The Herrin massacre had nothing to do with homophobia; it was a labor dispute that ended with union workers massacring a bunch of people who had been hired to replace them....Gay content? By that standard, all the paintings of the Crucifixion have gay content.
This is a fascinating chapter in the history of American labor, and one that we don't often revisit. For modern progressives, unions are generally the good guys—an important branch in the tree of intersectionality. (Though they occasionally cause trouble. Trump attracted some union support.) Cadmus reminds us that they could be thuggish; in his painting, he portrays the unionists as ugly, sullen, drunken, murderous brutes.
It's not that the painting is devoid of gay content—the victims are shirtless and ripped—but to portray it as an obvious metaphor for anti-gay violence is to insert modern grievances where they don't belong....
The art critic, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is Jerry Saltz. To be fair, he's looking at a painting that was included in a show called "The Young and Evil," which is (as Saltz puts it) "on the homosexual body in America as rendered by gay and bisexual artists from 1929 to 1957." Saltz is clear that "The actual event pictured was a 1922 massacre of strikebreakers by laborers that left 23 dead in an Illinois mining town." I don't think Saltz is confused about what the painting depicts and why the murders happened. It's just that it's a painting by a man who was gay (or bisexual), and it highlights male bodies, and it was included in the "Young and Evil" show. Saltz doesn't say the actual murders had to do with homophobia. He only says it shows "American violence, secular fundamentalism, crazed crowds, execution, martyrdom, the starvation of the spirit, and a complete lack of amazing grace."
Who knows what Cadmus really intended to express? Cadmus was commissioned by Life Magazine, but he got to pick the historical moment he depicted. He could have chosen this scene because he thought of it as a picture of some other kind of murder, and he could have chosen in because, as Soave concedes, it let him paint a bunch of beautiful reclining male bodies in a state of physical extremity. Who know what is in the artist's mind? And any viewer of the painting can meditate on these things without being a fool. Soave would like to forefront union thuggery, but Saltz doesn't have to, and the people who put the "Young and Evil" show together also obviously didn't.
Let's think about all the great historical paintings that hang in museums. Are they really about the specific event they depict or are they often about something else entirely? And where does the reality lie? In the mind of the dead artist? The painting matters and is on the wall now because it has some capacity to live in our own minds. And there are so many murder scenes in paintings that are, it seems to me, really about fleshly sensuality. And that includes some of those Crucifixion paintings.
Posts
47 comments:
Yeah, a lot of artists are homosexual, alert the media! They create some great art. Probably because they don’t fall into “The Tender Trap.” Shakespeare’s sonnets are probably the greatest example of homoerotic art in the history of the West. At least that’s how I read them. I couldn’t prove it.
The painting is totally devoid of gay content.
Is this what passes for art criticism in 2019? Imposing the intersectionality and identity politics of 2019 unto a 1939 painting?
And we flyover people are supposed to be the dopes? Please.
Don't forget latent heterosexuality and female nudes. The question of the mind of the artist doesn't come up.
Cadmus’ intent matters, but only to a certain degree, I would argue. Once a work of art is out in the world, it’s open to all kinds of interpretations. Paul McCartney wrote a song about an amusement park, but that’s not what we think about when we hear it. Also it’s very possible for artists to transmit certain messages unconsiously through their work. As humans we do this all the time, even when we’re not making art.
Labor unions - emphasis on labor - were heroes to the progressives of bygone days. For today's progressives, the only heroes are themselves.
I guess, a matter of the artist and the viewer. T.E.Lawrence in "Seven Pillars", in one place, noted the stripped bodies of dead Turks in the moonlight. He was a peculiar fellow in more ways than one.
This is what happens when we let the elites tell the rest of us what everything, and I mean everything, means.
And if you won't go along, it's because you're a homophobic, racist, sexist, bigot!
according to conventional wisdom; it's the COMPANY THUGS that cause the violence
I've always wondered, WHY? Why would the Company need to resort to violence?
The Company needs to get workers into the plant
The Union needs to STOP workers getting into the plant
If people are allowed to cross picket lines, Why would the company need violence?
And yet, in Any movie, book, news article (or other type of fiction), it's ALWAYS the Company Thugs that are talked about. But, in reality; the company just wants its workers to be able to work.
Hey Union People? If you are SO GOOD at you job that you're worth SO MUCH; how come you have to Kill People to stop them working for less?
Crucifixion paintings
He never had a girlfriend. Just sayin'.
