</span> Remarks and positions of politician Rudy Giuliani

Below are remarks and positions of Rudy Giuliani, former candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Mayor Giuliani has described himself as a moderate Republican.

Wally Bill Hedrick was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture, gallerist, and educator who came to prominence in the early 1960s. Hedrick’s contributions to art include pioneering artworks in psychedelic light art, mechanical kinetic sculpture, junk/assemblage sculpture, Pop Art, and (California) Funk Art. Later in his life, he was a recognized forerunner in Happenings, Conceptual Art, Bad Painting, Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. Hedrick was also a key figure in the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation when he helped to organize the Six Gallery Reading, and created the first artistic denunciation of American foreign policy in Vietnam. Wally Hedrick was known as an “idea artist” long before the label “conceptual art” entered the art world, and experimented with innovative use of language in art, at times resorting to puns.

<i>The Holy Virgin Mary</i> Painting by Chris Ofili

The Holy Virgin Mary is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. It was one of the works included in the Sensation exhibition in London, Berlin and New York in 1997–2000. The subject of the work, and its execution, caused considerable controversy in New York, with Rudolph Giuliani – then Mayor of New York City – describing Ofili's work as "sick". In 1998, Ofili was the first black artist to be awarded the Turner Prize. The painting was sold for £2.9 million in June 2015.

James Edward Grant was an American painter and sculptor active from the late 1950s into the early 1970s. Best known for his sculptural work in plastics, this work by no means defined him, but was rather a natural endpoint of an exploration into increased dimensionality—starting from abstract canvases, moving through collages and bas-reliefs until the work finally came off the wall in sculptural form.

Binh Danh is a Vietnamese-born photographer and artist. He immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Ferguson (impresario)</span>

David Ferguson was an American international outsider-culture impresario, activist, music producer and concert promoter. Over his career, most of which has been spent on the West Coast, he worked with musical acts such as the Avengers, John Lydon, Billy Bragg, Iggy Pop, Bad Brains, Black Flag, and Butthole Surfers and visual artists Vaughn Bode, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Barry McGee. Ferguson worked with multi-discipline artists such as avant-garde musician and spoken-word artist Lydia Lunch and the psychedelic drag queen performance group the Cockettes.

Silvia Poloto is an artist born in São Paulo, Brazil who immigrated to San Francisco, California, in 1992. She earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from University of São Paulo. She earned her M.B.A. at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo. From 1996 to 1999, she worked as an instructor's assistant in the Sculpture Department, City College of San Francisco. During that period, she also worked as a welder at 3D Studios in Oakland and art instructor in mixed media at the Associated Students of the University of California Art Studio at the University of California, Berkeley.
She works in a variety of media, including photography, sculpture, and painting, and she also creates video art. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including the United Arab Emirates, France, Spain, Italy, Singapore, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and China, among others. In the San Francisco Bay Area, her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the SFMOMA Artist's Gallery, the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, the Italian American Museum, and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, where she was an artist-in-residence in 2001. Poloto's work has been acquired by more than 50 institutional and corporate collections around the US and by more than 800 private collectors around the world.

Serge Sorokko is an American art dealer, publisher and owner of the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco. He played a major role in establishing the first cultural exchanges in the field of visual arts between the United States and the Soviet Union during the period of perestroika. Sorokko is the recipient of various international honors and awards for his contributions to culture.

Eric Butcher is a contemporary British abstract painter known for his reductive, processed-based approach.

Richard Nagler is an American businessman and photographer. Four monographs of his photography have been published. His photography has been exhibited in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe; and included in public and private collections. The work has also been featured in publications including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Artforum International, Artweek, The Los Angeles Times, Playboy Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle. Nagler graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969 magna cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa with a B. A. in politics and philosophy, and began his career in photography in the 1970s. Richard Nagler is also a book reviewer specializing in photography and other fine arts for The New York Journal of Books.

