Looks like the infamous Pallywood propaganda machine has come to the art world. In Toronto, there is an art exhibition called ‘A Child’s View of Gaza.’ Nobody who knows anything about art, believes that most of these drawings were done by children under 12, totally unassisted by adults. What say you?
Algemeiner (H/T Susan K) Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is delighted to announce the presentation at Alternative Grounds Café of a fascinating exhibition of drawings by children from Gaza. Each drawing reflects different aspects of a child’s life in Gaza and the impact of the ongoing blockade on their daily lives.
A Child’s View from Gaza also offers a child’s perspective on the Israeli offensive against Gaza, which took place from December 27th, 2008 to January 17th, 2009. Each drawing is unique in its perspective and details.
When these pictures were shown in Oakland last year, they did not appear to be drawn by children, or at the very least some of them may have been drawn under the heavy influence of adults who created the motifs for children to copy.
One obvious example was this one: It is a direct copy, with a lot of standard anti-Zionist embellishments, of a poster by anti-semitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff (above right).
Most of the pieces seem to be way too sophisticated to have been drawn by children at all.
An art professor said:
The authenticity of the painting is remarkable for a child’s hand. The drawing of the planes and helicopters, the man in the tower, the dynamic brushstrokes that are well conceived and controlled all seem to project a more mature approach to art. Could these “children” be in their late teens, college age, or young adults [MECA says they were 9 to 11 years old]? According to the the quote, “much of the artwork was produced by children.” I wonder how “much”? Also, it is possible that the “children” were directed by an adult who supervised and perhaps completed the initial drawing?
A long time avocational artist said:
These drawings don’t look like those of unusually accomplished children. They look like trained artists imitating the style of a child.
The sureness of the color application — especially in the dense, complicated scenes (which are obviously all done by the same person) — is at variance with the primitive (faux-primitve, frankly) nature of the sketching. It’s the use of color especially that gives it away to me as the product of an older person. But the complexity of the composition in the big scenes is uncharacteristic of 9-11-year-olds as well. Certainly the politicized content is atypical.
The sureness of stroke in these pictures is something you almost never find from a very young artist. The biggest giveaway I see in this regard is not actually in the complex, refined drawings, but in the more primitive ones. For example, the confidence with which the concertina wire is sketched in, in one of the primitive crayon drawings, is just not characteristic of the young. I was accounted an exceptional artist in my K-12 years, and I couldn’t have achieved that confident, bold, rapid-stroking effect until I was at least 16. It’s one of the hardest things to do, and you really do lack the coordination and focus for it when you’re younger. A kid would draw that laboriously, with a lot of short, stubby strokes strung together — or he would simply achieve a cruder, less symmetrical and more tentative effect.
An art teacher and art historian wrote:
These pictures indeed do not resemble children’s art, especially not of elementary school age.
The first picture: the space is depicted in a very sophisticated way, with overlapping structures that decrease in size as distance increases. The use of contour lines is nowhere close to the ability of a nine year old. And a dead giveaway of an adult artist: the clouds and shading AROUND contour lines. A child would never do that.
The second picture: it seems to me that an adult artist drew the outlines and let a child fill it in with color. The stark, securely drewn outline, the cutoff houses and the effective composition do not look child like at all. Children don’t build the human form from an unbroken outline.
Fourth picture: sophisticated use of one point perspective, very effectively positioning of the vanishing point at an asymmetric angle. Although the artist tried to add “childish” elements (the sun in the corner, anthropomorphic trees, clumsy figures), the whole composition was planned by an adult.
In short, I am convinced that adult intervention and planning were heavily involved in the production of these pictures.
There is one other element that calls the authenticity of these pictures into question. What is the first thing a child will proudly do when he or she finishes a drawing? Why, they sign it, of course.
Yet not one of the pictures is signed.
One would think that a children’s art exhibit showing such precocious examples of drawing would want to publicize the names of the artists – and elaborate on their own personal stories from which sprung such eloquence and experience.
The artist’s story is often more compelling than the art. But, for some bizarre reason, we are deprived of this information. Could it be that the organizers don’t want the children to be interviewed? Or is it simply that the children’s involvement in these works was minimal to none?
One anti-Israel website even tried to explain away this omission, adding the interesting “fact” that these art workshops must have only been occurring after sunset:
The art was often drawn and painted in the dark, because of limited electricity and frequent power outages. The names and ages of the artists are unknown, as Israel’s siege made it difficult to even get the art out of Gaza.
Really? Kids can spend an hour drawing an intricate picture but cannot find the ten seconds to write their names?
Astonishingly, this exhibit has traveled across the US and Canada in the past nine months, and not once has anyone asked the exhibitors to prove the provenance of the artwork. The emotional component is so compelling that it doesn’t even occur to the venues (or reviewers) that they might be victims of a hoax.
From all available evidence, however, that is exactly what these pictures appear to be. And the venues that are showing these pictures (as well as the book that was released with the pictures) are part of the deception.
of my gosh. to say that this was done by 0-11 year old kids a but much but to say they wer DONE IN THE DARK? ha ha ha
As they say, “One picture is worth 1,000 words”. No, I do not buy into the idea these are kids drawings! This is the product of a well oiled propaganda machine and probably very successful in it’s target audience.
