Here is an essay in two parts by Lasha Darkmoon which is partly based on
Shamir's Study in Art:
The Plot Against Art, Part 1
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-ArtI.html
Dr Lasha Darkmoon
September 19, 2009
"Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs or
criminals of so many."
HG Wells, The Shape of Things to Come.
I'll begin with a confession: I am a failed artist. Ever since I can
remember, I have wanted to paint. The only thing that stopped me was
lack of talent. The first time I did a self-portrait, checking with the
mirror in my bedroom to see how I was getting on, my mother put an
abrupt end to my artistic ambitions by exclaiming, "Gosh, what a cute
little chimp!"
It was a rude awakening for a nine-year-old artist.
About a decade later, I asked myself was art was all about. One day I
found this sentence in a biography of Burne-Jones, and I jotted it down
in my diary and pondered it for a day or two, "I mean by a picture a
beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be —
in a better light than any light that ever shone — in a land no one
can define or remember, only desire — and from forms divinely beautiful."
Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888.
<http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=28>
Art as it used to be, when painters knew how to paint. This would now be
considered kitsch.
When I read that sentence, I almost fainted. I was a sensitive girl,
given to fits of swooning at the slightest opportunity. It was then I
realized there was no real difference between poetry and painting,
between painting and music. All, in their own ways, sought for God —
albeit a God who might not exist — but a God nonetheless. God was
beauty. God was longing. God was the fire in the rose.
That's what I thought then. I was young and foolish.
Art, I found out later, was about making money. Organized Jewry taught
me this. Art dealer Paul Rosenberg says, "A painting is only beautiful
when it sells." Jewish president of the Marlborough Gallery, Frank
Lloyd, confirms this: "There is only one measure of success in running a
gallery: making money."
The question we need to ask is: Who runs the Art Market and how did it
become a freak circus?
Art Should Make You Miserable
Let's take a little trip round the art world with Israel Shamir. Mr
Shamir, after all, is not only well-informed about art but is also a
tour guide in Jerusalem. He agrees with me about the sacral nature of
art. "No art without Christ," he says. By "Christ" he means much more
than the historical Jesus. He means the Logos, or Christ Principle, the
rule of law in a divinely ordered universe.
Since Darwin and Freud, there has been a complete "revaluation of all
values." Everything has been turned upside down. We can mostly attribute
this parlous state of affairs to the machinations of organized Jewry, in
particular to a group of revolutionary thinkers known as the Frankfurt
School. (For a detailed introduction to the ideas of these neo-Freudian
Marxists, most of whom were Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany who
fled to America, see Chapter 5 of Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of
Critique).
Just as one of these Frankfurters, Theodor Adorno, set out to destroy
Western music, assuring the world that atonal music was a good thing
because it was discordant and ugly
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Whitcombe-AdornoI.html>,
others in the group set out to destroy art and push it to its reductio
ad absurdum: lights going on and off in an empty room, unmade beds with
condoms and bloodstained panties strewn around, and sealed cans
containing the artist's own excrement.
Tracey Emin's My Bed
Piero Manzoni's Artist's Shit
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Manzoni.jpg>
One of the founders of the Frankfurt School, Georg Lukács, asked
rhetorically, "Who will save us from Western civilization?" He began the
rescue operation himself, convincing himself that the best way to do
this was to create "a culture of pessimism" and "a world that has been
abandoned by God." Cool.
Another of these mental giants, Walter Benjamin, believed that the
purpose of art was to make people as miserable as possible, for
pessimism was an essential preliminary to world revolution. "To organize
pessimism," he pointed out portentously, "means nothing other than to
expel the moral metaphor from politics." Benjamin succeeded only too
well in making himself miserable. He committed suicide.
Marxist revolutionary Willi Munzenberg made no bones about his mission
in life. It was to destroy Western civilization. No kidding. To
accomplish this, he said, the Frankfurters would have to "organize the
intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only
then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible,
can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat". (My italics).
