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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31654 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Why Boston’s “Embrace Statue” has led me to embrace Western chauvinism

Boston Common is a beautiful park in America’s true historic city. It’s a must see when visiting, and features a number of old monuments. There’s the Soldiers and Sailors monument, the Robert Gould Shaw memorial, and a memorial to the Boston Massacre. All of these are in a beautiful timeless design that the common man appreciates, which is appropriate for the common park of Boston. I wouldn’t say these monuments compare to achievements in European cities, but they are nevertheless noble attempts to celebrate the glories of the nation. As in all great art, the form befits the content, and the statues artfully imitate the gravity of their depicted scene.

Boston liberals decided to plop down a new monument, called “Embrace”, in dedication of MLK Jr — a figure mired in controversy over his support and instructions on raping women and the evidence that he plagiarized both his PhD thesis and his famous dream speech. (If that sentence was strange to read, it’s because I’m trying a new writing style where I introduce progressive heroes like they introduce mine). But the reason I disagree with the statue isn’t because MLK is a cheat or a misogynistic rape-enabler. Were the statue beautiful and heroic, and adequately conveyed the perseverance and dedication and cultural significance of MLK, this post wouldn’t be written. But that didn’t happen. Instead the statue looks like shit.

I mean this literally: it looks like a gigantic turd. The real world angles (not the architectural projections) make it look like a man firmly gripping monumental dung [1]. Some go further, and say it looks like a man gripping a monumental dong — that Boston has erected nothing short of an erection [2] [3] [4]. Surely the view of the common people should take primacy for the statues of the Boston Common, and Twitter is filled with normal people laughing hysterically at this statue.

So why erect something so ugly? The root cause here is the conscious betrayal of the Western legacy. What we see in the Boston Common is what we saw in Obama’s official portrait, with many questioning the artist’s choice of a casual background and hiding semen in his work [5]. The Western legacy and its hundreds of years of artistic development, which made a science out of beautiful monuments, is seen as intrinsically white — which is intrinsically bad. And so the novelty of experimental artists is privileged over the traditional and beautiful forms of art. Many of these artists make bad and gaudy work. The public knows this, but they are chosen anyway by the powers that be, who notoriously have an undeveloped sense of beauty.

And so I embrace western chauvinism. The West is the best, not in all the ways, but in important ones. Their statuary history is surely the best. Because the West is the best, we should privilege the traditional modes of art. Accepting this fact would make the public beautiful again.

Google images "black dude sucking his own dick", tell me that's not what it looks like.

I'll take your word for it.

From another point of view looks like he is between pair of thighs and munching like it is his last meal ...

https://twitter.com/AmakaUbakaTV/status/1614002232180998145

Look it is the public fault. In democracy what happens in the public square is eventually the voters responsibility.

Look it is the public fault. In democracy what happens in the public square is eventually the voters responsibility.

That's called the 'Populist Delusion' and there's a good book written about it. You can buy the book, pirate it if you're poor, and there's a video presentation on why blaming the voters is wrong here.

It cover elite theory, the modern managerial regime, how it operates and it makes it clear 'voters' do not really have a say and literally can't have unless they decide to become borderline criminal. And mere public ugliness doesn't jolt the normie as much as perverts trying to mess with their kids, which led to FBI investigating school board revolts.

It reminds me of the mangled messes of limbs and flesh that Stable Diffusion occasionally generates when it's trying to draw people.

It can't be a Stable Diffusion image, it doesn't have ((((large breasts))))

So far, apart from WW3 the best new development of the twenties. I see that in five years time, photorealistic impossibly beautiful generated e-thots animated by sophisticated LLMs are going to drive all women that are online offline back into technophobic patriarchal submission through sheer looks-mogging and thus civilization may end up being saved by pure horny accident by self-aware geeks trying to make false idols to simp for.

/images/16738187451575873.webp

From another point of view looks like he is between pair of thighs and munching like it is his last meal ...

I must say this statue is a masterpiece in demonstrating just how many different ways a single sculpture can be seen as absolutely, totally inappropriate, while at the core being perfectly SFW. If that was the intent of the designers then bravo to them.

Sculpture, being in three dimensions, is always prone to "I intended the work to be seen from this angle but people can walk around it and see it from different angles" problem. See this video about how Rodin's "The Kiss" has different emphases depending on the angle you view it from.

Unless you have something that is placed in a specific positioning where it will only be seen from the front, you are going to have unintended views. Good artists take this into account. I can't speak for the artist or artists who cast this statue. This is a flaw of conceptual art: they had an idea which they wanted to work out, but they didn't or couldn't see past the idea to what it would look like in reality.

