Every day, folks here at Winter Watch search for tiny of glimmers of hope in the battle against cultural degeneracy. Today, we found some.
It seems that one major museum is finally taking into consideration the concept of human decency in determining what’s acceptable for large “modern art” installations in public spaces. It happened at the world’s largest art museum in Paris, of all places. Imagine that.
Musée du Louvre President Jean-Luc Martinez announced the last-minute cancellation of an exhibition that features a three-story architectural sculpture of a man sexually penetrating a four-legged animal. The massive structure, called “Domestikator,” was supposed to open Oct. 16, 2017 in the museum’s Jardin des Tuileries, as part of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC). Martinez said the planned location for the piece was unsuitable because it could be seen from a nearby school, it would have been adjacent to a playground, it depicts “sexual content,” and bestiality as modern art is simply “too brutal” and “too rude.”
The so-called “Dutch artist” responsible for the monstrosity, Joep van Lieshout aka Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL), claims that the museum was influenced by a backlash of Internet commentary and political pressure from “conservatives”.
Since 2015, Germany was home “Domestikator,” which is just one part of a larger installation titled “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” featured in the Ruhrtriennale arts festival. The following images show the full scope of van Lieshout’s display.
Unfortunately, another Paris museum offered to display the “Domestikator,” which is now in front of The Centre Georges Pompidou. Shameful.
The Louvre’s decision isn’t the only small victory. In September, the Guggenheim “decided to pull three major works from a highly anticipated exhibition after pressure from animal-rights supporters and others over the show ‘Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World,'” NYT reports. The following brief video explains what this piece of “modern art” involved.
Another AVL project is the Aldous Huxley-esque dystopian-inspired New Slave City. Yes, right in your face. Values, ethics, aesthetics, morality, food, energy and economics are totally turned upside down.
In AVL’s own words, “In general, I would like to have a world which is a little bit more extreme.” [Photos via Design Boom]
His views on eugenics: I don’t suggest we start killing 50% of the population, but that we be sensitive about it. Imagine you’re 70 years old. You don’t work anymore. I think everyone should have the choice, “Do I want to live 20 more years, costing a lot of money to society, to my children, become senile and things like that?” Or say, “Okay, I’ll stop now, I worked my whole life, if I decide to stop now instead of in ten years’ time, I save the community 4 million dollars. You know what, give me the 2 million for my children and I’ll go away now.” I think that sounds good. Why not?
Right, as if his Crime Syndicate masters would pony up the $2 million.
I applaud the people who sent threats to the Guggenheim. Someone finally gets how the world really works. It should be done more. The blatant double standard used by corporations, museums, pornographers/hollywood, msm etc. regarding the “freedom of expression” as an excuse to push their degenerative filth, chaos and lies has to be countered in the strongest possible terms. These discordians are ultimately weak, scared people. Their fears should be used against them, bravo!
Your comment Sir is on point, so on point to be the dialect of revolution. It needs to be stopped, with extreme prejudice.
If art is a reflection of the soul, then everyone who created these installations are coarse, ugly, perverts, entirely bereft of imagination or beauty.
But, it makes me reflect on the transcendent aesthetic of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Cole.
Maybe it’s not that bad – maybe they are all just plain lazy (and fashionable). This is what happens when artists “go to college”. If you wanted to be an artist when Thomas Cole was alive you would have become his apprentice (or student); learned to draw, learned to mix pigments, to prepare canvases, learned to apply paint to them; i.e. hard work – and then you started aiming at beauty. Now you just “go to college” and listen to someone drone on about deconstruction. And this is the result.
103 years ago Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal as a joke – and he was a fine painter. Now it is unutterably boring.
I can play some Led Zeppelin on bass, but, I’m a far cry from being John Paul Jones. My lack of technical proficiency shouldn’t define a new era of sub-standard music.
This is the crux of the matter. Personally I could demean and denigrate the hack Jew artist Mark Rothko until the end of time, but the decline began well before his rectangular opera. My umbrage begins with Picasso, and certainly extends to the Expressionist charlatan Duchamp that you referenced. But, it truly began with Van Gogh, and Matisse.
Aside from the inspiring Hudson Valley School or even Thomas Moran, art has experienced a steady decline in technical mastery. It would be impossible to compare anyone in the past century to a Albrecht Durer, Giambattista Piranesi, or Sandro Botticelli. Crude, childlike squiggles, and garish incoherent swathes of color are so unremarkable as to be insulting to a sense of balance and higher sentience. To compare Expressionism to the oeuvre of the Renaissance Masters is akin to comparing Stephen Hawking to Luciano Pavarotti because they both make sound.
Art isn’t subjective, only Judaic rhetoric is. Beauty is mathematically objective and utterly inviolable, phi is truth.
I despise contemporary art as you, but hold on a minute here.
Marcel Duchamp was not an “Expressionist.” He displayed a talent for mastering many different post-modern styles, and he produced pieces that stand on their own merit.
