Sir Barken Hyena writes:
Hola amigos, sorry it’s been so long since I’ve rapped at ya, but I’ve been quite the traveler lately, ever on the trail for potential new Lady Barkens. Most recently, this sweetly-scented trail has brought me to our most prominent and cultured cities, New York and Los Angeles, back to back within weeks of each other.
Now, due to my fame it’s best to travel a bit incognito, Peter the Great style, so that I can observe the true state of our nation without being deceived by sycophants and inconvenienced by the constant genuflecting of the masses. Also, my companion in New York, Princess Lady Bacon-Love of Batavia, is wanted by the FBI and several foreign governments, so we kept a low profile.
And as for the state of that nation — and culture — one good barometer is the kind of art that’s being made today. The view from New York is one of contempt. Do I mean I find the art contemptible? Yes, I certainly do, but more than that I feel that contempt is the only emotion conveyed by this art, the only emotion felt by its creators, and indeed the full intent and compass of the works.
And when you look at it that way, they are doing a fine job.
My experience at The Drawing Center in SoHo sums it up. There was precious little of anything you could call “drawing” there, but I suppose breaking boundaries is a given these days. Mostly on show were textiles ranging from unimpressive to insipid to downright silly. What art there was could be found on the placards explaining the works. One choice example:
Say what now?
Well, I didn’t see any “dialog”, though I’m not sure how I would have recognized it. The work itself looked like a melted stack of black Glad bags over a dog-chewed rag rug, no need to show it here, there’s nothing in it.
Nothing but contempt that is. Remember, this was in One Percent Central, an august zone of stratospheric wealth. This is the art that serves the global elite, as much as the Sistine ceiling served the Pope. They fund the galleries and foundations that make this possible, and perhaps even buy these works from time to time to display on their own walls. I have to assume that they find it expressive of their thoughts and feelings, though of course the primary purpose is to show their wealth by its profligate waste (I can get them a version of Worry Rug I for $14.95, though I can’t promise it’ll have the flair of the original).
The elites of the past used art as propaganda to display their superiority and cement their rule. The pharaohs overawed the simple with pyramids and monoliths, while medieval cathedrals offered them a vision of heaven. Louis XIV had his Versailles, even communists found it necessary to create Socialist Realism. But how does Worry Rug I serve this goal? These poor sad one percenters of today are joined at the hip to an ideology of liberal equality, for some reason, which really must be deeply galling to those conscious of their superior merit. How to show it? Contempt! Contempt for you and me, contempt for the eye, and the sensual, which can never be bought but only felt.
And just down the street from The Drawing Center, an unnamed gallery offers the pièce de résistance, the ultimate in contempt:
I know how you feel
Social criticism has long been a part of art, since the Romantics at least, but it’s been with a view to improving society, to curing its ills and bettering mankind. In other words, to further the promise of the Enlightenment and liberalism generally. I don’t think the above explosive critique of society has any such noble sentiment, because it’s quite clear to me that nobody really believes in this vision any more, and the ultimate failure of this multi-century program can only be due to the masses’ failure to step up to the challenge. So fuck off losers! The elites deserve their rule not because of their superiority but because the rest of us are losers. Thanks, thanks for that.
In my next post I’ll talk about Los Angeles and the art of delight.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
The Pope, the Pharaoh, and the Medieval lords and kings were (usually) part of the ethnic group that they ruled over. They shared standards of what was great, and the elite sought to signal how able they were to commission truly great works. They felt paternalism rather than contempt because they were part of the same culture as the peons.
Fast-forward to some Jew “artist” displaying her rags in the city that Wall Street Jews built. None of them are rooted in this country or its major, or even minor, ethnic groups. In fact, they’re not rooted in any country, just shuffling to wherever they can maximize self-interest and group power at the moment. They’re sealed off from the host population, and view it with contempt. “Goyische kopf — they just don’t get modern art!” Bunch of bald-faced, visual retards.