Why they couldn't have gone with a conventional life-size statue or pair of statues of MLK and his wife I don't know, it would have attracted less comment of this kind (to me, it doesn't look like a turd or a penis from the angles shown, but it does look like a pair of arms grappling with a pillow or a sausage). That's why I say the concept (embrace meant to include all the ideas of inclusion and equality and welcome and support and so on) over-rode the practicalities.

Tbf, the statue's 'correct' viewing angle probably reflects direct reference from a famous photo of MLK and his wife, modified by the limitations of the material and the designer's skills; it is meant to be a pair of arms grappling at the shoulder. And if you've rejected the theory of the Great Man (although I disagree), it's not entirely nonsensical to emphasize the famous moment.

It's just... famous in a sense that very few people would recognize without huge amounts of prodding, even if they knew a lot about the time period in question, executed poorly.

See this video about how Rodin's "The Kiss" has different emphases depending on the angle you view it from.

Right, but (didn't watch the video but have seen "The Kiss" IRL) pretty much all of these emphases reflect different facets of the artist's vision for the piece -- this is why Rodin's work is worth zillions of dollars and whoever built this thing has to flog his stuff to mindkilled city councilors. (unless his vision involved MLK holding big pieces of poo, I guess)

Look it is the public fault. In democracy what happens in the public square is eventually the voters responsibility.

For better or for worse, that isn't really true of a representative democracy. You can vote out someone that does something stupid. You can, if there is such a candidate, vote for a candidate who promises to undo the stupid thing. But for any given issue, there's no guarantee that candidates for office will even realize that $issue is something the voters care about and want to change. In many elections you simply will not have the option to weigh in on a given issue by using your vote.

It never cease to amaze me how little we expect from politicians and state employees compared to CEOs ... if only there was fiduciary duty for poilticians ...

I think there are a couple factors, or at least I can think of a couple which make a difference. One is that politicians are selected by the general public, which is not always wise to put it mildly. Anyone who has worked in a customer facing job can tell you how foolish the raw unfiltered public can be. And those people are picking our leaders too.

Second thing is that as you get to positions representing more people, they get more and more out of touch with those people. A mayor in a small city can have a decent idea what people want from him because there aren't as many voices to listen to. A mayor of a big city has a much harder time, and so on. When you get to an office like the president of the US, there's simply no way any human could listen to all his constituents and follow what they want. Businesses have the same problem too, but they aren't as big as governments (generally) so it's not as pronounced.

Finally there's a coordination problem in how you deal with it, which makes things tough. If your CEO is fucking up, the board of directors replaces him. That is a pretty small group compared to even a small city, which will have hundreds or thousands of voting adults you need to convince to get rid of a politician. That makes it a lot harder to hold them accountable, of course.

I think the core of this very real problem, which we see in architecture and subway art as well as public statues, boils down to two things: Scott's barberpole theory of fashion and the tragedy of the commons.

The barberpole theory of fashion holds that being fashionable requires distinguishing your aesthetic from the aesthetics of the masses. It naturally drives elite circles who define themselves on the basis of their aesthetic sensibilities (artists and architects) to equilibrate on an aesthetic that most people will find unsettling or discomforting.

And the tragedy of the commons manifests from individual artists, architects and public works decisionmakers prioritizing their personal status among their aesthetically elite circle over the interests of the people who will see the art. Each time they decide whether to erect some modernist abomination in place of something that will actually brighten the day of the people who see it, they are deciding whether to give themselves a large direct payoff at the expense of everyone else receiving a small diffuse harm.

I guess this is inevitable in a post-scarcity society. Showy wealth and extravagance is no longer fashionable basically for the same barberpole reason that it associates one with the wealth-craving aesthetic of the masses, so elites compete for adulation of their peers in a contest to most dramatically degrade public spaces with unpleasant art.

I think the barberpole theory is pretty lame.

First of all, it doesnt actually tell you what new thing the upper classes will adopt. Before modernism, public art and architecture was neoclassical. If I had asked you at that time what style one could adopt to best differentiate from neoclassical, would you have come up with modernism or postmodernism from first principles? I think the best answer there would have been imitating rural peasants, but its hard to say. In practice a "style" has lots of attributes, and giving an exact inverse is difficult and also unnecessary, because anything thats different enough cam be used as a repudiation.

