[Fwd: [Marxism] removing marx]

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Marxism] removing marx
Date: 	Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:41:39 -0430
From: 	michael a. lebowitz <mlebowit at sfu.ca>
Reply-To: 	Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
<marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
To: 	aorta <aorta at home.nl>


Winnipeg Free Press </>


    Breaking News


      Mural artist ordered to remove Karl Marx

Updated: July 30, 2008 at 07:01 AM CDT

Karl Marx may have been the father of communism, but in the eyes of a
Winnipeg business group, he's a politically incorrect choice for a mural
depicting Winnipeg at the time of the 1919 general strike.

A century ago, Winnipeg made international headlines for its labour
unrest and communist sympathies. However, Gloria Cardwell-Hoeppner,
executive director of the West End BIZ, admits she ordered an artist
working on a public mural to alter the design and erase the image of a
person "very much looking like Karl Marx."

The 19th-century philosopher simply didn't fit the intended aim of the
BIZ-sponsored mural, Cardwell-Hoeppner said.

"We were looking to have images of social history, not political
history," she added.

"That was a time with a lot of things happening and there were a lot of
people coming into the city. They were leaving struggles that they were
having over in Europe and coming to a new life here. That was what was
trying to be depicted here."

The two-metre by three-metre mural, on the side of a building at Ellice
Avenue and Banning Street, was among a series of public murals the West
End BIZ has had created in the last several years.

The BIZ has sponsored about 50 murals throughout the inner city in an
effort to beautify Winnipeg's core. Each year, it hires artists and
university arts students to paint two or three such works.

Sketching of the mural depicting Winnipeg around 1919 began a few weeks
ago, Cardwell-Hoeppner said, but the artists embarked on the design that
included Marx "before the research was complete."

The artist had intended to show a man of that period, not to pinpoint
Marx himself, Cardwell-Hoeppner said. The decision to erase the Marx
image, made Monday, disappointed at least one passerby.

"Walking down Ellice these past few days was a gratifying experience,"
said Errol Naumko, who wrote to the Free Press to express his dismay.

The mural has also become the subject of at least one local Internet blog.

joe.paraskevas at freepress.mb.ca

    * Winnipeg Free Press </>
    * © 2008 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

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