Posted on 10/22/2010 5:41:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Rocco Landesman is the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Boy, does he know how to spin the official line on offensive art. In a recent interview in Cincinnati, he was asked vaguely about controversy. "The best art taps into deep feelings, sometimes to comfort and sometimes to confront. Art can be very uncomfortable," Landesman said. "That can lead to strong reactions. For some of us, it draws us into the arts over our lifetimes and careers. For others, it creates strong negative feelings."
Landesman wasn't being asked specifically about negative feelings over the Loveland Museum Gallery in Loveland, Colo., a taxpayer-funded art space that recently featured a controversial painting with Jesus Christ receiving oral sex from a man. He's certainly not used to critical questions about just how this blasphemy-by-numbers seems like a tiresome rerun -- Jesus in urine, Jesus in chocolate, Jesus in (homo)sexual ecstasy.
You know -- he wasn't asked, but you just know -- that he never would defend as "the best art" the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad or the Dalai Lama receiving oral sex. He'd be offended if it were a secular figure, such as, oh, President Barack Obama. But this is Christ, whom every taxpayer-funded artist always wants to crucify. This is "the best art."
The artist in this case is a Stanford professor named Enrique Chagoya, and he called his art outrage "The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals." Typically, Chagoya was raised Catholic and claims the work isn't hostile at all, that it's about "faith and belief," that Christ was "about love and about sharing." Blah, blah. For good measure, gallery officials denied the image is sexual, as if men usually put their faces in other men's laps for other reasons.
There's more religious imagery in the multi-panel piece, including what appears to be the head of the Virgin Mary on a scantily clad cocktail waitress and another picture placing the head of Jesus on an obese female body in a one-piece bathing suit, riding a bicycle. The piece also contains written vulgarities (in English and Spanish).
Some might yawn. Here we go again. But what makes this story different is that Kathleen Folden, bless her heart, entered the gallery, broke into the artwork with a crowbar and ripped it to pieces. She didn't really destroy the art, because it was one of several prints, but she did express a rebuttal of sorts to the constant artistic besmirching of Jesus. Someone offended back.
Folden will be prosecuted for "criminal mischief" in the case. Chagoya is now the outraged one: "Should we as artists -- or any freethinking people -- have to be subjected to fear of violent attacks for expressing our sincere concerns?" Seeing as he's obviously free of shame, the Jesus-insulting artist added, "Let's exchange ideas, not insults." This is too rich.
Our media easily blame the offended Christian and not the artist. But make the image a Muhammad cartoon and our media would blame and shame the artist for being needlessly provocative and not the offended Muslim who would take action in response. Someone should ask Chagoya whether he's heard of Molly Norris, who merely proposed (and quickly retracted) "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" and then had to vanish from public view (along with her art) and change her name on the recommendation of the FBI.
The vast majority of the art community's shocking, or "transgressive," work is aimed at celebrating sin and the sexually "liberated." The National Endowment for the Arts recently announced that it would expend $12,500 to translate into English a novel by the Marquis de Sade, the libertine icon whose appetite for sexual violence inspired the word "sadism." The federally honored translator, John Galbraith Simmons, told CNSNews.com that this particular novel ("Aline and Valcour") is not pornographic and that "Sade is a figure who belongs with Shakespeare, with the greatest of authors."
The NEA also seems to find supporting art most exciting in the most "sexually liberated" cities. As part of the Obama "stimulus" package, CNS also found, the NEA distributed $1.4 million in special "stimulus" grants to 37 private arts nonprofits in the city of San Francisco, most of which is represented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That was more than the total number of NEA stimulus grants handed out to arts organizations in any other state except New York.
The artistic elites like to pretend that they're the sophisticates and that their opponents are the uneducated brutes. But looking at weird and junky cartooning like Chagoya's just makes you think the vandalism here wasn't committed by the woman with the crowbar, but by the guy with the paints.
Most of it "works" just as well as a verbal description of a concept -- "You know what? I hate Christianity so much ... that ... that ... I just want to put a cruxifix in urine!!"