And "obvious inversion" is only one way this could go. Another example that certainly seems to be true often is that only the people youre signaling to can read the signals. If this is "elites compete for adulation of their peers", that doesnt explain the uglyness. It only needs to be obvious if you want to show the proles that youre different from them.

Also, theres a lot of low-class coded things that lower-class people themselves dont consider beautiful. Consider for example these very loose-cut shirts littered with branding: The people who wear these like them, and they think theyre cool, but they dont think theyre beautiful. You have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel to find people who e.g. wear them to a wedding. Returning to the topic of public art, I have yet to see anyone argue we should have e.g. a statue of Mickey Mouse in public square. Why not? Mickey Mouse figures are certainly more popular home decoration than classical statuettes.

So, its not given that the lower classes will even dislike it, if public buildings and art are distinctly higher-class. I dont think postmodern art is an obvious consequence of post-scarcity. Theres plenty of people floating around telling us that things shouldnt be beautiful because thats fascist: consider taking them seriously.

I think you're right that the artistic design space is high-dimensional enough that in theory there'd be any number of vectors orthogonal to popular beauty that one could embrace to assert your position at the top of the barberpole while still producing something beautiful... but being as they're orthogonal, you can strive toward those vectors while also including a directionally inverted component of the popular beauty vector. After all, if you can create a piece with hidden nuance appreciable only by your fellow elites, isn't it still a bigger flex to do that with art that the masses will also find revolting? And it's also true that the theory doesn't tell us what specific style the anti-beauty will take -- the SF Federal Building, the Toronto subway sketches and the MLK Embrace statue all achieve their hideousness in unique ways, and all seem to strive toward various other indicia of elite art -- but if the question is why elite art selection tends to embrace hideousness rather than which particular type of hideousness it will settle on, then the theory seems to do pretty well.

Theres plenty of people floating around telling us that things shouldnt be beautiful because thats fascist: consider taking them seriously.

Taking them seriously means asking why they associate beauty with fascism, and I think barberpole theory provides an answer: fascism is low-class, and is just one of the many things that would-be elites signal their status by equivocating with beauty. We also hear that beauty is consumerist, looks cheap, is reactionary, means embracing an aesthetic of a white supremacist past, etc.

Re the first part, I think your reasoning here depends on the directions orthogonal to beauty still corresponding relatively closely to terms in which we normally think about art.

the SF Federal Building, the Toronto subway sketches and the MLK Embrace statue all achieve their hideousness in unique ways, and all seem to strive toward various other indicia of elite art

Do I read correctly that you think its possible to make something thats clearly art of our current elite and also beautiful?

We also hear that beauty is consumerist, looks cheap, is reactionary, means embracing an aesthetic of a white supremacist past, etc

What did you have in mind with "looks cheap"? Are there really people who would say e.g. the Lincoln memorial looks cheap?

"Reactionary" here means basically the same thing I did with "fascist", and the association with bad old times is somewhere between made up and self-fulfilling, so it cant be the cause of the dislike.

Do I read correctly that you think its possible to make something thats clearly art of our current elite and also beautiful?

I think so. The new Moynihan Train Hall is maybe the best example, drawing accolades from elites and normies alike (extension to Penn Station on which I wrote a treatise about a conservatism founded on this specific kind of greatness). One World Trade Center (the "Freedom Tower") was controversial but probably also qualifies, although isn't new anymore. I would say the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once is both a great movie and an elite favorite. On statues specifically I do not know, because I don't follow the topic carefully and only the controversial stuff makes the headlines.

What did you have in mind with "looks cheap"? Are there really people who would say e.g. the Lincoln memorial looks cheap?

Cladding. Elite architects think cladding "looks cheap" even though it makes buildings more appealing to mainstream sensibility. That's just one example.

No, the Lincoln Memorial doesn't look cheap; the pejorative there would probably be implications of fascism or white supremacy. When Trump issued an executive order that federal buildings should be designed in neoclassical style, the American Institute of Architects responded in part that "Rather than pre-qualified architects receiving the chance to design uniquely-contemporary federal structures for the cities they serve, all future government buildings would instead be reminiscent of the monumental, white construction that has defined Washington, D.C., since its inception, as well as the structures built-in ancient Rome and Greece, and more recently, in Hitler’s Third Reich." I think that's reflective of the genre.

"Reactionary" here means basically the same thing I did with "fascist", and the association with bad old times is somewhere between made up and self-fulfilling, so it cant be the cause of the dislike.

It isn't the cause of the dislike. The cause of the dislike is barberpole theory and elite fashion. The excuse for the dislike is this latter litany.