How conscious are they are their isolation and antagonism? Sam Moyer was one of a number of artists whose works were shown in an exhibit called Jew York — no joke, an exhibit to showcase the works of NYC Jews. “Get it? We’re doing that ironic self-deprecating thing!” (“Just kidding, we know we run this place, and you dumb goy peasants can go suck it.”)
Jews have little visual sense, which explains why their art looks so awful. But that doesn’t explain why it has to be so antagonistic as well — that comes from their being the most nakedly chauvinistic ethnic group in world history.
You know how there are Jews in the extreme libertarian camp, as well as in the extreme Communist camp? And how each camp of Jews tries to apologize for its enemies in the other camp? (“As a Communist Jew, I sincerely regret my ethnic group shamefully producing so many libertarians.”)
Well, where are the Jews singling out how awful and corrosive their “artists” are? They wouldn’t even have to apologize to the goy host population — just publicly call them out for being loathsome talentless posers. That will keep them from making a living from contemptuous art, while not alerting the unaware goyim how Jew-y these contemptible artists are and risking another pogrom (always the #1 worry when a Jew is planning to call out a group of Jews).
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You are such a champion asshole.
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Agnostic is pretty much the typical whiny “oppressed white male” basement-dweller. Failures in life generally spend their time whining about all them ethnic types who are keeping them from their millions and supermodel girlfriends. Lots of comically idiotic pop-psychology is generally present.
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oy vey…someone discussed ethnic motivations in art in an unflattering light. better not address the argument. just pull out the oldest smear in the book. “broke bitter nazi living in his mom’s basement.”
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Except white males ARE oppressed you imbecile.
“Failures in life generally spend their time whining about all them ethnic types who are keeping them from their millions and supermodel girlfriends. Lots of comically idiotic pop-psychology is generally present.”
Where do you get that he’s a failure in life? Oh wait, right. This is merely your modus operandi. You’re capable of imgaining that he is a loser so he is. It’s basically the same thing!
Care to explain what part of his comment was wrong? Curious.
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I hope you wear your swastika armband in public, so I can shoot you on sight.
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agnostic laid out a fairly serious argument that deserves scrutiny and discussion…and this is your pants-pissing response.
lol
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That’s nice. In real life, this bitch has probably never been in a real fight. But of course he would murder someone for holding political opinions different from his.
Are you a Jew? If not, why are you so retarded as to piss your pants over someone criticizing them?
Do you not realize that with your knee jerk, “swastika” response, you prove his point? One can criticize Jews without being a member of the NSDAP.
You’re a disgrace.
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You can tell that someone has spoken a forbidden truth when the response is sputtering name-calling instead of rebuttal of the factual points made.
If what he said is wrong – if degenerate art is not disproportionately created by Jews, then point out how this is wrong, preferably with some sort of evidence. If it IS true, then you need to come up with a more reasonable explanation than his for this phenomenon, or you are no better than the robots that cry “racism!” to every person who objects to black dysfunctionality.
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You left out Jews like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein and Bob Dylan — was there ever a group of artists more alienated from their host population, less in tune with the heartland of America or more contemptuous of it? Rodgers and Hammerstein should have been writing about Jewish tailors and pawnbrokers in Germany, not farmers and cowboys in Oklahoma. Bob Dylan should be writing about Ukrainian shopkeepers, not high water in Mississippi. How dare these rootless aliens engage in such cultural presumption!
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The reply above is directed at Agnostic, of course.
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Oh the “I Know A Good One” argument. Really rich.
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How dare someone point out the obvious about Jewish art? — that it is not very good, owing to their low visual intelligence (their famous high IQs are due to high verbal skills, e.g. the gobbledygook explaining what the art is meant to convey), and that it tends toward contempt for the host population.
In your panty-twisted reactions, you missed a little of the logic. Of artists who make contempt one of the main emotions, what fraction are Jewish? Pretty high. What fraction of artists overall are Jewish? Pretty low, Jews preferring verbal and musical media. Why are Jews so over-represented among contemptuous artists? Because of their fuck-you-goy chauvinism. (If their ramped up ethnocentrism is news to you, you’re an insulated hick.)
