Yet these limp little pouches are exactly the images that the mighty Tea Baggers are encouraging each other to duplicate and to raise on high at their intimidating Tea Parties.





This obsession with a tiny pouch of dried vegetation has led me to inquire whether the world of contemporary art might have something to reveal to us about such a curious symbol. Can art illuminate the tea bag's meaning and relevance in modern culture? Can it demystify or comment upon the tea bag's hidden potency? Please join me for a very brief political tour of the tea bag in contemporary art.

In Tania Bruguera's 2003 installation "Poetic Justice", constructed entirely of used tea bags and displayed at the Istanbul Biennial, might we find a powerful image, perhaps, of political dead ends? Do its constricting walls of discarded tea bags tell us something about tired political slogans and recycled ideas?

Does Shelley Grund's January 2007 "Used Tea Bag" from the "Painting a Day" series of everyday objects, suggest, perhaps, the discolored corpse of conservative ideology? The ethical exhaustion and legislative lassitude of the religious right?

Might Andrew Pini's "A Used Tea Bag" suggest the transparent self-interest of supply side economics and the dripping irony of compassionate conservatism?

Finally, can we see in Alejandra Villasmil's 2002 "Cojinette 1" (tea bag and mixed media on paper) the moral straightjacket of evangelical politics and the stifling censorship of prescriptive patriotism?

Perhaps the Tea Baggers need a few more lessons in contemporary art.