I guess this is inevitable in a post-scarcity society. Showy wealth and extravagance is no longer fashionable basically for the same barberpole reason that it associates one with the wealth-craving aesthetic of the masses, so elites compete for adulation of their peers in a contest to most dramatically degrade public spaces with unpleasant art.

I think this is a choice. The elites could also willingly choose to compete in more victorian games to reject the excesses of such unpleasantness from the past. There's no reason to assume that virtue decays forever.

This is only tangentially related, but this reminds me of a comment on reddit the other day about how public art is often divorced from a practical purpose, meaning that ultimate finished product is bizarre and unsettling even if it is executed well.

Wow. Holy shit. That is horrible, perverse. Also brilliant. It's like that scene in strange days where the murderer puts on a telepathic device so the victim can see her own murder from his perspective.

The artist went on the subway, found it depressing, and now the grey ants have to look at themselves through his disgusted eyes. You could go one deeper. Paint what it feels like to go on this subway on a rainy day to a job you hate, thinking of jumping onto the tracks, when you see this piece, a tainted mirror reflecting and amplifying your pain, put there by the sinister entity that rules over you. And you know the entity approves of and watches your despair, yet it is not motivated by cruelty or sadism, for it too could never feel joy, it merely searches for an aesthetic, endlessly.

You're gonna need more black paint.

Thanks for linking, this case is especially atrocious.

I really agree with this comment and I agree also with some extra

I get more of an “all aboard! Next stop: Auschwitz!” vibe.

(...)

It's awful. I can't imagine being a visitor to Toronto and being greeted with this. Like an out-of-place Holocaust Memorial.

(...)

I stand here in the same clothes I wore yesterday, 38 years old, waiting for the same train I take every single day to my minimum wage job. Every aspect of my life is falling apart. I can barely afford my rent. The grocery store is stealing my retirement. And i'm at the edge of a mental breakdown.

But here I am. Facing a wall of depression that is my literal being, funded by own tax dollars. A very interesting piece of "art" indeed.

(...)

This art makes you want to succumb to the dangerously narrow passages near the tracks. We should start a petition to get it taken down. No art at all would be an improvement over this frosted glass suicide note

(...)

That's the subway station most inhabited by tourists. This is what we think represents Toronto. Depression. Death.

(...)

It's so ugly, so depressing, and even with the vaguest of linework, it still manages to be notably misogynist. The most detailed figure is a teenaged girl dancing around a pole, and she's further dehumanized by having her body outlined more sharply than anyone else's, but her face hidden, AND a yucky guy leering at her - who may be racialized as Black, just to be even more offensive. I despise everything about this.

(while last one is matching claims that are usually false here it mostly matches my own initial impression)

most detailed figure is a teenaged girl dancing around a pole

The "art" is awful, but she's clearly holding on to a train pole rather than dancing on a stripper pole.

Yes, but I admit that it was one of my immediate thoughts. Maybe because it was depressing and pole is without any context? And in my areas public transport poles are not standalone in the middle but more bundled with other parts of the vehicle?

Wow, those are...not inspiring.

I do think the pole is a subway handrail, for what little that's worth.

Yes, but I admit that it was one of my immediate thoughts. Maybe because it was depressing and pole is without any context? And in my areas public transport poles are not standalone in the middle but more bundled with other parts of the vehicle?

Did you mean to write the same comment twice?

I wanted to respond to both people. Should I respond to one of them and hope that other will coincidentally see the other reply?

You can tag the other commenter @traveller

They'll get a ping and it kind of consolidates the thread.

The standard workaround that I've seen is to use a username reference ("@‌ToaKraka") for a second or third person. Reddit silently disables username alerts if you attempt to use too many username references in a single comment, and I assume that this software has a similar limitation.

(Obligatory reminder that imageboard software doesn't have this problem, and allows conversation threads to merge as well as to branch.)

Thanks, I was unaware of that!

@FiveHourMarathon

Somewhat amusingly the section highlighted by the original poster might not even be the worst part. Some other nightmarish panels:

1 2 3

I thought the people were overselling it given the OP, it looks drab and depressing but nowhere near these schizo looking things.

It feels like the environment was designed by people who actively hate those who have to be in it or something.

What the hell.

There's a wider selection, and an explanation, from the artist's website:

On the track side, while you think you can see the entire expanse of the mural, and the train track gives you some mandatory distance from its glass panels, you are often less than 12’ away from an artwork which is over 500’ long. Walking the full length of the terminal, the work is visible only in the intervals between the arrival and departure of trains. At rush-hours, this is less than every 5 minutes.

