An Interesting Piece of Junk
Some time ago, my oldest friend and I discovered an interesting piece of junk. It was a section of wooden fencing, the sort that may enclose your yard, about three feet high and five feet long. It was weather-beaten and gray and had obviously spent much time in the rain. It was, in short, a perfectly ordinary object, except that a few inches of one corner were covered with fresh, white paint, and a used prophylactic was stuck on another.
Don’t be offended. You see, my friend and I found it in the Guggenheim Museum, on Fifth Avenue, in New York, where it was on exhibit with various other junk. What we are talking about was an objet d’art, you see, committed by a woman whose name I don’t recall — probably amnesia — and protected by the usual, uniformed guards. (Imagine somebody breaking into a museum to steal a thing like that; how would Walter Cronkite report it?)
My friend and I stood frozen by the thing. Our heads slowly rotated and we looked at each other. The expression on his face said, “I’m crazy. I’ve gone mad. Stop me before I do harm.” But the expression on mine said the same.
“We’re in the Guggenheim Museum of Art,” I said, “and that thing is really there.” “You’re crazy,” he said. “You’ve gone mad. You must be stopped before you do harm.” In an unpublished letter to Mr. James Johnson Sweeney, painter Piet Mondrian explains the theory behind such “art”
I think the destructive element is too much neglected in art. You know that the intention of Cubism — in any case in the beginning – was to express volume. The three-dimensional space (natural) remained thus established. This was opposed to my conception of abstraction which is that this space just has to be destroyed. In consequence I came to destroy volume using the plane. Then the problem was to destroy the plane also. This I did by means of lines crossing the planes. But still the plane remained too much intact.
So I came to make only lines and brought the color in these. Now the only problem is to destroy these lines also through mutual opposition.
Mondrian is of course the man who paints horizontal and vertical lines, and colors some of the resulting rectangles, producing an “art” on the level of modernistic bathroom tile designed by a dropout from occupational therapy. And observe that what he is trying to do is destroy — he says so; apparently trying to destroy art itself.
Credit: Mahler Museum. Note the obfuscated hammer-and-sickle.
As Tappany Bobs Topside
Of course, the destroyers are busy in the other arts as well. It was James Joyce, the writer, who wrote:
Byrne by, bullocky vamp as tappany bobs topside joss pidgin fella Balkelly, archdruid of islish chinchinjoss in the his heptachromatic sevenhued septicoloured oranyellgreen lindigan mantle finish he show along the his mister guest Patholic with albelongahim.
Indeed, said Joyce, “the whose throat hum with of sametime all the his cassock groaner fellas of greysfriaryfamily he fast all time.”
If you don’t believe it, look in a lexicographer’s nightmare called Finnegan’s Wake, which fewer people claim to have read than understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Innumerable professors somehow make a living writing keys to understand the keys which explain the keys to Finnegan’s Wake.
Once again observe that the purpose apparently is to destroy the art itself, by making the material it uses meaningless.
Joyce also produced a book called Ulysses, which needed a court decision to get into the United States, and is about as readable as the minds of some of our politicians.
Remember that what we are talking about here isn’t just something you get by answering an ad in the back of Cheap Thrills magazine. Mondrian, as you may know, is a “great painter.” And Joyce, of course, is a “great writer.” Their works are studied in graduate school, where learned professors are fond of calling them “masterpieces.”
Credit: Tumblr Gallery
Gaspingly Endorsing East-West Negotiations
And not long ago, I saw a play in which there is something for everybody in the family, if everybody in the family happens to be a voyeur. During the entire course of the play, the heroine was nude. It seems she had been kidnapped by the hero, who in the first scene removes her clothes while she sits tied to a chair. That’s Realism, baby. Toward the middle of the play, the bright lights dim, the hero removes his own, and they simulate a sex act by breathing spasmodically. There was nothing else to the play but that. Indeed, it wasn’t really a play. It was just a couple of naked people simulating a sex act. There was no plot and no dialogue, the heroine had exactly two words. The hero did all the talking – which isn’t Realism, baby – babbling about how neurotic he was. Indeed, during the simulated sex act, the hero gaspingly endorsed “East-West negotiations.” Can you imagine discussing “East-West negotiations” while making love? Does anybody really do that?
Don’t get the idea I attended voluntarily: my taste runs to John Wayne war movies and Westerns. But your Editor, who is a sadist, warned this month either I sent him an article on what is happening to our culture, or he would send me a free subscription to National Review. And while the play was painfully boring – imagine listening to a loony babble for an hour – it was refreshing to be sure which player was the girl.
