Posted on 12/28/2023 7:49:47 AM PST by Starman417
For most of Western history art was used as a way for patrons to showcase achievements or propagandize citizens or lionize individuals. Maybe the single greatest artist in human history, Michelangelo, created his greatest works for patrons of various sorts. David created for the Florentine Guild of Wool, the Pieta for the French ambassador to the Holy See and the Sistine Chapel, and St Peter's Basilica for popes. Art was, in one way or another an homage to something greater than its creator.
Fast-forward about three centuries and the art world begun to change. Art as an indulgence of artists, where they would paint whatever they wanted, with or without a desire that someone would pay for it is largely a child of the late 19th century. That’s when Impressionism, that distinctly unconventional, nontraditional form of painting emerged. In a very short period, the world of art went from uber traditional world of Bouguereau to the anything-but world of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh. Suddenly art was no longer a vehicle for vanity or the celebration of greatness or storytelling. It was something else.
In 1917 Marcel Duchamp, a French artist unveiled a urinal on a wooden box and called it “Fountain”. A hundred years later art had “evolved” so much that a banana taped to a wall with duct tape (an actual banana… not plastic or paper mâché) would sell for $120,000 in 2019…
It is into this universe of art that we find what is supposed to be cutting edge and courageous, in the form of the Pietà by German designer Harald Glööckler. The revisualization of the classic piece features a tattooed Christ and a trans Mary. And what’s courageous about this piece? It stands up to those vicious, hateful… Christians.
In the cacophony of 2023, while there are other issues that are of far more import than this, this one might be a bit illustrative.
Having the “courage” to stand up to Christians and defile Christian traditions and symbols doesn’t require any courage… because there’s no danger of anything bad happening besides some chastising words from a few of the offended. No one is going to issue death threats against you, no one is going to put a bounty on your head, and mobs of people aren’t going to start riots and kill others because of you, as was shown in 1986 with The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili and 1987 with Piss Christ, by Andres Serrano. Of course, there is another religion where that’s exactly what happens if one were to criticize it or its symbols… but of course, those “courageous” artists aren’t assailing that religion.
This is a symbol of the bizarro world we find ourselves living in. Other things that are counted as courageous today include a man announcing that he’s a woman, flaunting one’s morbid obesity in public, or wrapping oneself in the flag of victimization for being black or gay or some other category.
None of those things takes courage in 2023 America where being anything but a patriotic heterosexual Christian white male accords hero worship. It doesn’t take courage to assail someone or something where there is no threat of consequences.
Heterosexual Christian white males built most (but not all) of the world we live in today. It’s far from perfect, but no time or place in history has been perfect. But it’s not their DNA that somehow makes them better citizens or better people. No, it’s the culture they built.
We’re told that somehow western culture is bad because it was not crafted by a multicultural collective. That makes no sense. Virtually every culture in human history has been built by members of a single race. There were not a lot of whites helping to craft the Mali Empire in Africa, there were not a lot of blacks at the center of the Chinese Middle Kingdom, not a lot of yellow people helping to build the Inca Empire and there weren’t a lot of brown people helping to build Russia or the Russian Empire. No, most of human history has been dominated by monochromatic empires, nations, and cultures.
It just happens to be the case that on Earth’s competitive landscape, the culture built and developed by straight, Christian white males is the one that has generated the greatest increases in freedom, technology, and prosperity in human history. And it’s not even close. But because not everyone has shared equally in the material gains from that culture, it must be destroyed…
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
When Hunter Biden can sell, art, you know we have hit rock bottom.
The ‘decline of art’ was initiated by the left via compulsory art as a percentage of public contracts.
Anyone with half a brain needs only look with open eyes at the results of ‘art welfare’ here in the US...
(true artists are often lost in the fog)
If I could do it, it ain’t Art.
Art?
Heck, there are people my age who can’t read or write cursive, never mind art.
And what’s with the kangaroo 🦘??!!
Likewise. I guess that’s the point, huh? /s
And the decline of culture is simply a symptom of the Left's all out , overt assault on Western Civilization.
The chant on America's campuses in the 1980’s “Ho, Ho, Western Civ has got to go. “
Looks like they got their way.
How much of "art as a profitable business" was wiped out in the mid-1800s? How many middling painters could have practiced on years of painting doctors' and merchants' families to become good? And how much of the "Art World's" criticism and complaints about J.S.Sargent or Bouguereau were sour grapes about photography destroying the business of representational art where only a very few of the best remaining artists could survive ?
Yes. A sublimated and projected inferiority complex. And different cultures react differently because some have a great capacity to absorb and build on the best aspects of Western civilization. The really toxic hatred comes from those parts of the world that have never had much to contribute and that can't seem to adapt under any circumstances.
From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS #22-26
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Yup. Easy to forget.
There should be a biannual posting of ALL the communist goals.
Every time I look at the list, I find myself going down the list saying to myself “Check...check...check...damn. Who put this list together????”
Well, it's good for struggling artists of other species. Your pachyderms and chimps for instance.
We also need a regular reminder that THEY’VE TOLD US exactly that’s what they were going to do.
An excellent book that should be required reading in high school. He eviscerates Quigley and the Communists.
I misspoke - I was referring to his smaller book, The Naked Capitalist, reviewing Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope. It’s in a similar vein…
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