Meeting the Heretic Pharaoh in Shanghai! (Reflecting on the mistaken judgments of history)

 

Oh, look who is sitting here. It's the heretic pharaoh in Shanghai. My, you are the globetrotting celebrity now, aren't you? Irony of ironies is that General Horemheb inadvertently made you famous by trying to cover you up. By trying to obliterate you from Egyptian history after your death, he turned you from a probable footnote into a renegade hero. Yeah, you’re proud, I see that smile on your face. So you’re in Shanghai now? You know, you can get some real pizza in this city and a fairly good burrito. Been to New York yet? You just have to visit the Met or the Brooklyn Museum.

Wandering into a hushed room of the Shanghai Museum, I hadn't expected to run into Akhenaten in a sensational show about Ancient Egypt, meant to dazzle the retina and showcase the unusual as well as edify. Actually, when this sandstone sculpture was made, he was still Amenhotep IV, but he was already moving toward worship of the Aten disk.

So here he was, staring at me through the centuries with a wry yet benevolent smile. The artistic reforms he had encouraged made this large sculpture seem like a warm and engaging presence. It was like suddenly being in the presence of this enigmatic king, the charisma was so palpable. Once a pariah, now a global icon, Akhenaten’s presence in a city so far removed from his own time and empire left a feeling of haunting displacement, as if time itself had cracked open and spilled its ancient, solemn beauty into the neon-hued future of this Chinese megacity.

This was the man whose sudden and radical religious reforms had been chiseled away, his name sanded from monuments, his city left to be reclaimed by the desert. And yet, despite all efforts to erase him, here he was, possessing a magnetic aura in the heart of Shanghai for us commoners. Not only had he not been erased, but he sat majestically as a victor over the ravages of politics, bureaucracy, corruption, religion, and time. People passed by, glancing at him and the strange physical distortions he liked to see in sculptures of himself.

Akhenaten is the most enigmatic of all the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. During his reign of 17 years (circa 1353–1336 BCE), he experimented with monotheism, diverging from thousands of years of tradition, in which he declared the sun god, Aten, as the only god. This was not just a theological fine point but a subversion of the entire Egyptian worldview. He moved the capital to Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna), abandoned the traditional pantheon, and revisioned Egyptian art, encouraging artists to use an unprecedented fluidity, realism, and maybe even a bit of what would later be called expressionism.

Abandoned were the harsh, rigid, idealized depictions of rulers conveying gravitas and strength. Instead, there were now images of Akhenaten with elongated features, full lips, and a body that seemed almost androgynous. He became like a Pharaoh Ziggy Stardust. Even more unusual were the family portraits, which were intimate, affectionate depictions of Akhenaten with his queen, Nefertiti, and their daughters.

Sigmund Freud wrote a book called Moses and Monotheism, in which he proposed that the Jewish religion took the concept of monotheism from Akhenaton. This theory has been completely disproven, but looking at the monotheistic religions, which would change the world, reveals what the heretic pharaoh was up to.

Akhenaten’s monotheism was not an ethical revolution, as it was in the case of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This type of monotheism also carried with it the responsibility of the individual and society to engage in personal and societal ethical improvement. For Akhenaten, monotheism was more about an exclusive devotion to the Aten disk to bring greater religious importance to himself and his family, to centralize power, and to break the control of the priests of Amun.

Did Akhenaten really begin to move away from a transactional, magical type of worship to higher ethical levels? Or, did he just replace the priests with himself as an intermediary to a new god and create an art to humanize himself as a form of propaganda, like most dictators? The move to the Aten seemed to be a case of moving just one notch higher on a level of self-absorption and self-importance.

Dr. Toby Wilkinson, an Egyptologist who has focused on the lives of common people in Ancient Egypt, pointed out in The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt that those who lived in Akhenaten’s capital lived brief, wretched lives. Life expectancy was often in the teens. Bone analysis shows inadequate nutrition, extreme physical and emotional stress, and continuous physical adversity. Height was stunted, and anemia was rife. I’m guessing, think of North Korea during the 1990s and magnify it by a power of three. This was the effect of Akhenaten’s religious reform.

Akhenaten’s new religion did not possess moral commandments like the Torah, Gospels, or Quran. There was no emphasis on justice, charity, or righteousness. Akhenaten’s reforms were a power grab, not social change. The people seemed to be there to be worked to death for the god-king.