To summarize: Let's create a culture of pessimism. Let's make Western
civilization stink. Let's create a godless world and drive people to
despair. Let's corrupt society's values and make life impossible. In
short, let's create hell on earth.
It will soon become clear to you, if you are a struggling artist, that
the art world is dominated by Jews who are only too anxious to bring
about this hell on earth. Their control over what now passes for art is
as tentacular as it is terrifying. Art has morphed into Anti-Art. "For
Jews," Israel Shamir points out, "their group interest lies in
undermining visual art, for they can't compete with it. Even deeper
group interest is to undermine Christianity, their main enemy."
To undermine. To corrupt. To create discord. To drive crazy. To destroy.
Verbs to remember. Let's begin our tour of the art world, with Israel
Shamir as our guide, and try to gain an insight into what is going on.
Gallery Hopping With Mr Shamir
One day, Shamir finds himself in the Basque capital of Bilbao in Spain.
He has come to check out the museum of modern art built by the
fabulously rich (Jewish) Guggenheim family. The biggest building in
Spain, the Guggenheim Museum impresses Shamir profoundly — it's like
something out of a science-fiction movie — but once he steps inside
the building he is acutely disappointed.
Hey, what on earth is all this junk? Pieces of corrugated iron lying
around like in a scrap yard. Rusty iron plates in one corner. Video
screens blinking away inanely. Bare geometric forms. And, believe it or
not, an entire floor devoted to a collection of Armani suits. Boy, I'm
outa here! Shamir mutters to himself, making a beeline for the Exit.
And what does he do next? He hops on a plane to Venice, and now we see
him poking around the famous Biennale Museum, trying to make sense out
of a collection of trashed cars on display. Mopping his brow feverishly,
he needs to sit down to collect his wits. No, don't sit there, sir —
those chairs are a precious work of art! You want to read a good book,
Mr Shamir, to take your mind of all this junk? No problem. Here's a
bookcase full of books. Help yourself. Or rather, don't help yourself!
This bookcase, crammed with moldy old books, is also a sublime work of
art! Yes, all the way from sublime, artistic Israel!
One might have thought that, after suffering all these disappointments,
Mr Shamir would have packed it in and gone back to Jaffa, determined
never to set foot in an art gallery again. But no, a glutton for
punishment, our art guide now decides to visit a museum in Amsterdam
where he is confronted by a collection of decomposed pig trunks. To his
astonishment, he learns that a cadaver immersed in formaldehyde, on
display in this same museum, has been purchased for $50,000 by a rich
American. Wow, a corpse collector!
His disillusionment is total when, on visiting Copenhagen, he finds
himself in the church of St Nicholas. Being a convert to Christianity,
maybe he goes in there to pray. If so, he is saddened to have his mind
polluted by the pictures he sees on the walls of that venerable old
church. Here's a color photograph of a naked old woman, withered and
sick. And here, right next to it, is a huge blown-up picture of the
female genitalia. And what's this? Oh, nothing to worry about! Just a
photo of a couple of guys having oral sex. Hey man, c'mon! This is a
healthy and natural act! What better place for the celebration of joyous
pagan sexuality than a Christian church?
"Whatever they proclaimed as art, was art," Shamir concludes ruefully.
"In the beginning, these were works of some dubious value like the
'abstract paintings' of Jackson Pollock. Eventually we came to rotten
swine, corrugated iron, and Armani suits. Art was destroyed." [My italics.]
The Jewish Connection
So what does all this have to do with the Jews? Plenty. If you want to
play that fascinating game known as Cherchez le Juif, let's continue our
tour of the contemporary art world.
You will meet many artists, quite a few of them pliant and accommodating
non-Jews, who are prepared to jump through the hoops set before them by
their Masters: the ubiquitous Jews lurking in the shadows. The men who
call the shots. The men with the money. The men whom the artist must
learn to please and flatter if he hopes to get ahead and become rich and
famous.
