Almost everyone who comes to this site has probably seen the ad for the Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (it is to the right as I write this), but I everyone who has HBO will watch it Feb 22nd  or when it repeats many times through the end of March (it will be out on DVD in June for those who don't).

We've all read about Abu Ghraib and seen the photos, but this documentary puts it together with a stong narrative in a way that hasn't happened before.  

Fernando Botero © 2006

Fernando Botero says that his statues which will be on Lange Voorhout street in The Hague this summer, are not intended as statements.

However, his Abu Ghraib drawings, exhibited in the Escher museum [Lange Voorhout 74] in the Voorhout Royal Palace are an accusation against the horrors in the prison in Iraq. ...

In the Escher museum are fifty recent drawings by the world famous artist, including eleven ones showing the torture in Abu Ghraib jail.

Even in the drawings which he made about torture and humiliation in the infamous Abu Ghraib jail, they return, the voluptuous shapes.

However, here threatened by dogs, covered in blood, hanging upside down on a rope.

Botero made his first sketch in this series spontanuously, from anger, when, in an airplane, he read a newspaper article on the horrors.

He does not want to compare himself to Picasso.

However, it is his painting of the bombing of Guernica which keeps the memory alive.

Similarly, Botero hopes that his Abu Ghraib drawings as well will be a ,,permanent accusation''.

Read more here.