After Akhenaten's death, the pendulum swung back. The boy-king, Tutankhaten, changed his name to Tutankhamun and brought back the old gods. Amarna was abandoned, and Akhenaten’s name was scratched from records. Horemheb, the general who later seized the throne, went further, dismantling Akhenaten’s monuments and using their stones for his own projects.

Yet, the more they tried to erase him, the more intriguing he became to us. The rediscovery of his legacy in the 19th and 20th centuries turned him into one of Egypt’s most famous rulers, a pharaoh who challenged the gods and reshaped history. As I stood before his sculpted image, I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it all. Because they tried to silence Akhenaten, the louder he has been promoted through the ages.

Now I know what that wry, benevolent smile means. I’ve seen all this before. I saw it at Angkor Wat, where people were enslaved to build a temple to a god-king, and I even saw it at Borobudur, where common folks were most likely forced to work to build a giant temple honoring a religion of peace and kindness. Akhenaten sits there smiling at how gullible we are. He smiles at the worldwide tourist industry that promotes grandiose structures and benevolent-looking statues built through human exploitation of other humans.

The Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) once wrote: "Le mal aussi a ses héros" ("Evil has its heroes too”). So there you sit, you sly dog, the opposite of Ozymandias, preserved for all time, not truly held accountable for your actions, representing narcissistic values that exist to this day, and now lionized by a contemporary world that often seems to place empty celebrity above all. You have lasted, you are the opposite of Ozymandias, but we can adjust a couple of lines from Shelley’s poem to apply to you: “My name is Akhenaten, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

A Children's Poem by Daniel Gauss: The Day the Ants Applauded Me in Balloons Lit Journal

"The Day the Ants Applauded Me" reflects a powerful and empowering message, especially for children: we have the ability to choose how we feel. In this poem, the person telling the story can either feel grief or joy. 

Emotions, while real and sometimes overwhelming, are not always uncontrollable forces. We can influence how we respond and even which feelings we nurture.

This gentle, thoughtful poem introduces children to the idea that emotions are like visitors—they come and go, but we can decide which ones to invite in and spend time with. 

It uses simple, vivid imagery to show that even sadness and anger can be understood, acknowledged, and then released. The poem offers young readers a sense of agency over their emotional lives in a comforting, nonjudgmental way.

Please read the poem here: The Day the Ants Applauded Me

Short Story by Daniel Gauss: Monsieur Pilleur and the Starving Buddha Head from Home Planet News

 

This is a Public Domain image taken from the Metropolitan Museum of a "starving Buddha" with its head removed by plunderers for sale to antiquities thieves.

“Monsieur Pilleur and the Starving Buddha Head” is a reflective and satirical (fictional) short story about a middle-school teacher who stumbles upon a rare, emaciated Gandharan Buddha head in a Manhattan gallery during Asia Week. 

His awe and moral concern clash with the suave, cynical attitudes of the art world, embodied by a mysterious figure named Pilleur who delights in owning looted antiquities. 

Through their encounter, the story explores themes of spiritual insight, cultural theft and the seductive power of possession in a world where art is both sacred and commodified.

Please read the story here: Monsieur Pilleur and the Starving Buddha Head

Short Story by Daniel Gauss: The Cambodian Ghost in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change

 

“The Cambodian Ghost” by Daniel Gauss is a thoughtful (fictional) short story about an American educator contemplating a teaching position at a Cambodian monastery. 

Disillusioned by the country's oppressive dictatorship and the callous and selfish attitudes of many expatriates, he forms a meaningful connection with a local student who reveals an obscure and largely overlooked monument to him commemorating victims of political violence. 

This encounter compels him to confront the complexities of complicity, resistance, and the moral responsibilities of bearing witness in a society grappling with its past and present injustices.

Please read the story here: The Cambodian Ghost

The "Again" Moment we sought, at the end of the pandemic (e.g. We can resume our lives, again.) Public art by: Seongmin Ahn

                                           {click on images to enlarge them}
                                         

In regard to the current pandemic, there was no specific date we experienced as a society when things suddenly and drastically changed and no specific date for when all of our lives suddenly got back to what we were doing before. 

So there was no bifurcation and there has been no collective and permanent “again” moment for us, a moment where we could all say that this thing is over and we have won and life will resume, as the pandemic insidiously drifted in and continues to linger almost two years after Covid-19 was detected. 