The ambitious artist will find himself drawn inevitably into a Jewish
world. He will learn to pepper his conversation with Yiddish phrases. He
will never breathe a word of criticism against Israel, no matter what
atrocities that country is in the process of committing. He will sneer
at Muslims, the Qur'an and the Palestinians. He will find it pays
dividends to insult Christianity, the religion of his forefathers. He
will mention the Holocaust, whenever possible, with moist eyes; and he
will paint as many pictures of Auschwitz as he can, preferably with
chimneys belching black smoke.
All this has been done by goy artists. The proof for these claims can be
found here in this enormous archive of art information
<http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/26art.htm>. I have drawn upon it heavily.
Even the great Picasso knew he was appeasing the Jews when he embraced
his friend Pierre Daix and confided in a low voice, "To think that
painters once thought they could paint The Massacre of the Innocents!"
He was clearly echoing or anticipating Adorno's "There can be no poetry
after Auschwitz." If there can be no poetry after Auschwitz, there can
be no art either — certainly not Christian art.
Andy Warhol knew better than most how to ingratiate himself with the
Jews. His 1980 series, "Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century,"
features ten portraits of what Warhol referred to as "Jewish geniuses,"
one of whom was Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir — the "genius" who
said there were no Palestinians, adding with her famous flair for the
witty phrase: "How can we return the occupied territories? There is
nobody to return them to." Another "genius" was Sigmund Freud, whom
Kevin MacDonald has described as having perpetrated the greatest
scientific fraud of the 20th century — a fraud that was very useful in
constructing the culture of Western suicide.
{photo} Warhol's portraits of Gold Meir and Sigmund Freud, from his Ten
Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century series {end}
Warhol seems to have put his considerable charm to work with Henry
Geldzahler, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — an influential
Jew who happened, like Warhol, to be homosexual. "Although they were
never lovers, the relationship became intimate," we are assured by one
of Warhol's biographers. "Andy spoke to Henry on the phone every night
before he went to sleep and every morning as soon as he woke up." I am
not saying that Warhol and Geldzahler were lovers, though others have
said so. That's of no interest to me. All I'm suggesting is that Warhol,
a notorious opportunist, found it helped his career to cultivate the
Jews. His appeal, in the words of film critic Carrie Rickey, was to the
"synagogue circuit."
Transvestite potter Grayson Perry — here he is receiving the Turner
Prize for his inspired pots — knew his success depended less on his
talents than on the advertising genius of his plutocratic patron Charles
Saatchi. He was well aware, moreover, that Islamophobia can always be
relied on to win friends and influence people in the Judeocentric art
world. "The reason I haven't gone all out to attack Islamism in my art,"
he confides fearlessly, "is because I feel real fear that someone will
slit my throat." Avoiding controversial political statements in the
interests of discretion, Perry decided to devote his life to producing
ceramic pots depicting "explicit scenes of sexual perversion." It must
have been a tough decision.
{photo} The potter wore bobbysox ... Grayson Perry poses with his wife
Phillippa and daughter Flo after winning the Turner Prize. (end}
Non-Jewish artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski and
Christopher Williams have been almost as prolific in their production of
Holocaust paintings as Jewish painter RB Kitaj, a man whose obsession
with Auschwitz has often been noted. "The chimney in a Kitaj painting,"
art pundit Juliet Steyn informs us, "functions as an indictment on
Christianity." Translation: After Auschwitz, who needs Golgotha?
RB Kitaj's Passion (1940–45): Cross and Chimney
Entrance through the Gate Exit from the Chimney by Joseph Bau
As for Andres Serrano with his Piss Christ and Chris Ofili with his
dung-bedecked Holy Virgin Mary — the Madonna surrounded by pictures of
the female genitals cut from pornographic magazines — both these
emotionally immature artists were clearly aware that contempt for Christ
and his mother is often pleasing to the Jews.
Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/ofili-serrano.jpg> and
Andres Serrano's Piss Christ
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/ofili-serrano.jpg>
Artists? These men are more like circus dogs, trained to jump through
hoops and beg for bones from their masters. It's the men with the money,
the Saatchis and the Guggenheims, who crack the whip.
Dr. Lasha Darkmoon (email her) is an academic, age 31, with higher
degrees in classics. A published poet and translator, she is also a
political activist with a special interest in Middle Eastern affairs.
'Lasha Darkmoon' is a pen name.
The Plot Against Art, Part 2
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-ArtII.html
Dr Lasha Darkmoon
September 20, 2009
I hate to tell you this, but if you like modern art there has to be
something radically wrong with you. To feel hostile towards it is as
natural as being repelled by incest.
Modern art is out to corrupt you.
If it doesn't do this, it will have failed to achieve the primary
purpose of its elitist promoters. It will have failed to undermine
traditional values. It will have failed to produce a "culture of
pessimism." It will have failed to destroy the sacral core of life. It
will have failed to poison your mind and give you the sickness unto
death. It will have failed to make you what Big Brother finally managed
to make Winston Smith in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: a mindless zombie.
The Wheelers and Dealers
That the Jews dominate the art world, as they dominate the mass media
and every other area of influence, is the best-kept secret of the
twenty-first century. One is not supposed to mention this. It is
anti-Semitic to do so.
In 1989, an erudite academic volume appeared called Sociology of the
Arts.In it the authors discuss who is who in the art world. "Blacks,
Orientals, and persons of Spanish origin constitute about 7 per cent of
the art audience," the book informs us helpfully. So what about the
other 93 per cent?
What ethnic group owns most of the art galleries? Who are the museum
curators? Who are the art historians? Who are the art critics? Who
publish the magazines in which art is reviewed? Who determine what is
good art and what is rubbish? Who are the dealers and big collectors?
Who run the auction houses? Who set up the art competitions and raise
the prize money? Who appoint the judges? Who are the judges?
Not a word. Total silence. Scary, isn't it?
As far back as 1930, it was noted by French author Pierre Assouline:
"According to dealer Pierre Loeb, four art dealers out of five are
Jewish, as are four out of five art collectors. Wilhelm Unde added art
critics to this list." In 1973, it was estimated that 80 per cent of the
2500 core "art market personnel" — dealers, curators, gallery owners,
collectors, critics, consultants and patrons of the arts — were
Jewish. In 1982, Gerald Krefetz (Jewish) let the cat out of the bag even
further. "Today, Jews enjoy every phase of the art world," he admitted.
"In some circles, the wheelers and dealers are referred to as theJewish
mafia."
Writing of his experiences in New York City, Jewish author Howard
Jacobson revealed that art critic Peter Schjedhal had told him, "Just
about every gallery we go into is run by a Jew. Even the women gallery
owners whose wine we absorb are Jewish."
Riki R. Nelson, Girl in a Box, Girl in Cherry Silk, from the Saatchi
Gallery, London
In 2001, ARTnews listed the world's Top Ten Art Collectors. Eight of
them were Jews. Ponder these staggering statistics: A people who
constitute 0.2% of the world's population make up 80% of the world's
richest art collectors. Out of every thousand people in the world,
roughly two are Jews. To be precise, one in every 457 people are Jews.
Yet go to a conference at which 1000 of the world's wealthiest art
collectors have gathered and you will find, to your amazement, that 800
of them are Jewish! Phenomenal, isn't it?
Nigerian-born Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary, from the collection of
Charles Saatchi, an influential Jewish art collector. The painting is
described as "a carefully rendered black Madonna decorated with a
resin-covered lump of elephant dung. The figure is also surrounded by
small collaged images of female genitalia from pornographic magazines."
The painting caused a public uproar and media frenzy when exhibited at
the Brooklyn Museum of Art as part of the Sensation exhibition of
Saatchi's collection in 1999.
