"ART" - a One Word Oxymoron

[Taarkin]

Our Lord and Savior covered with bodily fluids? Liberals are ruining art!

Degenerate liberals implying the Blessed Mother is some kind of necrophiliac??!

Liberals showing their love of rape!

Degenerate liberal homoerotic filth.

Pedophilia: next step on the liberal homosexual agenda.

liberals liberals liberals Liberals Liberals Liberals LIBERALS LIBERALS LIBERALS

 

[Audible Click]

You know, I hate that. I'm walking in the Museum of Modern Art, minding my own business, just taking in the information, then suddenly, out of the blue a piece of homosexual art comes RIGHT AFTER ME!!!!

I can see the painting of the nude man, bouncing on its frame towards my direction!!!! I cleverly duck behind a woman, knowing full well that this homoerotic art won't DARE go after a woman.

Then without warning....a small child runs out of the gift shop, innocently looking for his mommy. The horrible homosexual art turns, the top of the frame salivating. I can hear it growl in a soft, sassy voice, "A CHILD TO CORRUPT! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" And it lunges for the innocent child, his eyes not ready for the horrible images about to be plunged into his soft, malleable retinas.

Bravely, I lunge at the disrespectful art, grabbing it, touching it, yes, actually tackling it to the ground to save the child from the infection of homosexual artistic expression! I may get infected, but....think of the children.

In the struggle, the pansy painting bites my arm! Still I fight it, holding it down!

That's when museum security finally appears. They point their guns at the painting.

"Freeze you gay brushings!!!" one of the yells. The painting stops. Looks at the security team and knows it's defeated. They take the painting back into the dark room, deep in the museum, where no one can view it where it belongs.

I get up. I am proud and happy as I watch the young, uncorrupted son hug his mother - the same woman I hid behind in cowardice when the painting first chased me. She thanks me for saving her boy.

As I recover, covering my bite wound with a cloth, I realize that one of the security guards was kind of cute. I liked the way he cocked his gun....

....oh no.....

TO BE CONTINUED!





.....I am so so sorry. I just couldn't resist!!!!!

Nominated.

 

[MontagK505]

THE EYES!!!! THE EYESS!!!!! NO NO NO NO MAKE THEM GO AWAY!!!!! NOOOOO!

Holy carp! TBH, that was more horrifying set of paintings I've ever seen.....

And I thought H.R. Giger was scary.

 

[yomero]

Classical art has been corrupted by the contemporary Left.
"Art" is a one-word oxymoron.

Proof:

http://whencrapisart.blogspot.com

While I too don't like most of the works in the link, I don't see any connection with those pieces and the contemporary left. The prices for those pieces of art are impressive. Perhaps most are now owned by public museums, but it seems logical that initially it was fat, wealthy capitalists that drove the prices up. Consumers of expensive modern art are mainly the rich and they do not tend to be of the left.

And there is The Congress for Cultural Freedom, a right wing, CIA backed organization that was devoted to exalting modern western art in opposition to Soviet Socialist Realism. Perhaps Soviet art could be approved by JonathanQ.
From Wikipedia:

Some posthumous exhibitions of Pollock's work were sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization to promote American culture and values backed by the CIA. Certain left-wing scholars, most prominently Eva Cockcroft, argue that the U.S. government and wealthy elite embraced Pollock and abstract expressionism in order to place the United States firmly in the forefront of global art and devalue socialist realism.[29][30] In the words of Cockcroft, Pollock became a "weapon of the Cold War".[31]

And:

The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. In 1967, it was revealed (first by Ramparts and later by mainstream news outlets) that the United States Central Intelligence Agency was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group (through organizations such as the Ford Foundation), and it was subsequently renamed the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF). At its height, the CCF/IACF was active in some thirty-five countries and also received significant funding from the Ford Foundation.[1]

ETA: Museums, galleries and organisms dedicated to encourage modern art, are in part sponsored by personal or corporate tax-deductible donations. Those donors influence what gets subsidized
http://libcom.org/history/articles/cultural-cold-war/

 

[Robin]

Trying to shock and offend and even blaspheme and calling that "art" is simply ignorant and demeaning, to the sick individual who originated the sick piece, as well as to the fawning fools who defend it.

A good proportion of baroque art was designed exactly to shock and offend. What else do you call a painting of babies heads being dashed against a wall?

Are those paintings sick and demeaning?

 

[Travis]

To offer a contrary opinion to JQ, who won't see this because I'm on his ever expanding ignore list, is that the government should fund the arts.

Why? Well art defines us. Art is a legacy of a culture. Not all of it is going to appeal to everyone. By definition it almost can't because all art is is the deliberate construction of something to evoke emotion through aesthetics. Everything that accomplishes that is "art" no matter how much you might want to define it otherwise.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

To offer a contrary opinion to JQ, who won't see this because I'm on his ever expanding ignore list, is that the government should fund the arts.

Why? Well art defines us. Art is a legacy of a culture. Not all of it is going to appeal to everyone. By definition it almost can't because all art is is the deliberate construction of something to evoke emotion through aesthetics. Everything that accomplishes that is "art" no matter how much you might want to define it otherwise.

Seconded, and quoted.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

A comment about popular music from another thread has some relevance to this one too; what we see of the arts of antiquity and what we label as the defining pieces of their time are the ones that, by a process of sifting through the standards of all the intervening cultures, have been considered to have universal cultural appeal.

