The Decline of Art in Western Culture Parallels the Decline of Everything Else

For most of Western history, art was used as a way for patrons to showcase achievements, propagandize citizens, or lionize individuals. Maybe the single greatest artist in human history, Michelangelo, created his greatest works for patrons of various sorts. He created David 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. The idea of art as an indulgence of artists, who paint whatever they want, with or without a desire that someone 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 time, the art world went from the uber-traditional world of Bouguereau to the anything-but-traditional 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 in 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.

From: THE 45 COMMUNIST GOALS AS READ INTO THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, 1963

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.”

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