The important thing to know is that we’re not talking here about some dirty performance you have to know someone to see. No, what we’re talking about is “art” and “culture.” The play was presented off-Broadway in New York, is called, and as far as I know was never raided by the police. Watch for it when it comes to your town. Maybe with enough public demand we could get Bettina Aptheker to star in the road show.
Credit: Rolling Stone Magazine
A Helpless, Contemptible Worm
And there is a recent record album cover, the front of which shows Beatle John Lennon and his girl friend facing you in the nude; and the back of which appropriately shows their backsides. Your Editor won’t let us show you those pictures, but you could probably find them in the rear of one of those Times Square bookstores which cater to perverts. What’s on the record, I don’t know, but if your pornograph is working, you can hear for yourself. The album is helping reduce the British trade deficit, but the authorities recently seized a shipment in New Jersey.
Some of the destroyers of our culture are Communists, of course – actual members of the Communist Party, like Pablo Picasso, the painter – some are not; others are Marxists of some sort or even apolitical. But all share the basic motive of Communism: the simple desire to destroy. Indeed, hardly a day passes on which some “artist” or other doesn’t denounce the United States, and announce that he is working to destroy our culture and our system. And the weapon he is using is called Naturalism and is based on Marxism. Just as Communism is a consequence of Marxism in politics, so Naturalism is a consequence of Marxism in art. Both, of course, came to prominence toward the end of the last century.
Marxism holds that man is in the grip of a god called “History”; that man hasn’t even a ruble’s worth of free will; that events are caused – and history made – not by man, but by “History.” Naturalism says that man therefore is completely controlled by natural forces; is a chip of flotsam tossed by the foam; has no responsibility for what he does; and is at bottom a helpless, contemptible worm. Marxism says that man is made by “economic conditions,” by circumstances, and Naturalism says the same. It says that man is nothing but his circumstances; that to understand a man, you look not at the man but at the circumstances; that reality is found not in man but in economic conditions – in “poverty levels,” paychecks, welfare checks, and garbage cans.
Credit: Wikipedia
The Heroine Is Harboring a Blackhead
This of course is the basis of “slice of life” art. It is why novel after play after painting after film primarily tells us not about man, about characters, but about economic conditions, poverty levels, ugliness, and garbage; it is why the hero picks his nose and is neurotic and filthy. You see, that’s what’s happening, baby. It’s really real. In Sweet Eros, for instance, during what a catatonic would call a Niagara of affection, the hero loudly informs the audience that the heroine is harboring a blackhead – and describes it!
It was Aristotle who said that art is superior to history, because history shows life as it is, while art shows it not only as it is, but as it might be and ought to be. Man needs art. In one intense, concentrated moment art gives profound intellectual pleasure; dramatically illuminates the meaning of existence. But Naturalism at bottom is trying to destroy art, and trying to do so dishonestly. It says its heroes must be nose-pickers because that happens in “real life” – because “we’re just telling it like it is, man.” And this tries to evade the fact that life is one thing and art another; that life is all-inclusive and art selective – because it is art; that just because something happens in life doesn’t mean it must be included in art; which is why what you see from your window, no matter how interesting, is not and cannot be art; and why, correspondingly, the more Naturalistic art is, the more boring it is too.
Art isn’t and shouldn’t be life; if it were it would completely lose its power – its selectivity – which is why the destroyers are trying to make the change. If they succeed, we shall see, not art on the stage, and elsewhere, but life; not your life, but the life of a whining hophead complaining about the way you live. We shall see not a simulated sex act, but the real thing, the participants, say, being an animal and a man. Visiting policemen will be told that the act is necessary to “preserve artistic integrity,” because such things happen in “real life.” Indeed, as in the circuses staged during the Roman Empire by Caligula, when the plot calls for a murder, someone will be killed.
The destroyers who are doing this are doing it on purpose. They claim to be objective, of course; they say they have no choice, are simply serving you a “slice of life” and did not do the cooking – but they did. Since what they are showing you is art – rotten art – they have deliberately selected the contents, because rottenness in a heroine is what they want you to see. They want you to walk out demoralized and depressed. And that is why so much of such junk contains so much Communist propaganda.
