Posted on 07/07/2008 3:11:03 PM PDT by forkinsocket
There are times when art should be the last thing on an art critic's mind. The thunderous popularity of a number of contemporary Chinese artists compels a political analysis. Much of the work is powered by a startling and completely delusionary infatuation with Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. This is more sinister than anything we have seen in the already fairly astonishing annals of radical chic. We are witnessing a globalized political whitewash job, with artists and assorted collectors, dealers, and sycophants pouring a thick layer of avant-garde double-talk over the infernal decade of suffering, destruction, and death that Mao unleashed on his country in 1966. And as we are also dealing with the house of mirrors that is the art world, I have no doubt that somebody is ready to explain that I am confusing appropriation with approbation or that fascism is just another way of spelling freedom. I must say, the theory people have a lot to answer for. But here is the bottom line: the global art world's burgeoning love affair with Mao and the Cultural Revolution makes a very neat fit with the current Chinese regime's efforts to sell itself as the authoritarian power that everybody can learn to love.
A few weeks ago it was reported that Christie's International, in the run-up to the Summer Olympics, was privately offering for sale in Hong Kong one of the largest of Andy Warhol's portraits of Chairman Mao, with an asking price of $120 million. It is only natural that Warhol would figure somewhere in this sordid scene. It was in 1972 that he began painting portraits of Mao. The date is significant.
(Excerpt) Read more at tnr.com ...
Why is this a surprise? We have a few FReeper trolls and sleeper trolls who are Maoists too.
I was a bit surprised that it was in the New Republic.
“pouring a thick layer of avant-garde double-talk over the infernal decade of suffering, destruction, and death that Mao unleashed on his country in 1966.”
I’ve read that the total cost of communism to China was 60 million dead. I don’t know if any were waterboarded, which would REALLY be an outrage.
Mao should be a subject of study and of art.
His writting shows him to be incredibly intelligent and a lucid communicator. His writting on military strategy is straightforward, even after translation. There is a clear logic behind his writtings (which he demonstrated in his campaigns to rid China of the Japanese and then against the KMT in the civil war) which was clearly influenced by liberal Western thinkers such as Clausewitz. His ability to maintain political control after the war is equally as incredibly.
But then he’s also the architect of some of the worst social and economic planning known to man.
Because that dog don’t hunt, no matter how good and smart the dog trainer is.
Communism doesn’t work, and a skilled and intelligent and motivated agent trying to get it to work just prolongs the problem of it not working.
Chiang wanted to kill him before the Japs... but we talked him out of it. Big mistake...
Nice post.
Hey, I’ve got one of chairman mao’s little red books...I wonder if it’s worth anything...
The liberal media will be drooling all over themselves during this Olympics Mao Lovefest. Every obvious weakness/failing/injustice of this totalitarian State will be overlooked and worse, praised as an ideal the west should aspire to.
Joe Stilwell had this idea that he could win the Pacific War all by his lonesome using Chiang's troops. He did succeed in getting a lot of Nationalist Chinese troops killed, but came nowhere near defeating Japanese troops stationed in China. The huge Nationalist Chinese casualties resulting from Stilwell's quest for glory also weakened Chiang's army sufficiently to make it vulnerable to the Communists in the post-WWII period. The disparity of damage between the two Chinese armies (Communist vs Nationalist) from WWII is encapsulated by the fact that 3 Communist generals vs 200 Nationalist generals were killed fighting the Japanese. What Stilwell managed to do was make China safe for Communism. Ultimately, the 100,000 dead we took in the Korean and Vietnam Wars are the result of the existence of a Chinese Communist regime, which Stilwell essentially made viable by singlehandedly destroying the alternative.
Mao is a demi-god in China because the Chinese have not abandoned the tradition of the god emperor. In Chinese eyes, Mao’s ascent to the throne gave him the legitimacy to do anyone he wanted. China has discarded probably 99% of its traditions, but this is one custom that has remained unchanged.
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