Just because you learned he did “Nude Decending A Staircase” around the same time as the Expressionism existed doesn’t mean he was one. In fact, the whole consistent point of this was that it bored him after he’d accomplished a stylistic treatment to his satisfaction. In all, his is quite a complex and brilliant oeuvre.
Duchamp admitted he was a trickster to a degree, but never to the exclusion of his peers. His more infamous installations and abstractions carried to their logical conclusions had more intelligence and humor to bite into than, say a Salvador Dali posture or publicity stunt.
When Duchamp saw that he’d accomplished all which he desired from an execution standpoint, he abandoned painting completely, eventually abandoning the art world completely (but oh, yes, he had one last piece for us to consume post mortem in the Philadelphia Museum).
Duchamp wasn’t an Expressionist, a Cubist (analytic AND synthetic…), a Surrealist, a Futurist, or an Impressionist, but you can bet your bottom dollar, he could paint in every single one of those styles if he had wished to do so.
And who was comparing Expressionism to high Renaissance art? Is it that you consider any visiting exhibition at the Louvre to automatically be presented as art of equal merit?
It’s too easy to throw the entire 20th century’s art production in the trash, Lycurgus. I’m guessing you must have some kind of hypocritical “thing” for the Impressionists since your “umbrage” began with Picasso?
Dude, Dada was a completely legitimately absurd reaction to the meat grinder of World War I. It may have been ugly, insulting and childish, but so was the stupid-assed war!
Obviously, you have an appreciation for the classics and that fact that contemporary art is a contrast to say the least in comparison to Renaissance art. So, I regret correcting your misstatements regarding Duchamp.
“he could paint in every single one of those styles if he had wished to do so.”
…and he did!!!!!!!!!
Very thoughtful discussion here – thanks. “Technical mastery” is key. That is what separates the joke art pictured and discussed above from the artists we are commenting on here. Joke art is barely worth discussing, at least, as art. But Rothko, Picasso certainly Mattise and VanGogh are.
What I think needs to be acknowledged and is rarely understood is just how much “mastery” it takes to produce a good oil on canvas painting. Even those painting that you may dismiss on aesthetic/moral grounds. Just two examples:
Each and every painting by de Kooning is the result of a huge amount of meticulous, masterful work – applying paint, mixing it, scraping it off, re-appying – hours and hours of hard manual – i.e. with the hands – work. Work that HE did.
Charles Demuth – produced mostly cubist and semi-abstract paintings. Not to your taste, presumably. But did you know that he was absolutely consummate draughtsman? The drawings and floral still lifes are the work of a man who had breathtaking technical mastery.
We could argue for ever about the aesthetic results achieved (it would be fun!) – but I hope we can agree about the vast gulf that separates the joke art above from the art of painting. Just how shabby is it in comparison, to think you have a clever idea and then go out and find someone to build your “Domestikator”?! And then mingle proudly with the crowd at the opening reception. Talk about “degenerate” art!
I’d agree with everything you said in that last paragraph.
Modern art is like someone proudly showing you their kids’ macaroni art and proclaiming them the next Rodin. As a man you can give an ambivalent “uh-huh” and change the subject without giving it a modicum of consideration. Women have to praise the attempt objectively then praise the child and parent for social considerations. Essentially being held hostage by decorum. As a civilization we were too polite to tell someone they should give up because they’re terrible.
On the other hand Art holds up an uncomfortable mirror to society. What Stephen has to say about Dadaism isn’t unfounded. But, it should bear equal consideration – especially here – that modern war is fraud. The art should no less embody the artifice than the brutality.
The Art we enjoy says much about our internal character. Personally I’m as much a fan of Stanislav Szukalski as Albrecht Durer. Szukalski’s work reminds me of a Lovecraft story brought to life, something that can evince some awe and terror.
We are closer – but you are forgetting “technical mastery” (your words) a child’s macaroni art is not that but a de Kooning painting is. And paintings that display technical mastery are not necessarily good art. Dali was a decent painter but I think produced little or no good art (“academic” is Clement Greenberg’s term of abuse) – And Dada is mostly joke art – tho pointing out the post WWI context is a good idea.
Similar points can be made in music. Steve Reich’s minimalism was recently trashed here. Someone said “my dog could play it”. No! Wrong! – It is extremely difficult music to perform – exceedingly complex and meticulously structured. It is music of extreme “technical mastery”.
For anyone interested in an amazing contemporary artist and an all around great guy, I highly recommend checking out watercolorist Paul Jackson, based out of Columbia, Missouri.
Me/my family have been friends with Paul for decades and he’s just a salt of the earth type of guy.
You know something is wrong with society, when digimon fan art is better than what you find in museums
Is Atelier Van Lieshout jewish? The vulgarity would suggest he is.
It should not be called “contemporary” art, but “Weimar” art…