OK. That's sufficient. You've accomplished as much as you possibly can with that stupid statement. Actually going ahead and creating that "art" doesn't get you anywhere further.
I despise Modern Art.
Good article.
I thought there is a separation of State and Religion? How can government CONTINUE to support this cr*p “art” that no ordinary person would give a penny for—so unconstitutional.
Why is government funding depictions of Christ? NPR and all government “endorsement” amount to agitprop in the Leni Riefenstahl style. That is why we don’t have government owned ???? press.....or do we? Are we any different than Nazi Germany? with the constant vile propaganda put out by our government????? which are really taxpayers who would NEVER support such vile “drawings”.
Figures that Stanford would have hired this Cultural Marxist who is deconstructing White Western Civilization to create his pansexual perversity to destroy the family.
The key word is "self-indulgent." Modern art is about the artist. He doesn't care if he communicates anything to the observer. He expects the observer to see the world as he sees it. He wants the observer to admire his vision and his cleverness. The last thing in the world he is thinking about is the whether or not his creation actually means something to the observer. If artists were great thinkers or inventors, there might still be something in these narcissistic productions that we could somehow find interesting. But more often than not, artists are nothing but glorified craftsmen. When no attempt is made to produce clever, attractive works that the viewer can relate to, the inevitable results from these mediocre minds will be, as you said, boring, predictable and pedestrian.
“...”The best art taps into deep feelings, sometimes to comfort and sometimes to confront. Art can be very uncomfortable,”...”
The there lies proof that the speaker of this vapid, unprovable phrase has stupidity would require scientific notation to adequately express.
Hey artfart, try doing some art about the Mohammed-critter sometimes, we’ll check out our courage - chicken lips.
Agree.
The highest praise these idiots give each other is that a piece is “transgressive.”
This means it shocks normal people.
Most people grow out of thinking that doing things strictly for shock value is clever in about the 7th grade. These “artists” appear to be stuck mentally and psychologically in junior high.
Same is true, BTW, of many “writers,” “poets,” etc.
What passes for “art” these days is as big as hoax as what passes for the Congress. Art used to be recognizable, valid representations of life.
Today, however, we have paint drippings and “textures” that pass for “art”. Give me an impressionist or Rennaisance-era artist any day to the junk peddlers today.
When an elephant can reproduce similar works of “art” to that of a Jackson Pollack, we have truly transitioned from the ridiculous to the sublime!
These are the same idiots who preach tolerance and then put up a display of a crucifix submerged in a vat of urine ,, all the while censoring cartoons of Mohammad the child molester .
“Should we as artists — or any freethinking people — have to be subjected to fear of violent attacks for expressing our sincere concerns?”
Let me answer that with a question of my own. If a stranger approached you and laid a big wad of spit in your face, would he be “subject(ed) to fear of violent attack” from you? Probably not; you’re undoubtedly a metrosexual girly-man who would wet his pants. But the point is that you shouldn’t be shocked when the people you work so hard to offend act ... offended, and respond accordingly.
There is no such thing as great art being produced anymore. With a few exceptions, the nineteeth century was the last century when great art was still produced. Nothing in the arts, in whatever medium, being produced today is great.
I can just imagine the real outrage if the man delivering the oral sex to Christ was depicted as a Muslim!
I can just imagine the real outrage if the man delivering the oral sex to Christ was depicted as a Muslim!
That is if the ACLU commies actually mean what they say when they hold up the 1st Amendment as a total block on the State depicting religious matters and traditions.
And Obama, the selfdeclared Christian, says nothing. He is only there for the muslim community when they are offended about matters like cartoons and burning korans.
I am smiling at your screen name coupled with a very nice summary of what is wrong with Modern Art. Your point about the self indulgent modern artist is very well taken.
I think it’s a bit much to say that there is a complete absence of great work. You might check out Sr. Wendy Beckett (British nun, consecrated virgin, left her hermitage to become an art critic) on some of the moderns. She certainly helped me see some of the greatness in what I had previously thought merely to be dreck and rubbish. She even convinced me of some of the beauty in Hockney and some of the minimalists that I previously hated.
There’s a lot ore good work out there than I used to think.
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