Yet, all of our lives were interrupted and each of us has had to either begin again or plan for this. Artist Seongmin Ahn focuses on beginning “again” as she presents her public art project around various neighborhoods in New York City.

Again is an ongoing multi-site, multi-media public art series involving murals, floor pieces, signage, paintings and prints. It first appeared as a vinyl cut installation at the Korean Cultural Center (NY) in 2020 and then at the Wang Cultural Center at Stony Brook University (Long Island, NY) and Dongduck Art Gallery in Seoul. 

It currently appears on multiple billboards partnered with Save Art Space and a community mural in Queens is coming soon.

What is the message you are trying to convey in your Again project?

The Again project began from a small “hybrid” letter painting, developed during the most trying period of the quarantine, in the spring of 2020 in New York City. It is my message to the public that we can begin Again, despite the devastation we went through and are still going through caused by the pandemic.

Are you conveying this message in a way that it is particularly relevant to the folks in New York City?

I painted the first Again painting in English and Korean, which are my two most comfortable languages. As I developed this as a public project, I wanted to reach out to diverse groups who speak different languages in their neighborhoods. Believe it or not, research shows that more than 600 languages are spoken in the New York metropolitan area. 

I used to live in Woodside Queens, neighboring with Latino immigrants, and then Forest Hills, Queens, with lots of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Currently, I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Italian, Polish and Hassidic Jewish folks make their homes. Diversity is the true character of New York and in order to reach out to these different neighbors, I wanted to visually speak to them in their languages.

In which neighborhoods are the murals being displayed? Which groups of New Yorkers are you reaching?

When I first developed this painting into a public project, I thought about neighborhoods which were hurt hard by Covid-19. So when I looked for mural sites, I was actively searching for walls in Corona in Queens, Longwood in the Bronx, Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, etc. 

But there were problems in regard to contacting building owners and getting permission. And then, as the pandemic lasted longer than expected, I realized that all of us were impacted by the pandemic in every aspect of our lives… those who lost their loved ones, to those who lost their jobs, and from front line workers to little school children who couldn’t go to school for such a long time, losing their opportunities for proper learning and socializing with peers. 

So, from that point I have looked at every possible neighborhood and location from streets in Harlem to walls of corporations and museums. I would like to have a balance between different groups of people with `different ethnic backgrounds, social and economic status. We all are essential New Yorkers.

It must be difficult for you to get feedback since strangers are looking at your work and have limited means to contact you. Have you been ok with this element of the project – not getting the positive feedback you might otherwise have received?

Well, getting feedback is always nice and encouraging. And sometimes I get inspired by feedback especially when it suggests a new idea for a future project. But for a few decades my art practice has been almost like a monologue. I would prefer to focus on the creating process to effect my vision instead of how the final product might be received. Once I put my artworks out in the world, I let go of them and move on to the next project, rather than looking back. I am just too busy thinking about how to realize new ideas into physical presence and how to solve technical difficulties.

How does your message reflect your personal experiences during the pandemic in NYC?

One of my most ambitious exhibitions in my 25-year career as an artist had to be shut down as soon as it opened due to the lock down in New York City in 2020. As it was co-organized by an influential non-profit gallery and a prestigious commercial gallery with a long history, we expected quite an amount of exposure in the artworld. 

We scheduled multiple events and lots of art professionals from all over the country were supposed to visit us. Plenty of public attention was expected as well. But nothing happened due to the lock down. So, I was devastatingly disappointed and depressed, even becoming physically ill. Again was also a self assertation that I can begin Again no matter what happened to me. I wanted to transfer the crisis into an innovative opportunity.

Also, during the lock down we were directed as to who should go to work, who should stay home. This whole conversation made me think “Are artists not essential workers?” and “How can I become more essential through my art practice?” So, I began to develop more public projects with an assuring message to contribute to the community that I belong to.

Do you see this project developing further into more neighborhoods or even cities?

The idea of using international languages to speak to different ethnic groups is more functional and feasible in New York as the city has the most diverse immigrant communities. However, there is no limit of possible locations. I select specific pairs of languages that speak better for the community where it is installed. For example, Elmhurst has large Indian population, so the billboard in Elmhurst has Hindi and English. I can expand this project to any city in any country. I just need to keep adding more languages.

