Remember when Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the President, asserted another way of looking at facts on Meet the Press last year? When asked why Press Secretary Sean Spicer made a demonstrably false claim that the inaugural crowd size broke all records, she said he was stating an “Alternative Fact.” This was laughable at the time, but a year's worth of trump's manipulation of truth and calling reality he doesn't like “fake news,” can leaves us questioning all things real.
Telling lies
The push-back to Trump's truth-twisting has been to argue the merits of factualness.
But the President spins that effort as a smear against him and prevails. Tony Schwartz, who co-authored “Art of the Deal” told MSNBC on Thursday that the better ways to combat Trump's lies is to encourage people to open to the possibility that he lies. Artist Mary Frances Dondelingery goes one better. To spur awareness of falsehoods made to appear true, she created an alternative history of an entire civilization – ancient Greece, complete with fake proof. (More about that in a moment).
Lessons learned
Dondelinger got the idea after reading an online pronouncement that Michelle Obama was male. Shocked that such a fiction could pass for fact, she sought to flip the reality of ancient Greece's male-dominated culture, when women were house-bound and even held from attending the Olympic Games, into a women's world.
In her version of history, women enjoyed expanded roles and men were the caregivers. And she did it all by fabricating bowls and vases in the shape of antiquities and adorning them with storytelling paintings – also old-style. Except the tales she tells describe the lives of women as free-wheeling, even to picturing a woman wrestling a lion.
The artistry of her work should hit viewers hard about the insidiousness of “alternative facts.” And, as if to ensure the believability of her objects, she took the alternative history one step further and faked an archaeological dig complete with photos of the excavation. All of which is headed to an exhibit Art Spirit Gallery in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
Critical thinking
These exhibit examples put to shame Damien Hirst's inexplicable show of mock antiquities in Venice last year called “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable.” For all his make-believe objects of gold and bronze and marble, they came off as unbelievable as his show title suggests. In contrast, Dondelinger work needs no explanation. As she told the press, “It's harder than ever to figure out what is 'fake news' and what is real..This series encourages Critical Thinking on many levels.”
Mixed message
One false note in her effort to be false: in a vase painting a nude man is in bed with a clothed woman. But this is not an “ alternative fact,” In ancient Greek art, men are usually nude, even in sports, and women are not because the male form was preferred. No worries, Mary Frances Dondelinger. Interspersing real with fake is very Trumpian.