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/ofili.jpg>
If you require confirmation for these citations, see here. This huge
cache of outré information has been particularly useful to me in
researching the Jewish influence on modern art.
The art world is so densely populated with Jews that one way to get away
from the goyim, if you are Jewish, is to take up art. That way, with any
luck, you won't bump into a non-Jew for days! In 1996, Jewish art
historian Eunice Lipton confided somewhat tactlessly that the only
reason she became an art historian was that she wanted to hang out
exclusively with Jews. "I wanted to be where Jews were — that is, I
wanted a profession that would allow me to acknowledge my Jewishness
through the company I kept."
On the face of it, she noted, art history would seem to be a gentile
profession, if only because the study of Christian art was its hub and
center. And yet, she says, "the field was filled with Jews. One might
even say it was shaped by them."
She was doubtless thinking of the great historian of Renaissance art,
Bernard Berenson, whose influence has been seminal. Berenson once
described himself as "a typical Talmud Jew" who longed to drop "the mask
of the goyim" — hardly, one is tempted to think, a fit interpreter of
Christian art to the hated gentiles! Though he had converted to
Christianity in 1885, here we see him, almost half a century later in
1944, writing an "Open Letter to the Jews" in which he warns them about
"envious Christians" who would persecute them "even if you were innocent
as the angels." To my mind, this sounds more Talmudic than Christian.
With the rise of German fascism, Jewish art historians began to flee
Nazi Germany, along with those Marxist revolutionaries known as the
Frankfurt School. Most of these Jews ended up in America. At New York
University alone, the following Jewish art historians were to take up
residence: Richard Ettinghaven, Walter Friedlander, Karl Lehman, Alfred
Salmony, Guido Schoenberger, Martin Weinberger.
Art historian Lipton probably also has in mind — when she says she
wanted to live in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere — the two most
illustrious art critics of the twentieth century, Harold Rosenberg and
Clement Greenberg. Like Berenson, Greenberg appears to have had a
distinctly Talmudic cast of mind. Convinced of Jewish superiority, he
once remarked, "The European Jew represents a higher type of human being
than any other yet achieved."
Both these influential critics, Rosenberg and Greenberg, were members of
the Frankfurt School and helped to reshape the aesthetic perceptions of
the gentile masses.
Bending Art to Jewish Abilities
All art henceforth was to be "Jewish". It would break free from its
Christian roots. Whatever Jewish artists were good at, that would be the
art of the future. If Jews were no good at drawing, good drawing would
no longer be necessary. Representational art was out, abstract and
conceptual art was in. Actual unmade beds, not pictures of them, now
became works of art. Marcel Duchamp's famous urinals — bought in a
store and transported to an art gallery where they were magically
transformed into works of art. Cans stuffed with the artist's own
excrement. Photos of crucifixes stuck in glasses of theartist's own urine.
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, photographed in 1917 by Alfred Steiglitz, an
early 20th-century Jewish photographer and promoter of modern art. "It
does not take much stretching of the imagination," gushes Calvin
Tomkins, art critic of the New Yorker, "to see in the urinal's gently
flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a
seated Buddha." In 2004, this inspired pissoire was voted Most
Influential Work of the 20th century by 500 "art experts" — sorry,
"piss-artists." <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Duchamp.jpg>
"Preparation of these items places no demand on artistic abilities. They
can be done by anybody," Israel Shamir points out, adding somewhat
cuttingly, "Such art is perfectly within Jewish capabilities."
In order to succeed in this difficult profession, the visually
challenged Jews had to "bent art to fit their abilities." It is as if,
unable to excel at athletic prowess, the Jews had somehow managed to
gain control over the Olympic Games and decreed that, from now on,
sprinting and marathon running were no longer important. What really
mattered was winning the sack race or the Spitting Competition —
accomplishments, possibly, which Jews were particularly good at!