Mary Snowden is an American painter and educator. She is known for works that use humor to explore issues of feminist identity and consumerism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ciel Bergman</span> American painter (1938–2017)

Cheryl Marie Bowers, known as Ciel Bergman, was an American painter of Swedish origin. Her work, considered post-modern, has a focus on the environment as well as feminine consciousness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Fein</span> American surrealist painter and author

Sylvia Fein is an American surrealist painter and author. Inspired by the quattrocento, Fein paints in egg tempera, which she makes herself. She studied painting at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she became part of a group of magical realist painters, including Gertrude Abercrombie, Marshall Glasier, John Wilde, Dudley Huppler, and Karl Priebe. A newspaper described her as "Wisconsin’s Foremost Woman Painter." Beginning in the 1940s, Fein lived for a time in Mexico, then in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, eventually settling in the town of Martinez. Her 100th birthday was marked with an exhibition at her alma mater, The University of California at Berkeley.

References

  1. ↑ Mills, Elinor (29 September 1998). "U.S. court protects 'annoying' online speech". CNN. Retrieved 19 November 2014.
  2. ↑ Maclachlan, Malcolm (19 April 1999). "Annoy.com Downplays Supreme Court Defeat". TechWeb. Archived from the original on 13 April 2001.
  3. ↑ Rhine, Jon; Stein, Todd (15 September 2000). "Ungagged CEO of Annoy.com sinks teeth into critics". San Francisco Business Times . Retrieved 19 November 2014.
  4. ↑ http://www.thefirstamendment.org
  5. ↑ Ness, Carol (8 March 1995). "CD-ROM with gay sailors released". San Francisco Chronicle .
  6. ↑ "United States Navy Censorship Dispute". www.clintonfein.com.
  7. ↑ "Conduct Unbecoming Reviews". www.clintonfein.com.
  8. ↑ Hudson, David (25 September 1998). "Federal court rules that annoy.com may continue to annoy". First Amendment Center. Archived from the original on 28 August 2007.
  9. ↑ Delgado, Ray (21 October 1997). "Web site owner sues to limit 'decency' law". San Francisco Chronicle.
  10. ↑ Mendels, Pamela (31 January 1997). "Asserting a Constitutional Right to Annoy". The New York Times.
  11. ↑ "Apollomedia Corp. v. Reno". Netlitigation. 1998.
  12. ↑ Macavinta, Courtney (24 September 1998). "Annoy.com free to bother Netizens". CNET.
  13. ↑ Biskupic, Joan (20 April 1999). "Court Upholds Ban on Obscene E-Mail". The Washington Post .
  14. ↑ Quinto, David W. (23 July 2001). Law of Internet Disputes. Aspen Law & Business. ISBN   978-0735525924.
  15. ↑ "Declaration of Clinton Fein in Support of ApolloMedia's Motion To Stay Paragraph 7 of Order". Annoy.com. 16 June 1999.
  16. ↑ "United States v. ApolloMedia: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Opinion". Annoy.com. 15 September 2000.
  17. ↑ "The Best Sites of 1998". The Webby Awards. 1998. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011.
  18. ↑ Fein, Clinton (12 November 2001). "Post Traumatic Press Syndrome: The Full Story". Annoy.com.
  19. ↑ Johnson, Kresta Tyler (October 2004). "Artist and advocate Clinton Fein has his controversial images destroyed prior to exhibition". Artthrob.
  20. ↑ Ba-Isa, Molouk Y. (11 January 2005). "Corporate Policy Leads to Political Censorship". Arab News .
  21. ↑ Johnson, Ken (17 September 2004). "Clinton Fein, "Warning" at Axis". The New York Times.
  22. ↑ Baker, Kenneth (12 October 2004). "2 of Clinton Fein's political works run afoul of his printer's policies". San Francisco Chronicle.
  23. ↑ "Clinton Fein: Torture". ArtNet.com. January 2007.
  24. ↑ Beaumont, Peter (9 September 2007). "Iraq inspires surge of protest art". The Observer .
  25. ↑ Winn, Steven (22 September 2007). "WWII fades into distant past, and with it, our sense of patriotism". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on 9 September 2012.
  26. ↑ "Art Beijing 2007". September 2007.
  27. ↑ Stoilas, Helen; Knox, James (12 October 2007). "Bridge" (PDF). The Art Newspaper . Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 May 2012. Retrieved 11 November 2019.
  28. ↑ Selz, Peter (December 2007). "Clinton Fein at Toomey Tourell". Art in America.

Bibliography

Articles

News

Publications

Art, editorials and writing

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.