This time-bracketed viewing of the artwork, as well as its intimate contemplation of our contemporary urban human condition, mirrors and channels the structure and meaning of Charles Dickens composed epic novels, made in intimate sections for his daily 19th century newspaper readership.

Although the project is conceived as a whole (this work has the overall sweep of an entire city block and can be seen as a continuously unfolding ribbon), the title zones of immersion implies that seeing the work close up is a both a necessity and an affordance, allowing a charged intimacy in this public space – a pathos rarely available in public art.

The expression of psyche in public space can give public art a purpose greater than spectacle or decoration. This work presents the unvarnished witnessing of our human dwelling – which speaks of our collective separateness. (I feel a kinship here with Daumier’s Third Class Carriage, and Henry Moore’s wartime subway drawings). The unwritten code of the subway gaze, which says ‘look down/look away’, is challenged as we see ourselves in the work, through drawings and reflections. This window into our contemporary isolation offers faces and body language, blurred and revealed poetic writings from my journal entries, and rhythms of colour that punctuate the ribboned expanse.

And in a certain sense, it's definitely not wrong: "pathos", "separateness" and "urban condition" are definitely things expressed very well in the 'art', to the extent that many critics of urbanism could point to it pretty precisely as an example.

((Uh, though the 'poem' is schlock.))

It's just no one seemed to stop to consider whether that was the right goal.

It would look better if they just had the coloured panels and scrapped the (bad) charcoal drawings of "let us remind you why you hate travelling on public transport, because it reminds you that you are just a faceless cog in the economic machinery forced into a routine like a rat in a cage".

There is no sense of beauty anymore. And yet people want beauty, as the comments from ordinary people show.

Normal people have a strong sense of beauty. Unfortunately sociopaths have figured out how to get themselves into positions of power and we’re ruled by people who largely don’t give a shit about their job and have no sense of responsibility.

I meant from a purely aesthetic standpoint it's extremely strong, people are definitely getting an artistic experience out of this, it's not some forgettable triviality. But I'm not sure I'd consider breaking people's spirits like this a wise or ethical use of the power of art.

I miss art déco.

Yeah I can easily see someone like me (but with money) picking that piece. Particularly with modern art, where so much is about the interpretation, it is easy to get lost in your own perspective or too focused on one or two concepts to the exclusion of everything else. It wouldn't even occur to me how miserable it would be to see every day until it was installed, I'd be too busy jerking the author off over the irony of it all.

The West is the best, not in all the ways, but in important ones.

If only westerners would realise this themselves and actually believe it... Also The West that's "the best" isn't progressive modernism, but rather tradional Westernism, which modern westerners disavow completely, and to bring it back we to remove modern westerners from every ounce of power they may hold first.

Your flair has never been more relevant. That Toronto artwork really drove home to me how much we’ve lost.

Don’t love the statue. It feels like they wanted a unique MLK statue and just missed the mark. MLK’s memorial in the national mall is a a much more traditional monument and looks great, especially lit up at night.

Not sure one statue ties into a wider point on “The West”. Seems like most of our statues are just a guy on a horse or standing in a military uniform. Doesn’t seem like a sign of downfall to try out new styles even if this one turned out poorly.

We have these statues in Downtown Phoenix around the Herberger Theatre and the Science Museum, I think they look pretty okay. I also like the gigantic mirror in the Convention Center. I guess my point is that it's not all bad, maybe it's one of those cultural-folkways-genetics things and not simply "all modern art sucks."

MLK’s memorial in the national mall is a a much more traditional monument and looks great, especially lit up at night.

Oh dear. That is not true at all. That thing is ugly.

Perhaps the problem is that memorializing MLK other than with a street name is impossible.

What upsets me is that it feels like the artist got halfway through doing an amazing sculpture and someone came in and said "What are you doing? If you keep going like that it's going to look fantastic - cut it out with the good sculpting already!" so he just stopped and shipped it as is.

The unfinished part is referring back to Michelangelo's sculptures, so they are trying to do reference to "heroic classical sculpture", so I can forgive them for the unfinished look, the image arising part-way out of the stone.

The statue itself is not bad, if a little too reminiscent of Chinese Communist style, but it could be a lot worse. So for public art that is a memorial to a heroic figure, it gets a pass from me.

Have you been in person? The memorial as a whole just works in a way that isn't apparent in pictures. The white stone conjures up images of Mount Rushmore, subtly asking the viewer, "what would a modern Mount Rushmore look like?" but without taking on the virulent anti-imperialist tone all too prevalent in other artworks of the genre.

