Expelled Art Student to Sue Yale

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Gaetano Porcasi is a Sicilian artist and school art teacher. His paintings are considered unique not only for their social and political commitment but also for the technique and choice of typical Mediterranean colours from which a strong and deep Sicilitudine (Sicilian mood) emerges. The 2003 itinerant exhibition Portella della Ginestra Massacre is a good example: in 1947 a group of Sicilian farmers was shot and killed in Portella by the outlaw Salvatore Giuliano and his men under orders from the local Mafia mobsters and big landowners in order to stop the farmers’ attempts to occupy and plant uncultivated local land. His historical paintings which denounce the violence and oppression of the Mafia find their counterpart in his paintings which depict sunny Sicilian landscapes rich in lemon, orange and olive trees, in prickly pear, agave and broom plants. They show the wealth of a land that has been kissed by God but downtrodden by man. In painting the sky of his native Sicily Gaetano uses several different hues of blue and it’s from this sky that his pictorial journey starts. In his paintings the history of Sicily, which has always been marked by its farmers’ sweat and blood and by their struggles for freedom and democracy, finds its pictorial expression in the fusion of the red flags of the workers with the Italian flag in a sort of Italian and Mediterranean epopea. The red flags and the Italian flag stand out against the blue sky that changes its hues according to the events, the seasons, the deeds and the moods that are painted on the canvas. The luxuriant nature of Sicily with its beautiful, sunny, Mediterranean landscapes seems to remain the silent, unchangeable and unchanged witness to events and the passing of time. Here people are only accidenti, they aren’t makers of their own life. Thus Gaetano makes a clear-cut metaphysical distinction between a benign, merciful nature and Man who breaks the natural harmony to satisfy his wild, unbridled ambition and selfishness and who becomes the perpetrator of violence and crime. Gaetano is also an active environmentalist and his fight against all forms of pollution has already cost him a lot of aggravation.

critico D'arte Siciliani of MI 6:29PM January 10, 2010

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createmo of AL 1:20AM November 02, 2008

Age discrimination laws were enacted for a very specific purpose: to protect certain groups of employees in the work place. They apply in cases of failure to hire or discharge after many years of service when passing certain age points. For a 19-year-old college student to claim age discrimination is absurd, frivolous and deprecating to the useful purpose of these laws.
As the previous posted noted, without knowledge of all the facts, it is difficult to comment further. However, if a 19-year-old student in a graduate-level program was subsequently claimed by the university to be "immature," then the admission committee would appear to have been negligent in its evaluation. She should be refunded the tuition.

of IL 12:01PM October 09, 2008

Age is only one determinant of maturity. We have all seen incredibly immature chronological adults and incredibly mature chronological youngsters.
Without knowing the facts that led Yale to make this decision we should acknowledge that we are all unable to either condemn nor endorse it.

Dick Underwood of IL 5:05PM July 14, 2008

I've seen two stories on this incident, and neither has made clear the reasons for the expulsion. "Immaturity" could cover a wide variety of problems and behaviors, and I doubt very much that age alone was the reason for the decision. The graduate art program at Yale is extremely high-powered and high-pressure; the young woman may not have been able to cope well. Yale doesn't normally accept underage students in any of its schools for good reasons. Perhaps the art school's admissions committee simply made a bad call, in which case it MAY owe this woman some compensation, depending on the grounds for the expulsion.

Lili of IL 10:36AM July 13, 2008

Yale's conduct is uforgivable. Particarly, after taking all that tuition money. I hope she gets enough money to open her own art museum. Dershowitz, are you listening?

JOEL KAUFFMAN of FL 9:43PM July 12, 2008