"The Jews were extremely ill equipped for their conquest of Olympus,"
Shamir instructs us. "For many generations, Jews never entered churches
and hardly ever saw paintings. They were conditioned to reject image as
part of their rejection of idols." In short, the Jews were visually
handicapped. Trained in Talmudic dialectics, they were marvelous with
words. They had a verbal IQ of 130. Their IQ for patterns and pictures,
however, was dismally low: only 75.
The Jews of course don't wish to acknowledge this. To suggest that they
tend to make lousy artists is anti-Semitic. If Jews didn't make more of
a splash as artists in past ages, it is argued, it was because they were
"held back" by their Christian oppressors. Unfortunately for the Jews,
the great Berenson will have none of this argument. "The Jews have
displayed little talent for the visual," he states tersely, "and almost
none for the figure arts."
How, then, you might wish to know, are there so many Jewish artists
around nowadays? To what can we attribute this fantastic efflorescence
of sudden Jewish pictorial genius? The answer, we are told, lies in
Jewish networking and hustling: Jewish predominance in the mass media,
Jewish economic dominance of the art world, Jewish power, Jewish money."
How Anyone Can Be Famous
Andy Warhol once said that everyone in the future will be "world-famous
for fifteen minutes." What he failed to point out was that almost
anyone, including the village idiot, can be made into a celebrity with
the help of public relations. All it takes is constant attention in the
mass media. Charles Saatchi, advertising mogul and art collector
extraordinaire, spells it out: "An unknown artist's big glass vitrine
holding a rotten cow's head covered by maggots and swarms of buzzing
flies may be pretty unsalable. Until the artist becomes a star. Then he
can sell anything he touches" (my emphasis).
Interior of Everyone I have ever Slept With, 1963–1995, an iconic work
by Tracey Emin, owned by Charles Saatchi until being destroyed in a fire.
Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years (1990). Richard Lacayo of Time
Magazine: "A Thousand Years is a large glass box in which real maggots
hatch into flies that appear to feed on blood from a severed cow's
head." Charles Saatchi and Hirst had a "symbiotic relationship" as
collector and artist from about 1992–2003.
How does one become a star? Who gives the Emperor his new clothes and
helps to suggest he is remarkably well dressed?
An unmade bed is transformed into a consummate work of art once it is
bought by Charles Saatchi and placed in a prestigious art gallery. The
artist acquires a mystique created out of the power of suggestion. You
must be a genius if everyone is raving about you and your unmade bed.
Mass hypnosis does the trick. Advertising and persistent persuasion work
wonders. See hereand here and here.
Let me ask you a question. If someone tried to sell you his excrement
for $10, would you buy it? Probably not. Well, consider this: on May 23,
2007, a can labeled Artist's Shit, purportedly containing the excrement
of artist Piero Manzoni, was sold at Sotheby's for €124,000 (US$ 180,000).
How is it done? Is a can of shit worth its weight in gold? It obviously
is — if people are fighting to buy it.
A larger question: If you can con people into buying shit, can you also
con them into evil wars in the Middle East and mass cultural suicide in
their own homelands? Nothing easier. It's being done right now.
Talent helps, but is it essential?
You will be surprised to learn that some Jewish artists, despite
Berenson's sweeping dismissal of their visual abilities, are actually
quite good at painting. For example, Modigliani and Chagall. Shamir
attributes some of their excellence, however, to the influence of
Christianity. These two Jewish artists became Christians. This helped,
Shamir thinks, to make them good painters. At least they had something
to say now. Life had taken on a new meaning. They weren't just
scratching their existential sores and whining "God is dead!"
On the other hand, there were other artists who remained firmly within
the Jewish camp and managed to distinguish themselves: notably, Pissarro
(impressionist), Soutine (expressionist), Max Ernst (surrealist), and
Tamara de Lempicka (art deco). To succeed as an artist in the new
milieu, it helped if you were Jewish. Thus both Frida Kahlo and Gustav
Klimt arguably owed their initial success to the fact that everyone
thought they were Jewish. They were not, but somehow managed to give
that impression.