My ex said something similar when we saw it. Maybe I'm too enamoured with the image of the finished sculpture I have in my head.

Doesn’t seem like a sign of downfall to try out new styles even if this one turned out poorly.

Maybe try these experiments in Autodesk to see if they work before you cast them in immortal bronze and erect them eternally in a place of honor in the heart of the city.

Or at least open it up to see that they don't look like some guy carrying an armload of shit.

‘Western’ is a dumb category. Instead we should refer to Christian or post Christian cultures- and, obviously, Christian cultures are aesthetically superior to post Christian cultures because they don’t make embracing ugly art an elite cultural shibboleth, but post Christian cultures are distinctive in being post christian and not post Islamic or post pagan. Christianity’s marriage laws, social attitudes, taboos, and attitudes towards worship leave fingerprints stamped all over these people, even if they’re post Christian and not Christian. ‘Western’ is a meaningless category. The fact that the civilization values prominent, representational art of important people at all is something that sets a post Christian society apart from a post Islamic society.

Instead what you’re arguing for is the superiority of a Christian society over a post Christian society, and I won’t disagree with you there. As a Christian conservative myself I have obvious reasons for this preference that go beyond artistic preferences, but ‘I like art to be beautiful’ is a reasonable preference.

I would disagree - Western is a perfectly apt description, or at least there's not much better. I disagree with the term of just 'Christian' because it ignores or downplays the pre-Christian Greco-Roman intellectual tradition the West inherited. The history of the West intellectually and philosophically has been attempts to attempts to synthesize Greek rationality with Jerusalemite faith. Many influential figures made this their explicit goal, such as Thomas Aquinas. These two broad schools of thought sharpened each other and I think lead to the remarkable intellectual achievements of the West. I think this is the true legacy of the West, at least intellectually.

Agreed. Modern Westernism has taken all the bad aspects of Christianity and kept them while throwing out the actually civilisationally useful stuff.

As someone from a completely different society in the UK I meet atheists all the time whose brief system is so so Christian it boggles the mind, the only thing is they don't believe in is God/the Bible.

So, what does this mean for pre-Christian societies? It wasn’t Christians who built the Parthenon or all of those gorgeous Greco-Roman statues. You draw a distinction between “post-Christian” and “post-pagan” societies, but, at least in the entirety of Europe, Christian societies are all post-pagan societies. Pagan Europeans made beautiful representational art many centuries before they were converted to Christianity.

Just what I was thinking. The essential features of Western civilization were all there BC or at least pre-Constantine. Mosaics too, as well as statues. Indeed, Christianity brought with it the introduction of iconoclasm as an idea, which caused long and ridiculously bloody (for the tininess of the stakes) factional strife in the Byzantine empire.

We had Roman Law, we had Plato and Aristotle, we had vaguely representative government and the rights of the citizen. That is the essential components IMO.

Linking pre-Christian Greece and Rome(and these were different societies even if they had a few similarities due to being indo-European and Mediterranean) to the modern ‘west’ can only be done through Christianity. The Italian renaissance that revitalized classical art? That was at the behest of Christianity.

To the extent that they’re similar to Christianity, it’s either because of geographic similarities(Christianity being, like Rome and Greece, based out of, well, Rome and Greece) or Christian borrowing.

I have to disagree. Renaissance architecture and statuary, and consequent developments, are influenced by Pagan architecture and rediscovered architectural/theoretical treatises more than anything Christian. Ethiopia, despite being Christian longer than Germany, does not have the same standard of beauty that you find in the West. Western architecture is its own category distinct from Christian non-Western communities in Ethiopia and Lebanon. Even Gothic (medieval) architecture was heavily influenced by Romanesque which was influenced by the developments of the Roman Empire.

“Western” only became befuddling as a category when postmodern academics willed this thought into existence. It pretty much just refers to Europe influenced by Rome and various hegemonic European groups (themselves influenced by Rome) (Goths, Franks, etc). The West, of course, does include Western Christianity. But it’s a perfectly useful term to use. Everyone seems to know exactly what region I’m referring to when I use it, absent edge cases in like the Balkans or Finland.

Gothic architecture was notably also influenced by Islamic architecture.

When you say "Gothic (medieval) architecture", are you implying that Gothic architecture is mediaeval architecture?

"Western" is also extended into pre-Christian Europe. Hence, Plato and Socrates etc. are "Western philosophers", but not Christian philosophers. Greek and Roman art is all "Western", but not all of it is Christian.

