America, what a country -- we'll not only sell you anything, we'll buy anything, or at least our guilt-ridden, peer-haunted, deep-pocketed liberal elite will. Observe, the shit-artists are at it again:
NEW YORK -- Four years ago, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani blasted the Brooklyn Museum of Art for hanging a painting of the Virgin Mary that was decorated with elephant dung.An exhibit that opened at the Whitney this week strikes back - with a portrait of Giuliani that has elephant dung painted on it.
"Libertas, De Te Servent!" (Liberty, May the Gods Protect You!), by Chinese artist Zhou Tiehai, is part of an exhibition about America's global image at the Whitney Museum of American Art through Oct. 12.
I saw a picture of the Elephant Dung Madonna in one of my textbooks. Grant you, I realize that a picture in a book, even if it is in color, is no substitute for the original, but I am still pretty sure it is one of the most hideous things I have ever seen. (Here's an image of the thing: see what you think.)
Anyway, now some Chinese guy has reached into his diapers to pull out a get-rich-quick scheme. Some might say that it takes colossal gall to come from a country where such shenanigans can land you in a labor camp to one where you are given free reign to not only criticize the government, but to (figuratively) defecate on it. Of course, to say that is to risk being labelled a square, a philistine, a (shudder) Republican. Nevertheless, I say it. Mr. Zhou, you may be otherwise talented (if this is the same artist some of his work is quite good) but your latest production should be flushed down the toilet.
Via Right-Thinking.com. By the way, a commenter in the post on Right-thinking points out that the article in the Seattle PI doesn't mention that Giuliani's complaint focused on the use of taxpayer money to fund the the shit-madonna exhibit, but of course to artists and their sycophants even the faintest threat that the American public cash cow might decide to refuse to give more milk is the same as clapping artists in irons and throwing them in jail. As far as the liberal elite artistic community is concerned, the average American is a blight on the landscape, a Disney-worshipping, fast-food-gnawing, teevee-sitcom-watching swine, whose only purpose is to pay artists to throw the equivalent of feces at them. Back in the late fifties and throughout the sixties, the complaint was that Americans didn't like or understand art, its artists were abused, neglected, and worst of all, forced to work mundane "real" jobs and live among those who thought they were "weird." Well, government bodies and committees of the guilty rich were formed, artists were coddled, fêted, given grants and legacies and treated like the kings and nobles we supposedly had cast off in 1776. How strange people act when they get everything they want.
Posted by Andrea Harris at July 6, 2003 12:34 AMIt would be fair to point out that the NEA is no longer in the business of giving grants to individual artists.
Still, you otherwise make your points well. It reminds me of a guy in one of my recent threads who thinks his country--the United Kingdom, is "a load of crap." Why? Because the Labour government there would address people's complaints by making changes, and their home secretary vehemently endorses the concept of national ID cards.
It really is a crass hellhole that some people feel they live in, isn't it? I think Lileks had the best term for them: miserablists.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at July 6, 2003 at 05:09 AMThere is a HUGE difference between Liberty and License. Freedom denotes the ability to try; it also denotes the absolute certainty of living with the results.
'Tis the Law Of Consequences!
Posted by: MommaBear at July 6, 2003 at 07:48 AMI wasn't referring to any grant group specifically, just pointing out that we do have many types of organizations that are set up for the purpose of supporting artists, and many of them were set up in response to the complaint that artists weren't getting the suppport they needed. I don't expect artists who get government grants to churn out Norman Rockwell imitations out of gratitude any more than I think artists who receive private grants from rich patrons should produce flattering portraits of their benefactors. But it is interesting that some of these artists should produce works of art so filled with hatred and disgust for the people who made it possible for them to produce these works of art. It's almost as if they are saying, "Sucker!" The psychological state of mind of someone like that I leave to your imagination.
PS: I am not sure that the example of your commenter is apropos. I read what he had to say, and he has a certain point. I believe the "load of crap" he was referring to is his country's current state of affairs, not the country throughout its history or its people as a whole. The artists I am referring to seem to view America, or Western Civilization, as a mistake going back to its very inception.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at July 6, 2003 at 10:17 AMThe ugliness of the art produced by these artists reflects the nature of their souls.
Posted by: Michael Lonie at July 6, 2003 at 05:07 PMSimple resolution, end all taxpayer funding of the arts (and sports as well). If these can't survive in the commercial arena, then sod them. I resent the fact that any of my taxes go to fund either one of those two leeching special interests.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Castel-Dodge at July 6, 2003 at 05:26 PMAs always, Sensei Robert has the best take:
"A government supported artist is an incompetent whore."
-Robert A. Heinlein
Posted by: MonkeyPants at July 6, 2003 at 05:40 PMI'm still trying to figure out how to get my government grant to be an unemployed artist.
I'll keep you posted.
D
Posted by: David Strain at July 6, 2003 at 07:33 PMI don't have a reference on this, but I've heard that in Holland, the government is required to buy the art works of all artists who have established certain credentials--and that there are warehouses full of such paintings.
Any Dutch people to confirm or deny?
Posted by: David Foster at July 6, 2003 at 11:01 PMI'm not Dutch, but I found the following via a Google search:
"But at that time the wellfare policies influenced also the dutch art policies, which continued to the end of the 70ies to finance kindhearted anyones artistship, who felt an artist. This policy was the consequent transposition of the arttheoretical statement that everyone is an artist (Beuys). But what happened in the 1980ies, when out of a sudden, even with the force of financial emergency, the direction of the art politic change so roughly? In the traditional manner the dutch government was trying to represent the state by financing just the “topart”. The premise of non-identification with the promoted object was forgotten. And since the beginning of the 90ies (wet op het specifiek kunstbeleid) they even try to define within four-jears-plans the wished outlines of public art money is given to. What for an idea of art and artist has such a state? By a practice of nearly fourty years of public artists salaries and by abolishing the rolemodell of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the Netherlands the principle of the autonomy of art was diminished. The secondary consequence was a less pithy artmarket and artreception (artcriticism) which allowed the dutch government in the 80ies to command sociable duties as integration or egalization to the artists, who where in a kind of vacuum and couldn’t defeat their work in an arttheoretical way."
The English is a bit fractured, but it talks about artists on a public salary, which would mean that their works belong to the Dutch government. I believe it offers indirect support to what you're talking about, David.
Posted by: Dark Avenger at July 7, 2003 at 03:18 AMI looked at the example. Dung or not, it's a piece of shit.
I really wish I had the time and wherewithall to dip a statue of Mohammed in elephant dung. I'm really curious to see how long it would last at an exhibit.
Posted by: Ken Summers at July 7, 2003 at 09:27 AM