How were locations actually chosen?

Getting permission for a mural was really challenging and it is also an ongoing struggle to finalize a location for an Again mural. I considered different platforms and all the locations possible except very wealthy neighborhoods. For Again on billboard, I have three locations in Harlem in Manhattan, Elmhurst in Queens, and Bushwick in Brooklyn. Harlem stands for my Black neighbors, Elmhurst has lots of Middle Eastern, Central Asian community members. 

Bushwick is very mixed depending on the blocks. I am currently working to finalize a location in College Town in Flushing, Queens for an Again mural. The Wang Cultural Center at Stony Brook University also hosted Again in a vinyl installation for their lobby. I want to have balanced platforms and locations considering different ethnic groups and ages and have diverse ways to send out the visual message.

How is this project a continuation of themes in your work and how does it diverge from what you have been doing?

My previous works were personal, emotional and philosophical searches to answer questions concerning my own struggles and questions. On the other hand, Again is my effort to continue a dialogue with the public, which naturally sprang out from social and political agitation in recent years. My first word painting was “Black Lives Matter; I was strongly impacted by the social movement caused by the death of George Floyd.

I still show a continuation in terms of how I value aesthetic presentation along with a conceptual idea. I am fundamentally a visual artist, not a writer or social activist. My work must be visually pleasing to me. The visualization process mostly begins from traditional visual languages.

Do you hope to do more public work in the future?

I definitely want to do more public work. Public work created different opportunities for me. It expanded my vision and capability beyond a small canvas and small studio space. Now I am looking at big open spaces in the park, or huge and nice walls of buildings differently. Also, a public project is a collaborative effort involving different bodies of people. 

As an artist, I initiate a project, but I must coordinate collaborative contributions from a funder, hosting organization, fabricator, my personal assistants, etc. Even this relatively small public work was sponsored by Café Royal Cultural Foundation and the Queens Council on the Arts. Save Art Space played an essential role to expand this project on billboards. As I plan to expand Again into a grander public project, I will need more professionals to collaboratively work together. This is a whole new experience to me, which I enjoy and appreciate.

Black Power in Print: The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

                                                {click on images to enlarge them}

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has an excellent online exhibit and Internet resource zone which covers such issues as the visual iconography of the Black Panther Party as well as early attempts by African American artists to break the color barrier at some of America’s ‘finest’ museums and galleries. This is important in light of what it finally took for African American artists to be included in American art galleries and museums.

Had it not been for the outrage and protests following the murder of George Floyd, black artists would probably still be under-represented in the most prestigious galleries and museums. White gallery owners and curators did not make it easy for artists of color to gain access to an art viewing and buying public. The meaningful inclusion of artists of color was not a gradual progression but a continual hurdle. 

This collaboration between Boston’s MFA and New York’s MoMA helps show that the artists were out there, but they were ignored. The American art world was permeated with racism and it took violent riots stemming from decades of frustration and indignation to finally scare this segment of society into opening up. After the reaction to what happened to George Floyd, and the accompanying fury against all racial hypocrisy, the powers that be had little choice but to finally acquiesce. All power to the people.

                                                Dana Chandler

The show Black Power in Print is in conjunction with MoMA, which recently added numerous copies of the Black Panther newspaper to its permanent collection as part of a donation by Patrick McQuaid. They have featured the work of Emory Douglas, who was responsible for the eye-catching and morally gripping graphic illustrations and photomontages for the paper.

Black “class” consciousness

Friedrich Engels wondered whether the mistreated, underpaid and overburdened working class of early industrial Europe might even be aware of their oppression and exploitation, given what he perceived to be their “false consciousness”. Engels was following up on Marx’s idea that the lower classes will readily embrace the values, vision and ideology of the upper classes. 

Much later Pierre Bourdieu would offer the concept of symbolic violence - those who suffer social and economic injustice often accept their suffering as being perfectly justifiable and their own fault. But these were all middle-class guys examining workers from a distance and their pessimism about workers’ perceptions came from the outside. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers of Oakland, California proved (the myth of) false consciousness not to exist among the economically and racially oppressed in the USA.

                                                Bobby Seale

The Panthers emerged as a radicalized proletariat – they represented working class and poor black folks and were openly Marxist (although they welcomed alliances from progressives of any color). Marxism was an overwhelmingly important component of their makeup, and this is often downplayed when considering their agenda and their work in their communities. 