Pieces that were products of their time, but only of their time did not survive in great numbers, as they were not collected, not maintained, not archived. I have heard that the romans would make bronzes of just about any hero of the moment, of no more than the rudest construction, then melt them down for scrap when the moment had passed. We don't have a huge population of crappy roman bronzes, only the ones that were seen as being worth preserving, and of those only the ones that actually withstood the test of time.

We don't have any of the original greek marble statues in their original state; the colored paint is weathered off of them, and what we see as fine art is not what the artist intended. Accurate reproductions look garish and strange to our eyes, as they don't meet our expectations, so artists carving in the 'classical style' have continued either by ignorance or design to make new statues in pre-weathered form.

In order to have a body of art that stands the test of time and changing taste, a society needs to start with a huge body of work, and a huge variety of styles. Some of it may be appealing only to a few, or to one subset of our many cultures. Some may be masterworks, unrecognized by contemporary viewers.

What is seen as the defining work of our age will be determined hundreds or thousands of years from now, from what few pieces remain, and through the eyes of art historians with different criteria than we use. It is not for us to choose what will be considered our defining work.

Certainly we do a disservice to ourselves and to posterity by trying to limit our work to only what we think will be of universal appeal, and to legislate art to only what offends no one. The defining work of our age is just as likely to be 'piss christ', Andy Warhol's soup cans, or Robert Mapplethorpe's nudes as it is to be Thomas Kincade's sappy landscapes.

 

[This is The End]

A comment about popular music from another thread has some relevance to this one too; what we see of the arts of antiquity and what we label as the defining pieces of their time are the ones that, by a process of sifting through the standards of all the intervening cultures, have been considered to have universal cultural appeal.

<snip>

Well said.... but it was already well said in post #5 on Page 1

My son frequently complains to me that my generation and the generation prior had the best music and that his own generation's music sucks.

I point out that what he hears from the previous generations is primarily that music which has survived a long winnowing process; what remains are the few hundred best out of tens and tens of thousands of crap songs. On the other hand, what he hears of current music is all of it because the winnowing has only just begun. In twenty years, what is commonly played of this generation's music will only be that which has survived the winnowing, most of it quite good, if in differing ways. Then his children will voice the same complaint to him.

I remember studying art (just one formal college level class, but it actually was a study of art not an art-making class) and it reinforced what I had felt growing up when I was exposed to a wide variety of art, not just the popular or well-known pieces: Most art is crap. Even from the age of the masters, much of it may have been executed technically well but the subjects were religious schlock or Hallmarky schlock. The same exists today.

<snip>

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Well said.... but it was already well said in post #5 on Page 1

You are correct. I could have sworn I read it in another thread.

 

[Cuddles]

A number of posts have been removed to AAH. Remain on topic and avoid engaging in personal attacks and bickering.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cuddles

 

[Damien Evans]

This thread be awesome.

 

[Foster Zygote]

I want to know what sort of music leftists like.

 

[JFrankA]

And I thought H.R. Giger was scary.

That's the thing about art. It invokes a reaction. I've always thought of Giger's work as horrific and scary but with very sexual overtones. Almost makes you feel repulsed and aroused at the same time. In that case, Jonathan is right: That is art being an oxymoron.

 

[brodski]

I want to know what sort of music leftists like.

rap, which isn't real music anyway. Or so I'm told.

 

[Travis]

That's the thing about art. It invokes a reaction. I've always thought of Giger's work as horrific and scary but with very sexual overtones. Almost makes you feel repulsed and aroused at the same time. In that case, Jonathan is right: That is art being an oxymoron.

The highlighted part is important. The point that has gone right over certain peoples heads.

 

[Tolls]

1) The work is a photograph of a crucifix in a jar of urine, not the physical objects.

2) Andres Serrano is himself a Catholic, and while he has avoided being specific on his intended meaning for the piece, his comments have suggested that his purpose was to comment on the commercialization and fetishization of Christianity.

Having seen some of the dross that was sold as part of the papal visit to the UK recently he has a point.

Sister Wendy Beckett, a nun who is widely respected for her art criticism, described that she saw the piece as a comment on the modern world's treatment of Jesus's love. There's no intelligent reason to say it's purpose is ridicule of Catholics.

I like Sister Wendy. I model my teeth on hers...

 

[GreyArea]

Check for yourself if there is any known Republican homosexual within the ranks of 635 congressmen.

How many members of Congress are there? You might want to check that.

I don't see what homosexuality or Congress have to do with art. What proportion of artists are LGBTQ, in each medium, and how does this compare to the general population? And how many members of Congress were artists before their election, and how does that compare to the general population? Probably not many in the latter case.

And why would it matter? You haven't explained the mechanism of influence.

While these statistics could be investigated in a scientific manner, I don't think it's possible to factor in evaluations of the quality or decency of the art. Such judgments are a matter of opinion, not fact.

Your case is weakened further by looking abroad and in the past. For example, how did the U.S. Congress influence Mondrian or Picasso? I don't think your argument makes any sense.

 

[Aitch]

I want to know what sort of music leftists like.

This 'leftist' (see my other posts on that word) likes...

Early Music
Bach (JS)
The Grateful Dead
Brahms
Dub Reggae
Les Six
Blues
Rock
Minimalism
Electropop
Electro-acoustic music (Ussachevsky, Babbit, on so on)
Abba
William Walton

and (many) others.

I hope that helps.

 

[Lithrael]

THE EYES!!!! THE EYESS!!!!! NO NO NO NO MAKE THEM GO AWAY!!!!! NOOOOO!

Wow. No kidding. They do look perfect on the chihuahua though.