Rodgers & Hammerstein and Simon & Garfunkel are the exceptions that prove the rule — that Jews have always identified more with black, urban culture. They were way more into jazz, both in its Jazz Age and Bebop stages, than they were into earnest Anglo folk music. Still bragging about having “marched in Selma” against the racist goy bigots.
I welcome alternative explanations for why Jews are so likely to lie under the surface when you scratch away at works of Contemptuous High Art, and why so few fellow Jews are willing to criticize that phenomenon, unlike the willingness of Commie Jews to savage the libertarian Jews and vice versa.
Trying to pull the curtains over the whole thing, though, is shameful. You style yourselves as against political correctness and angry at artists whose driving value is contempt for the community the work is made for. Just as long as the trail never leads to the most wealthy and powerful ethnic group. Shameful.
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Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and the Koch Bros. All billionaire Jews, huh? And the whitest in the sense of WASPiest song ever written? White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin. And beloved by millions of non-Jews.
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what the hell do those three billionaires or a singer have to do with modern visual art?
if you’re going to throw up squid ink it will have to be more potent than that garbage
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I know this will never permeate your skull, but citing anecdotes isn’t proof you idiot.
How about George Soros, Sheldon Adelsson, Haim Saban, Michael Bloomberg and the asshole who own 5 of 6 major media companies? All the while they are a tiny percentage of the population.
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Sorry I responded to Agnostic. Troll. My apologies to all.
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The funny part is, this whiny crybaby actually sees himself as some kind of badass social analyst, bravely cutting through a web of P.C. with his clueless ‘analysis’, as opposed to a resentful halfwit with an internet connection and a serious racial insecurity complex.
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Except he IS a brace social analyst you dickless coward. He is expressing opinions that would make him a pariah if he uttered them in public. In the meanhwile, you are the guardian eunuch of the Jews’ palace harem. And you do it for free.
“opposed to a resentful halfwit with an internet connection and a serious racial insecurity complex.”
I see much more resentment coming form you. And of course, from the hooknoses he is criticizing. I don’t really get what the “racial insecurity complex” is supposed to mean, but I assume it is an insulting version of person who doesn’t take pride in being blind, while seeing.
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“He is expressing opinions that would make him a pariah if he uttered them in public.”
Probably because he’s an idiot who thinks he’s a seer. Kinda like 9/11 ‘truthers’.
“In the meanhwile, you are the guardian eunuch of the Jews’ palace harem. And you do it for free.”
Hahaha. Yes, it’s all a big zionist internet conspiracy.
Run along, Chicken Little, the sky isn’t falling in.
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lloydville, you are a moron for calling Agnostic a troll. He has been around for at least ten years, including his contributions as commenter on Paleo Retiree’s “Two Blowhards” as early in my recollection as 2003.
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I don’t care how long he’s been around — he’s trolling on this thread.
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The piece that you particularly mentioned, no favorite of mine, links back to the much greater work of Louise Nevelson, over-diluted with fine arts/MFA curriculum.
The show at the Drawing Center was an excellent example of the de-feminization of women’s art. Or perhaps more accurately the de-womaning of feminist art. Media that is traditionally thought of as woman’s territory: weaving, quilting, embroidery must somehow be made more monumental, nastier, to be considered more than domestic pastimes. As for all that black encaustic on Ikea mats: an unfortunate relic of poorly conceptualized “conceptual” art.
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I doubt I’ll be visiting here again. Some people ruin it for everyone.
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Now that would be a shame.
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So, is this why “Uncouth Reflections” can’t have Nice Things? By the way, PL, I almost never agree with Agnostic, certainly not on Jews, but threatening to shoot people you disagree with on sight is not exactly the height of civilized discourse either. By the way, I also believe that Mr. Agnostic is Asian, so he’s hardly a “white supremacist”.
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your shitty Nazi comebacks will be sorely missed
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Pingback: The Art of Contempt and Delight, Pt. II | Uncouth Reflections
Want to have your art and whine about it too?
Cover your eyes and ears when Agnostic names the Jew
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lol
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Well we can all be thankful that Jews have had no impact whatsoever on contemptuous art when it comes to movies and television, because then this thread would never end!
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