Also, the important distinction here is modernist vs. non-modernist. For example, there are plenty of horrendously ugly modernist churches, while pre-modernist churches tended to be gaudy at worst.

Well yeah, but counting those societies as western is dumb- they don’t have any more in common with later Christian and post Christian societies than they do with middle eastern societies.

A category that includes 1950s America and 4th century Rome is already very broad. However, "Western" is a category referring to a set of intellectual, linguistic, and other cultural traditions, typically taken to descend from the cultures of Ancient Greece, Rome, and the Hebrews (up to the 1st century). It's not defined in terms of degree of similarity. A South Pacific Island that had miraculously and independently become Christian, democratic, individualistic, and had a play in in Iambic Pentameter about an existentially tormented prince would still not be "Western", because despite its similarities it would not be part of the same tradition.

Saying that ancient Greeks and Romans weren't Western is a bizarre understanding of "Western". We could redefine words to mean the opposite of their common definition. But then communication would be very difficult and full of misunderstanding.

I took a year long Western Civ class in high school. It was almost all ancient Greece and Roman.

There's heterodox opinions and then there's just failure to use terms in a sensible manner.

Well yes, the category ‘western’ includes ancient Athens as well as 21st century America- that’s why the category is dumb. Not completely absent of meaning, but not defining something that needs to be defined.

To be fair, hydroacetylene's contention is that "Western" is a bad category and that we should replace most of its uses with "Christian".

While I don't disagree with your conclusion I do doubt that it was really the statue that led you to this. Be honest - you were ready to embrace western chauvinism beforehand, weren't you?

Yeah I had the same thought when I read the op - it's like if I wrote an op saying 'guys I have decided to stop taking things so seriously'. That template is supposed to be for unexpected new developments, not natural outgrowths of previously stated beliefs.

Unfortunately, the modernist ugliness you are right to complain about is Western, or at least it came from the West originally, and has now been embraced by decision makers globally.

Traditional architecture, sculpture and painting are beautiful everywhere, regardless of the geographic background. The modernist equivalents are ugly regardless of background.

Compare two recent statues in London. The first is a pile of whipped cream, with a drone, fly and cherry sitting on top. It is designed by a British woman and is an example of contemporary western art.

https://news.sky.com/story/fourth-plinth-whipped-cream-and-fly-sculpture-unveiled-at-trafalgar-square-12038929

The second is a recreation of the ancient Winged Bull statue from Iraq, which was destroyed by ISIS. It was designed by an Iraqi Jew and is a literal recreation of ancient middle eastern art.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2018/03/28/londons-fourth-plinth-unveiled-michael-rakowitzs-winged-bull-sculpture-made-from-date-syrup-cans

The Winged Bull statue is self-evidently far superior, it is also not western. It is superior because it is traditionalist and not modernist.

The whipped cream statue is not modernist, either. Modernist art is this stuff. And it is worth noting that some people then made the same criticism of that art that you are making re contemporary art, and, as you do, said that this was "real art).

I guess the mods don't have a problem with you darkly hinting that anyone who doesn't like modernism is a nazi, but I think it is weak and lazy and I know you can do better G. At least build up to it or something.

I didn't hint that at all. The point was simply that "modernism bad, traditional good" does not have a great pedigree, and so a convincing argument re the merits of modernism needs a lot more than that bald claim. And, anyone who thinks that "Nazis didn't like modernism" implies "all who dislike modernism are Nazis" needs 1) a refresher course on basic logic; and 2) a refresher on history, since Stalin was not a fan, either.

Your point was that "modernism bad, traditional good" does not have a great pedigree, and so to get that across you told Crowstep that the whipped cream statue isn't modernist and then implied you would give an example of modernist art, but instead of linking an art gallery, or GIS for modernism, or even just the Wikipedia page, you linked a page about an exhibition the nazis held to "inflame public opinion against modernism". So you weren't darkly hinting, you just lost all ability to communicate normally?

And, anyone who thinks that "Nazis didn't like modernism" implies "all who dislike modernism are Nazis" needs 1) a refresher course on basic logic; and 2) a refresher on history, since Stalin was not a fan, either.

Nobody thinks "Nazis didn't like thing" implies "all who dislike thing are Nazis", but plenty of people pretend to for political gain as you know, which is why you can get side eyed for buying a tiki torch. To me it looks like it is also why you claimed it was "worth noting" that the nazis made "the same criticism" Crowstep did when he said he preferred soup can lamassu. Especially since you apparently do have non-nazi links, you just didn't use them.