If you're ever cornered and can't avoid giving a serious opinion of a work of art, you can never go wrong by saying it expresses something about homosexuality.
Don't hang around after though. Go get some more wine.
My mom became a jr. high English teacher after her kids reached school age. A couple years into her time as a teacher, the local teachers union went on strike and my mom refused to go out with them. Thereafter she was ostracized by folks who she had thought were her friends.
Not murder but a good example of the hatred that unions can generate.
(Though they occasionally cause trouble. Trump attracted some union support.)
Maybe I'm just easily distracted, but why did the writer gratuitously include this aside about Trump? Is this really the extent of "trouble" the writer can think of that unions engaged in after the event pictured? And what does this tell us about Soave, that he equates votes for Trump with incidents where unionists killed 20 people, or where they shot at truck drivers or when unionists set fire to a hotel? Yeah arson and mass murder are just like voting for Trump, right? Or not as bad, is that what Soave is suggesting.
I despise their little parentheticals dropped in to pollute the points they think they are making.
The Roman Catholics do push any art that shows the bleeding naked body of dead Jesus on the execution cross. For some reason they do not like pics of a happy, ressurrected Jesus as the good shepherd dressed in his clothes and caring for His justified sheep.
"...in his painting, he portrays the unionists as ugly, sullen, drunken, murderous brutes."
Drunken? Nothing in the painting indicates that. Plus none of them look like dandies.
One guy's pants are gone, next to 2 guys whose pants are unbuttoned.
I've never heard of this riot. How many did the Pinkertons kill for Carnegie?
The Queer eye for the Big Guy has been a Thing since Michelangelo.
I doubt a gay hating artist could depict men so letter perfectly homoeroticaly just to make some sub rosa point.
What has happened to elite education? Oh wait, we know that as of this past couple of weeks.
And there are so many murder scenes in paintings that are, it seems to me, really about fleshly sensuality. And that includes some of those Crucifixion paintings.
Absolutely. Wouldn't be surprised if, by count, the majority of murders scenes in painting were more about fleshly sensuality than anything else. Crucifixions? Probably lower ratio than murder scenes, but significant.
Are they really about the specific event they depict or are they often about something else entirely?
Such speculation is a perennial, legitimate sport, degraded in some eras by some participant's stupidity, self-absorption, or general bat-shittery. (E.g., the psychoanalytically-inclined in mid-20th century, and contemporary gender/race hustlers, narcissists, and retards.)
It does seem odd that one of the dead is not wearing pants...
Gay content? That painting is blatantly racist. Many of the strikebreakers were black, but Cadmus shows us only whites being beaten and murdered, and the only negro face to be seen belongs to one of the union thugs.
Traditionally, painters would put a lot of effort into learning how to realistically portray the human body on a two-dimensional surface. Sometimes they like to use this skill in a painting. Not necessarily to simply show off their skill, but if the painting is to include a human figure and it's not done convincingly, the painting will fail in a painfully obvious fashion.
Kind of like if you're going to play a violin concerto, you'd better get the intonation right, or you're going to have an unpleasant evening.
In this case, I suspect that the homosexuality is in the eye of the (critic) beholder.
But no big surprises there, right?
tommyesq said:
"It does seem odd that one of the dead is not wearing pants..."
Perhaps the painter had a personal objection to men wearing shorts.
Clearly, a couple of the killers are wearing MAGA hats!
The question appears to be whether the artist was a gay man who happened to be an artist, or an artist who happened to be a gay man.
A show entitled "on the homosexual body in America as rendered by gay and bisexual artists from 1929 to 1957" presumably leans toward the former PoV.
And Reason magazine, predictably, focuses on the politics of the event depicted.
Mostly the painting is lurid, but, the show organizers presumably want it to be homoerotic. Reason seems closer to reality here: it's political.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The Herron massacre was terrible. Go read about it, what a bunch of savages! But the painting is awful, and art criticism even worse. 99% of all "Modern" art criticism is pretentious twaddle. Tom Wolfe was making fun of it 50 years ago. The problem is they have to say something "new" "interesting" and "deep" about a painting and almost none of them have the intelligence or imagination to do that. That's why a lot of art critics are SJW's.
More than one Catholic girl has admitted to being turned on by the crucifix in church.
tradguy: The Roman Catholics do push any art that shows the bleeding naked body of dead Jesus on the execution cross. For some reason they do not like pics of a happy, ressurrected Jesus as the good shepherd dressed in his clothes and caring for His justified sheep.
