very interesting. if only it were drawn with, gasp, elephant feces!

That portrait makes Stalin look positively nice. It reminds me a bit of Kurt Vonnegut's self-portraits. Was he influenced by Picasso?

Freddie Mercury?

It's interesting to notice that in the Cooper Union artist's banner the Picasso drawing is actually being held up in front of the artist's face. The artist wasn't simply hanging a portrait of Stalin, nor simply hanging Picasso's portrait in a kind of readymade mode or as an act of curation. The artist did something more -- she created a new artwork, a self-portrait, using Picasso's work as a historical reference. Apparently she was aware of Picasso's statement of artistic political protest and the power he could weild with his art, but not quite aware of her own.

Despite the layers of meaning, the net effect was to put the face of a genocidal killer right in the face of his victims. You can't expect everyone to understand art, or pick up on the artwork's nuances (most journalists failed to notice the portrait-within-a-portriat quality of the artwork), especially in a public space.

It's sometimes hard for me to reconcile my respect for free speech with someone, even inadvertently, hurting people who don't deserve it.

My mother lives in Vermont. One day her elderly neighbor put up an anti-gay sign. She walked to her neighbor's door and told him that it offended her deeply, and that this was no way to have a friendly relationship with your neighbors. He took the sign down. Censorship? Or just neighborliness?