The important thing to remember in all this is that artistic talent had
become, strictly speaking, non-essential. It helped, but promotion by a
good publicist helped more. The artist had to be a showman rather than a
skilled craftsman. Neither Tracey Emin (patchwork quilt) nor Damien
Hirst (shark preserved in formaldehyde) found it necessary to create
their own works of art. Cheap manual assistants were often hired to do
this for them. The vital thing in their art was the original concept.
The end product was of secondary importance.
Tell Me Something Beautiful is a patchwork quilt stitched up entirely by
eight-year-olds from Ecclesbourne primary school, London, with Emin in
the classroom offering advice. When the school wanted to sell the quilt
for £35.000 ($60,000) to an art dealer, Emin threw a fit and threatened
legal action, demanding the quilt be "returned" to her at once.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by
Damien Hirst (1991). Saatchi sold this work to collector Steven Cohen
for $12 million, who in in turn donated it to the Museum of Modern Art.
The successful contemporary artist needs to be a person devoid of moral
scruples. Confidence trickster, hustler, prostitute, pimp, he needs to
mix with the right crowd and know whom to cultivate. "The artist who
would be known," wrote the great folklorist Joseph Campbell, "has to go
to cocktail parties to win commissions, and those who win them are not
in their studios but at parties, meeting the right people and appearing
in the right places." Campbell was later accused of anti-Semitism, but
Jewish artist Julian Schnabel backs up Campbell's claim. "Much time is
spent nurturing liaisons with creatures of the art world," he notes
gloomily. "There is no time for friendship. Later, there is no capacity
for it."
How does a really talented artist succeed in such a rat race?
Painter Helen Frankenthaler had to sleep with art critic Clement
Greenberg, but it was worth it: Greenberg gave her good reviews. Willem
de Kooning let his wife Elaine bed down with art critic Harold
Rosenberg, but it was worth it: Rosenberg gave de Kooning good reviews.
Jackson Pollock had to pleasure nymphomaniac Peggy Guggenheim, but it
was worth it: her patronage helped to get Pollock good reviews. After
all, her daddy owned the Guggenheim Museum.
None of these artists slept around for love. They did it for money.
Jackson Pollock famously said of Peggy Guggenheim, his plutocratic
patroness: "To fuck her, you'd have to put a towel over her head. And
she did want fucking."
"Incestuous collusion, mutual back-scratching, under the table wheeling
and dealing, nepotism and clique allegiance are intrinsic principles of
the modern art world," art expert Sophy Burnham concludes ruefully.
That's how it is. C'est la vie! It's so heartbreaking you have to laugh.
If you wish to succeed as a modern artist, be prepared to lie and cheat,
to be a confidence trickster and sexual exhibitionist, to flatter your
Jewish patrons and churn out Holocaust paintings to please them, to sing
the praises of Israel and vilify the Palestinians, to knock Islam and
the Qur'an and show contempt for Christianity. Unless you are Jewish,
you must lose all allegiance to your people, your religion, or your
traditional culture.
Be prepared to prostitute yourself if you're a woman or pimp your wife
if you're a man. Be prepared to do a Piss Christ like Andres Serrano or
a pornographicHoly Virgin Mary like Chris Ofili. Be prepared, like
Grayson Perry, to dress up as a woman and produce sexually perverted
pots. Be prepared to pull a paper scroll out of your vagina like Carolee
Schneemann. Be prepared, like Vito Acconci, to titillate a jaded public
by masturbating for them in a prestigious art gallery — and calling it
'art'.
Leonardo must be turning in his grave.
Let art critic Clement Greenberg have the last word: "I've decided the
kind of people attracted to art are often psychopaths. You can quote me
on that."
He should know.
Dr. Lasha Darkmoon (email her) is an academic, age 31, with higher
degrees in classics. A published poet and translator, she is also a
political activist with a special interest in Middle Eastern affairs.
'Lasha Darkmoon' is a pen name.
