Word: artiste
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...true for American Idol, though each week it’s the American voters who decide the aspiring stars’ fates. You can be the most brilliant singer (like Carly Smithson, placed sixth), or the most endearing personality (like Brooke White, placed fifth), or the most authentic artist (like Jason Castro, placed fourth), but what Idol contestants need to get ahead is a combination of voice, likeability, and adaptability to the weekly themes...
...61/2 years in a Burmese prison was a self-portrait. The likeness is only passing - he had no mirror in his cell - and the line is uncertain: in lieu of a brush, he used the pieces of a disassembled cigarette lighter. The theme couldn't be clearer, however. The artist's face is enshrouded by prison bars. Yet sprouting from his head is a verdant tangle of vines that sprawls to the painting's edge - a fierce assertion that the mind, unlike the body, will not be held captive. "While I was in prison, I was concerned everybody could forget...
...unique modus operandi - is attracting the attention of international collectors, according to Karin Weber, owner of a Hong Kong gallery specializing in contemporary Burmese art that has shown Htein Lin's paintings. "They're dense with visual information," Weber says, referring to a corpus that both chronicles the artist's bodily and sensory impoverishment, and offers a timely glimpse into a country that is itself a prison to millions of its citizens. In Htein Lin's crowded, largely expressionist scenes, skeletal figures cower in tiny cells, their gaping, hungry mouths sealed by bars. Some document prison rituals like body searches...
...Despite the cruelty and tedium Htein Lin recorded, he doesn't consider himself a political artist. He was, in fact, disillusioned with politics after years of futile activism. As a law student in Rangoon, he became involved with a troupe practicing a-nyient, a traditional Burmese form of comedy that often pokes fun at the country's military leaders. When those leaders reasserted their authority in a 1988 putsch, Htein Lin, along with many other student activists, fled into the jungle. While living in a rebel camp, he happened to meet an older artist, who offered him drawing lessons using...
...with as much as he can," Weber says, "because he may not have another chance." In a recent painting of his adopted home, for instance, Htein Lin depicts London as a chaotic welter of traffic and pedestrians. Every inch of the canvas is covered with color, as though the artist is unsure who will donate the next sarong or smuggle him the next smudge of paint. It's a subtle reminder that being out of prison isn't the same as being free...