Not much of an art historian, are you? That's OK, you shouldn't be looking at all that papist idolatry, anyway.
From The Free Trader-Journal and Ottawa Fair Dealer, June 23, 1922 (4 p.m. edition)
Ottawa, Illinois, which included a column of breaking news on the riots.
Exonerates U.M.W. of A.
Cincinnati, June 23. – John L. Lewis in a statement here today declared “The United Mineworkers are not to any degree responsible for the unfortunate occurrence at Herrin, Ill.” He said the organization, of which he is president, never encouraged or condoned lawlessness.
“Sinister influences,” Mr. Lewis declared, “had been at work among the incite and inflame the spirits of lawlessness. Coal companies, he said, “had employed thousands of detectives to work among the miners.”
Good Lord Professor. This whole post is off the rails.
If you want a nude gay art show, go to a nude gay art show. Or watch the Wedding Crashers.
"Are they really about the specific event they depict or are they often about something else entirely?"
Both. That's what makes art fun. Van Gogh's Starry Night is really about a scene at night from the window of an asylum. It's also really about using a paint made from cow urine (Indian Yellow) to paint the stars and moon. Mona Lisa is really about an woman with an enigmatic smile. It's also really about a winding path through the mountains, a bridge, and what looks like a lake.
Thereafter she was ostracized by folks who she had thought were her friends.
There are two things the left is good at:
1. Bullying
2. Creating conditions around which to bully people.
Together they make up the core of Progressivism.
As Queastor points out, the actual strikebreakers were mostly blacks recruited from the streets of Chicago. The UMW in the 20s, like most other trade unions of the time, were completely white. The days-long torture and violence of this massacre (after the strikebreakers had surrendered) is probably best linked to the race riots and lynchings elsewhere. The painting totally conceals that. Reading gay subtexts is, under the circumstances, willfully obtuse criticism.
To make a closer observation than some of the prior comments, the painting does seem to show one man’s butthole.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/a467410c-4768-42d9-9523-68460a6d3eb2
There is a terrific semi-naked "John the Baptist" (I think) by Caravaggio in Kansas City. It is pretty clear what the artist was thinking.
The painting is queerer than a three-dollar bill.
Figurative painters through history have injected their sexuality into their paintings. Straight people generally don’t notice a straight subtext — but a gay subtext, pardon the expression, can rub them the wrong way, as it did this critic.
For a modern example see Saturday Night Live’s masterful Schmitts Gay ad.
Kevin @ 9:49:
That is a very cogent and concise insight. Very well put.
The Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet lived in Bali most of his adult life. When on a trip there I visited the museum he founded and which was full of his paintings. A good 75% of them featured nude or semi-nude young male locals. They struck me, no art critic, as entirely mediocre, and I thought, 'Well, I suppose if it's 1940 and you want to make a career out of gazing at attractive naked twenty year old men, painting them in the jungle in Bali is rather more pleasant than doing the same thing in Amsterdam."
Renaissance art was impoverished by the fact that there was no Saint who was martyred by being buggered to death.
Renaissance art was impoverished by the fact that there was no Saint who was martyred by being buggered to death.
If only that had known what we have now learned about the death of Richard III.
If only that had known what we have now learned about the death of Richard III.
I think you mean Edward II, though I've heard his red hot poking disputed recently.
No, Richard the III’s body was found, and marks on his bones indicated that his royal bum was violated by a broadsword.
When I want my homosexuality infused labor-union related violence fix, I go for Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, or the very weird 1989 film.
Blogger tcrosse said...
Renaissance art was impoverished by the fact that there was no Saint who was martyred by being buggered to death.
Death by bunga-bunga?
No, Richard the III’s body was found, and marks on his bones indicated that his royal bum was violated by a broadsword.
The Roses weren't pansies.
That didn't come up when I did a search. All I found were 9 blows to the head, more than enough to kill.
Tudor censorship lives on!
It is rumored that Titian's Martyrdom of St. Jonathan is hidden away in a special gallery of the Vatican Museum.
Roman Catholics take seriously what Paul said about his determination not to know anything "except Jesus Christ and Him crucified".
Even if it’s about male pulchritude, which I find a weird idea, don’t women look at paintings? Don’t we hear how paintings of female flesh are about “the male gaze”? Don’t women see?
I think Reynolds has the right take. This is a display of ignorance and temporal chauvinism.
Post a Comment