Great American Artist George Zimmerman Is Tired Of Being Evil Jasper Johns, Is Now Evil Shepard Fairey
Who is the most famous contemporary American artist? It’s debatable, but probably George Zimmerman. We are being serious. Jesus fudge, we really are. Prolific, too! Here is his latest: a monochrome horror smear of Angela Corey, the Florida prosecutor who had the nerve to charge the nascent artist with murder even though it was legal to kill Trayvon Martin because there were no witnesses. The thing has words on it, about the American judicial system, and how this lady does not respect it. It's atour de force of ironic juxtaposition, as well as a turgid commentary on intellectual property and postmodernism, as evinced by its potent use of the Shepard Fairey Hope Generator.
Zimmerman’s first foray into painting stuff he finds on Google image search sold for $100,099.99. That is roughly $100,089.99 more than he would have earned for the same painting in a hypothetical universe in which he never shot Trayvon Martin in the heart, according to Wonkette's in-house experts on the market for embarrassing garbage art by talentless brazen shitty dumbfuck asshole child killers.
Sure, you can respect, say, Jeff Koons for working hard and being imaginative and marketing himself intelligently, but let's be real. It's way, way easier to just shoot a black kid.
We are reminded of Paul Gauguin, who some think murdered Vincent Van Gogh, and also of Jean Genet, the French writer and inveterate criminal who was spared a life in prison when prominent intellectuals pleaded with the government for his release. OK yes, this is just name-dropping to try and distract you from the fact that George Zimmerman was paid more than $100,000 for an appallingly lazy painting and will probably get a lot of money for this one, too, once he finds some sick collector of morbid curiosities, who will probably masturbate on it, thereby improving it.
Most of Europe bars the sale of Nazi artifacts. Can America please ban George Zimmerman from having hands, to paint with? He can still paint with his feet, as long as we are allowed to watch.
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[ Twitter / NY Mag / Google Books / Wiki ]
You know who else......yeah, I guess you do.
The person(s) who paid 100G for Zimmerman's first painting wasn't buying a work of art, because by any measure it simply had no artistic value. So don't worry about his "art" being worth so much; it isn't. Rather, that party was straight up donating money to old GZ for whatever reason, most likely ideological or political. I'd wager that the paintings are just a cover for this transfer of money from wealthy right wing patrons, and Zimmerman may not be the ultimate target for this largesse.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate about all of this.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if it came out that George actually had nothing to do with producing these paintings. They appear more like something that was cooked up by some PR or political consulting firm. The repurposing of existing images to make an obvious political statement could be a telltale sign there, because it is very unlikely that a naive folk artist with no prior artistic experience would be that clever.
Zimmerman's patrons might be going to all of this trouble not because they like him personally or sympathize with him; in fact they likely haven't even met him, and have no desire to do so. Instead they want to make him into the next Joe the Plumber, someone who can be used to gin the base back up (after more than a year of defeats) and rally support among them and to serve as a point man to irritate the opposition. The few grand is chump change to these folks and it is worth it to keep this individual afloat and in their pocket.
For all we know piping large sums of cash to Zimmerman might be part of some shell game to conceal sources and donors of money used for political campaign purposes. In this scenario Zimmerman and his paintings might just be serving as a front for some laundering scheme. This is all of course quite speculative at this point, but you do have to wonder how such artistically-obvious kitsch would have sold for such a high price, as well as who would have paid it and why they did so. Wealthy people generally don't exhibit such gauche taste when it comes to investing some of their own money in fine art.