The fact that they were avowed socialists was, however, one reason why Fred Hampton was murdered in his sleep by the Chicago Police Department. It was bad enough, in the eyes of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, to be black and activistic, it was much worse to be black, activistic and socialist. What’s most significant about the Black Panthers is that they brought America’s racial issues and problems into socialist theory, and showed how race and class could intersect and be embraced by a socialist social science.

The founders of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, decided to be more than theoretical socialists waiting for history to develop and attempted to protect their community from police abuse while providing services to their community not expected from the government. The Panthers understood that racism, discrimination and segregation had led to the adverse status of black folks in America, but they did not become absorbed in the Black Power orientation toward racial pride and cohesion. 

They refused to ignore the economics of capitalism which was the ultimate enemy for them. Although class and race intersected, focusing on race, in itself, was a red herring to them. J. Edgar Hoover actually considered the Panthers to be the most severe security threat to the American way of life at that time and many members of the organization were framed and/or murdered by the police/FBI.

                                                            Huey Newton

             

Among the highlights of the visual iconography of the Panthers is a poster of their 10-point plan. The plan included demands for full employment; reparations payments for black folks - General Sherman’s idea of giving every freed black person 40 acres of land and 2 mules after the Civil War was referenced; decent housing; an educational system that provided a knowledge of self and one’s position in society; an end to the war in Vietnam pursued by a white-racist government and business class; an end to police brutality and the right of black folks to carry arms to protect themselves from the police; the release of black prisoners from America’s prison-industrial complex; trials of black defendants before juries that could understand the experience of the defendants and, mirroring the language of the Declaration of Independence, a call for separation from the dominant American culture.

The Panthers got tired of waiting. When Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter from Birmingham jail, he mentioned that the early Christian Church had been a thermostat for and not a thermometer of its times. He seemed to be urging the contemporary church in America to step forward more into social activism and to change society while helping black folks integrate into it. The Panthers attempted to be this type of thermostat through other means. Perhaps their methodology was ultimately vindicated by the actions of infuriated Americans who took to the streets demanding change.

The idea that folks in the poorer classes cannot even perceive their own abuse was a middle-class academic dogma that the Panthers put to shame. More than anything their legacy, as reflected in this show, is that reform must come from those folks who are being neglected and abused and that those in power will often not listen to reason. It took the nation-wide protests following the cruel killing of an innocent man to finally shake those in power. The Panthers showed that integration was essential but it had to be integration under the terms of those being integrated – because only those folks could be the true moral reformers of their society.

                                                            Fred Hampton's Door

Read the thoughtful and incisive essays of Daniel Gauss: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

The Blurry Monk and the Sleek Advertisement

 

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I was sitting in a coffeehouse in Phnom Penh when I saw this monk walking toward the large advertisement. In Phnom Penh monks wander around in the mornings "begging" for donations or food. 

I saw very poor shop owners provide monks with money because, from what I was told, they believe it is good luck to do this and bad luck not to do this. Buddhist monks must thank God for superstition every day of the week; without it they would probably get a lot less food and money.

So I saw the monk moving toward the advert and I thought that if I snapped a photo it would be a good contrast between the (alleged) values of the monk and the values of the advert.

The photo didn't come out that well because of the glare from the glass through which I took the shot and the fact that the monk was moving and he came out blurry.

Yet, I think the photo still works and I wanted to share it out here. 

The monk is moving, he is blurry, because he represents transience or impermanence. He is constantly aging. 

The jewelry ad represents a type of permanence, or it represents the permanence of the inequality that is readily seen in Cambodia and other 4th world countries.

Cambodia has suffered from 39 years of a dictatorship which is going to be followed by several years of a dictatorship from the original dictator's son. For 39 years the dictator, a former Khmer Rouge officer, did very little to lift his people out of poverty.

If you go to Cambodia it will break your heart. The level of poverty was worse than anything I had seen elsewhere and I have traveled to 11 Asian countries.

But back to the monk. Another thing I wanted to ask through this photo is: to what extent is the monk really divorced from the economic system he begs from, and to what extent is he participating in that economic system?

Read some amazingly thoughtful essays by Daniel Gauss here, for free: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/