In Witness, for instance, another play by McNally on the bill with Sweet Eros, the characters ridicule Capitalism, America, and General Douglas MacArthur. The hero relates that he once caused a congregation in church to “turn on,” by generously overloading the censers with incense. But toward the end of the play, he puts on what appears to be a religious garment of some kind. You see, he is planning to assassinate the President of the United States, who is scheduled to pass under his apartment window. That, in case you are wondering, is why he spends much of his time assembling that rifle – the one with the telescopic sight. Apparently we are to understand that assassinating the President is a religious act.
Incredible!
Credit: Cincinnati.com
A Slave Who Believes He Isn’t
“Art is a weapon,” the Communists have long said. Today that weapon is being used in music, dance, painting, the theater, fiction, and film to destroy Capitalism, patriotism, beauty, and our country – even to destroy art itself. And an important part of that campaign is the current craze to portray nude sexuality. There is nothing necessarily wrong with a portrayal of nudity. Indeed, if you have been lucky enough to see the original David by Michelangelo, for instance, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Florence, you have been in the presence of the greatest art. That of course was why you felt exalted. Whatever your sex, what exalted you was not just the nudity – but the art. What makes the difference always is the attitude of the maker; is the art; is the question of whether the artist is trying to create or destroy. For instance, there is nothing in the world more beautiful than a woman – so today we are shown a heroine with a blackhead on her face.
The point is that what is happening today, particularly on our stage, isn’t sexuality at all, but an attempt to destroy sexuality; to use sexuality to destroy and communize our country. Lovemaking is man’s – and woman’s – greatest joy; the most intimate, personal experience one can have with another. And Marxists and other collectivists are against it. Indeed, openly Communist societies make the Puritans look bawdy; in the Chinese communes, if I remember correctly, husbands and wives sleep in separate barracks and are allowed to get together only a few minutes a week – presumably only to prevent them from going stalk, laving, clazy. Communists are against sexual pleasure because it is pleasure – and because it is personal; which is dangerous to Communism’s communal principle. To permit intense, personal pleasure would be to admit that individuals – not masses – have the right to enjoy it; that man has certain “unalienable rights,” such as owning personal, private property; that he isn’t a contemptible worm. And a slave who believes he isn’t will rebel.
But observe that what is happening in the arts today isn’t just that sex is being given the most repulsive treatment possible – which it is – but that man’s greatest, private pleasure is being made communal; being made a public spectacle enjoyed by a crowd. What is being presented under the protective cover of “art,” isn’t art, isn’t sexuality in terms of art; it’s life – actual sexual activity. The enemies of our country, and of man, are communizing us by communalizing sex; the irony of which is that as always they will suppress it after using it if they succeed in taking power.
Credit: News18
Wallowing in the Collectivism of Democracy
It is interesting to note that like the circuses, the famous Roman orgies came into vogue after the death of the Republic, when the Empire was wallowing in the collectivism of democracy and beginning to collapse. Maybe that will be the next step here. Maybe after a while we could stop calling it “art” and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare could arrange it. Future historians studying our civilization would call it “bread and sexus.” Indeed, it now develops that millions of dollars of your tax money are being used by the government to promote communal sex in our country’s schools – and the program is being inflicted on children as young as three!
And, compare the beautiful grace of good ballroom dancing, couples gliding as one across the floor, with what is happening now in your local discotheque – where you will find a scene reminiscent of an Inferno. Heads nodding, faces blank, eyes glazed, bodies twisted and limbs askew – and pulverized by a roar said to be “music” – the victims twitch allegedly in couples, but, in fact, in a totally sexless demonstration in which they never once touch. Indeed, once in Cheetah, a discotheque in New York, I saw a girl somehow regain her senses and walk off the floor, because her partner wasn’t paying her any attention – and he twitched on alone for about five more minutes before noticing it. That can’t happen in a waltz. Of course, he didn’t “blow his cool.” New York, as you yokels know, is the world capital of sufistikashun. So he simply continued spasmodicating without losing a twitch.
As you watch that scene, the word brainwashing comes to mind. It seems that the victims could be made to do anything. Indeed, according to Frank Zappa, head Mother of a rock group called the Mothers Of Invention (Gary Allen, AMERICAN OPINION, February, 1969): “The loud sounds and bright lights of today are tremendous indoctrination tools. Is it possible to modify the human chemical structure with the right combination of frequencies? If the right kind of beat makes you tap your foot, what kind of beat makes you curl your fist and strike?”
The antidote to all this is of course a revival of Romantic art – real art – an art of discrimination and elegance, heroes and heroines. And the antidote is exposure – since so much of the trouble here, as everywhere else, is being caused by conspiracy.
This article first appeared in the February 5, 1969 issue of The Review of the News, by Alan Stang.
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