As it happens, the Degenerate Art exhibit is the most complete survey of modernist art that I know of personally and, given that the OP was essentially arguing, as others have here repeatedly, that contemporary art is degenerate, and/or that the creators thereof are intentionality trying to destroy all that is True and Good, a link to the Degenerate Art exhibit was too hard to pass up.

The whipped cream statue is very technically competent. It is also ugly, and meant in a spirit of ugliness. The lamassu statue out of syrup tins may be gaudier and cheekier, and even tackier, but I prefer it. First, I like lamassu. Second, it is colourful and hopeful. There's enough ugliness and rubbing our faces in despair and cultish nihilism. Third, it really does represent something more rooted in the common people. If we're going to be all democratic about our public art, then there are a lot worse out there.

I sincerely doubt that the whipped cream statue was "meant in a spirit of ugliness," whatever that means. It was probably supposed to be some sort of political commentary, or perhaps meant in a spirit of whimsy, or in the spirit of the type of art school sophistry that is so common to artists' statements. You have no actual evidence that it was "meant in a spirit of ugliness" (again, whatever that means), as opposed to simply being, in your view, ugly? And it isn't even that ugly; there are plenty of great works of art that are uglier than that and plenty that depict ugliness, and plenty that are both. Are those "meant in a spirit of ugliness"? And, if so, perhaps that is not a bad thing.

From your first link (emphasis added):

When asked why he was compelled to revisit Velázquez's Portrait again and again, Bacon replied that he had nothing against popes, but merely sought "an excuse to use these colours, and you can't give ordinary clothes that purple colour without getting into a sort of false fauve manner".[24] At the time Bacon was coming to terms with the death of a cold, disciplinarian father, his early, illicit sexual encounters, and a very destructive sadomasochistic approach to sex.[25]

Almost all of the popes are shown within cage-like structures and screaming or about to scream. Bacon identified as a Nietzschean and atheist, and some contemporary critics saw the series as symbolic execution scenes, as if Bacon sought to enact Nietzsche's declaration that "God is dead" by killing his representative on Earth. Other critics see the series as symbolizing the killing of a father figure.[26] However Bacon balked at such literal translations, and later said that it was Velázquez himself he sought to "triumph over." He said that in the same way that Velázquez cooled Titian, he sought to "cool" Velázquez.[26]

Yes, I think that is the very definition of "a spirit of ugliness".

Then I really have no idea what "meant in a spirit of ugliness" means. All art that is produced by the stereotypical "tortured artist"? All art that some Freudian can impose the standard Freudian interpretation on? That is pretty much all art.

And, btw, the key phrase in OP's claim is not "spirit of ugliness" but rather "meant."

it is worth noting

Please speak directly. Why is it worth noting?

Unfortunately, the modernist ugliness you are right to complain about is Western, or at least it came from the West originally, and has now been embraced by decision makers globally.

A host / parasite distinction needs to be made here, I think.

If course, the original host / parasite diatinction that Scott made about the West was that authentic Western culture involves Odin and daubing yourself in blue woad. Anything after 1492 is a globohomo skinwalker ghoulishly possessing Europe's animated corpse.

daubing yourself in blue woad.

SMH modern westerners probably think Alizarin is a spell from Harry Potter... When will this age of ignorance end...

Anything after 1492 is a globohomo skinwalker ghoulishly possessing Europe's animated corpse.

What, you mean you'd count stuff AFTER Western civilization was corrupted by Arabs like Avicenna and his minions like Aquinas in the High Middle Ages?!

The 13th century was the high water mark of European culture. Fight me.

Certainly not the worst claim...

But seriously, you'd count Western civilization AFTER the Romans conquered the Greeks? Everything else was basically corrupt.

But would we say the Chinese cultural revolution was Chinese in culture? I would say it was Marxist-globalist, and I would say the same about Soviet art. These nations have since tossed aside their Marxist-globalist chains and have put on their authentic culture once again. We should do the same. Perhaps the seed of Global Man art (globo-homo) did originate in the West, in the form of capitalism or Bolshevism, but its adherents consciously place their works outside the tradition of their ancestors. They themselves see it as global, and not Western.

What's wrong with Soviet art? I would expect the kind of people who complain about "modern art" to be delighted by socialist realism.

The realism is fine, the futurism is where it's at. I fucking WANT to be flying superman style with nuclear power in my hand.

The difference is in the intent of the author. They didn't actively hate the people, they weren't miserable piles of neurosis taking it out on you the observer.

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