People from Gaza like to distort the truth and make out there the victims but in reality they are the aggressors! ie teaching young gaza kids too hate and kill jews! There will never be peace until the the pages of the koran which specify hate are ripped out of the koran for good! Its as simple as that!!
You’d have to tear out just about the ENTIRE Qur’an if you did that.
In 40 years of teaching, I’ve never seen a piece of art by a kid that wasn’t signed. I also know that sophisticated composition combined with childish execution is always a fake done by adults.
Fakestinians lie. That’s what they do. And maim, rape, loot, and murder.
Will Canadians be taken in. Yes. We’re so accommodating and trusting.
OH MY ! But aren’t little Abdul and MoHAMed talented children. I’ll just bet that they are the tallest and strongest in their class too. After they’re both in their late 30s. But that’s O.K., a lot of the inbred children like this are in their 30s.
If your going to tell the big lie, go for the gusto!
If people in the west think is true, we have a problem of miscommunication and we had better get straight.
Burn’em.
Protest from Al-Haashim Kamena Atangana re the way women dress in Toronto.
Now an exhibition of supposedly drawing by children….GIVE ME A BREAK the muslim beast is stirring in Toronto.
Taqiyya, Taqiyya, Taqiyya. all the way
Now they should have an Israeli child’s view of rockets incoming from Gaza and the devastation they wreak.
There have been more than ten thousand rocket and mortar attacks on Israel over the last 8 years and all of them were unprovoked (i.e. cannot be tied to acts of Israeli aggression in any sense).
The Israeli government and military have killed exponentially more Palestinians than Hamas’s rockets have even injured.
I’ve seen the damage on both sides of the green line, and it is far, far worse in Gaza and the West Bank, where there are no military targets. For every Israeli who is harmed by Hamas’s rockets, the Israeli military (not a fanatical paramilitary militia group, but the force of a sovereign nation) destroys entire villages in retribution.
A repeated refrain on this site is that Islam is a religion of hate. But the hatred directed at the Palestinians from people on this site is coming from people who seem to identify themselves as Christian.
Christ said you will know something by its fruits. I know devoted, loving Muslims who produce the spiritual fruit of the blessed. I also know loving and devoted Christians who produce rich fruit in sincere faith. But the fruit of this site is a hatred that is, in itself, a rejection of the teachings of the One who said. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
“The Israeli government and military have killed exponentially more Palestinians than Hamas’s rockets have even injured.” I want to see proof of this “exponential” difference, because I call SHENANIGANS.
We have to hand it to Hamas, when it comes to propaganda they get A for effort. And it is probably effective enough to fool half- baked mind of which, sad to say, we have no shortage.
AT actually, without a trained eye, I don’t think the average person would pick up right away that they are not really kid’s drawing. Most people wouldn’t be looking at it that way and wouldn’t spend much time studying the elements of the drawings. I’m afraid I didn’t see it right away, and probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t pointed out to me.
BNI I have been a professional artist for 48 years and there is NO WAY those pictures were done by a child..They were done by a professionals and most likely with the help of a computer..We need one of the geeks to see if they can take them apart on computer..Like nobama’s BC…
Jim, thanks for the additional confirmation.
“AMBULANCE”?
Give me a break! The moslem kids over there don’t have time to draw pictures, they are too busy learning how to be martyrs! For the true picture, watch these vids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eTGbP55HGi8
I want to see ‘shrumes over gaza.
Nice to we are getting some bang for the bucks we loan Israel. Go IDF. Go Caterpiller. RAH RAH RAH.
Propaganda and yet an exhibition critical of Islam or Islamic terrorism is impossible. We are on our knees to Islam. I am disgusted.
As a professional artist I can say that at least some of these images are much too advanced to be drawn by children.
Pure Bullshit ! They will fall for it in Dhimmi Torontostan, but they would’nt buy this shit anywhere else, especially out here in Western Canada. All this is , is Propaganda parading as art meant to discredit Israel and make those Palistinian annimals look good. Pure horse cookies !
The drawings were not drawn by kids but inbred adults that look like kids! Picasso can draw better than this propaganda crap!!
I dunno, Vicki, “Guernica” was pretty childish-looking too. It had to be sent around on tour and explained to everyone who saw it. At least these inbred Vincent van Gazans got their propaganda across without a guidebook.
I mean, look at that poor minaret, with big bites out of it! And that satellite dish on the collapsed building, and the armless Van Driessen, just lying there, chilling out. Ohhhh, the Hamasity of it all!
This art work is all about taqiyya and BS.
Notice on the last picture the two “ambulances” are labeled in English. Also no red crescent sigil. Same as English language signs in some random third world riot. FAKE!!!
How unIslamic….no??? I expect to read about some pedophile Imam declaring art unislamic and these so called “children” beheaded
These can’t be legit. I have it on good authority that the birds fly upside in that part of the world because there is nothing worth defecating on.
Rather than these pictures being the truth of what Israel is doing in Gaza, I think they represent wishful thinking on the part of the palesimians WRT what they wish they could be doing to Israel.
No problem with that.
Clueless idiots in Ottawa sleep on.