Is It Art, Or Isn't It? / Style Scout

A new exhibition in KC sounds so intriguing the boys may have to take an artsy road trip. Here are some excerpts from the Pitch's review of Tom Huck's woodcut prints:

"The image depicts various barbecue attendees engaged in killing, torturing and roasting small-town cops dressed up like the pigs that Huck clearly thinks they are. A topless woman astride one unfortunate tubby officer wields a chain saw over his head. A mischievous child torments a hogtied Buford T. Justice with a doughnut-baited fishing line. Grinning hayseeds devour meat and entrails while a fat, happy chef in a toque reading "KISS THE COOK" presides. The composition is draped in viscera, fat and gristle, strewn with sausage links and greasy, smiling faces."

Richard: "I also dislike cops. I'd vote art on this one if it wasn't for the title of the piece: Oinktoberfest."

Chip: "Is this woodcut literally 'draped' in sausage. If so, I'll vote art as well. Delicious art."

"Take "Late Night at the Racist Rectal Rally." Against a country landscape studded with flaming crosses, a Klansman mounts a woman in a Pickelhaube helmet, her legs entwined with a viper. A further entwining of racist iconography and sexual imagery: A Nazi woman is erotically asphyxiating her hooded partner from below with a noose. It's the persistence (and coupling) of race hatred across cultures and hemispheres. The image, like "Oinktoberfest," is so confrontational that it's easy to overlook the technical precision and confident style with which Huck executes his art."

Here's a taste of Huck's work (click to enlarge), a triptych called "The Transformation of Brandy Baghead." In case you're not sure, the work is "a bombastic, ghastly indictment of cultural narcissism, cosmetic surgery, corporate sponsorship and the amoral churn of reality television" (Pitch).



















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This week's Style Scout has (finally) appeared on Lawrence.com, so we'll leave you with a chance to comment on Casey Don Williams, 28, from "E-Town" (Emporia), a bartender at Teller's who is "into the sporty look, but I love diversity" and who says that he looks like "a cross breed of Jude Law and Brendan Fraser."

Readers, is he fashionable? Ladies, would you bang him?

Here he is, posing in front of some books: