The fourth-floor gallery, with a mix of what most people would recognize as Pop Art, was previously “From Soup Cans to Flying Saucers” and is now “Domestic Disruption.”... This gallery... is far less discombobulated than its previous iteration, corroborating more convincingly the internationalism that is a recurring subtext on this floor. Tom Wesselmann’s scaled up “Still Life #57” (1969-70) is one of his best installation paintings, not least for containing no nudes. It is in dialogue with Noah Purifoy’s “Unknown,” a balletic assemblage-painting in which a parasol armature radiates across saturated bands of green, yellow and red. To the other side stands Beatriz González’s “Lullaby,” a metal baby crib, painted enamel green with an appropriated image of mother and child.
"Still Life #57" — which you can see here — is a very large painting of a radio, an orange, and some daffodils. But longtime museumgoers almost certainly associate Wesselmann with vivid, forthright "Great American Nudes" like this one, "Great American Nude #75."
Now, the nudes are banished, the galleries are rearranged, Wesselmann will be known by an orange (instead of the orange's shape-mate, the breast), and it must be "in dialogue" with an African-American man's balletic parasol and a Hispanic woman's crib.
I'm not looking at it, but it sounds like ham-handed inclusiveness. It sounds as though the white man is still the center of power: The arrangement seems like an exercise in diluting and offsetting him. That, ironically, is an expression of a deep, persistent belief in white male supremacy.
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If MoMA offered a tour of their storage rooms, where all the forbidden art is relegated, they could make a fortune.
Wait, it's MoMA; would the nudes even be that recognizable?
Some very very naughty nudes.
Good. Take notes, this is the death spiral of “culture” into irrelevance.
Tired of the PC bullshit.
If white boy Michelangelo were painting today they'd stick all his religious 'crap' in a back room somewhere, if they allowed it in the building at all.
Liberalism ruins everything.
All those who celebrate this kind of nonsense should required to take a seminar on the old folk tale "The Emperor has no Clothes."
The real patriarchy in America. Liberal elitists who think there's genius in banal art such as this.
A greater decadence begins to consume a lesser one.
That, ironically, is an expression of a deep, persistent belief in white male supremacy.
Everything from the Left is an expression of this. Remember that poster from the Smithsonian that explicitly said that every virtue is White supremacy?
Women, gays, and people of color are oppressed! Why? White men!
The United States is built on institutional racism! Why? White men!
Africa is a basket case! Why? White men!
Math and science are racist and sexist! Why? White men!
Climate change is going to destroy the Earth! Why? White men!
Achilles, a donkey caught with his pants down is not a "nude".
The Supreme irony of course, being that Trump increased his share of the vote with everyone EXCEPT White men.
If you want to know who is ruling you , ask who cannot be criticized.
Actually, the psychology has changed. White men cannot be allowed any art or influence, which means they are the ruling class in the POC's minds.
MoMA's description of "Lullaby": González is a leading and influential artist in Colombia, whose work reflects a deep interest in her country's history and vernacular art forms. Informed by the violent and politically tumultuous era of the 1940s and 1950s in which she grew up, her paintings, drawings, and sculptures mix popular and commercial forms with nods to "high" art, exploring political, social, and domestic subjects with equal insight. During the 1970s, González worked on a series of paintings executed in enamel on metal sheets mounted on mass-produced furniture. The image that appears in Canción de cuna (Lullaby) was taken from a collection of kitsch photographs distributed by a popular print company in Colombia. Found in the streets of Bogotá, the crib used in the sculpture once belonged to a public hospital. The iconic image of mother and child—a theme that has recurred throughout art history—is transformed by González into an ambiguous image of maternity, hinting at the sharp social observation that distinguishes her work.
That, ironically, is an expression of a deep, persistent belief in white male supremacy.
It is what it is.
Now find me an artist of any sex or skin color or ethnicity who can paint a Madonna without using excrement. If you can.
I looked at the picture and now I will remember Wesselmann as the red nipple guy.
"The Supreme irony of course, being that Trump increased his share of the vote with everyone EXCEPT White men."
I recall Hillary Clinton. Kamalla Harris is no Hillary Clinton.
Millions of white men rose staggering from their death beds to drag their aching balls over forty miles of broken glass under machine-gun fire in the faint hope of casting a vote against Hillary Clinton. Something about her just got on our nerves.
Painting is another dead art, joining many others that have died in the last 120 years.
- Poetry killed by cheap books
- Painting killed by photography
- Theater killed by movies
- Classical music killed by recordings and microphones
- Architecture killed by Fascist and Communist appropriation
We live in a dystopian time for the arts. What remains?
The elephant dung madonna was at least a nice statement. Elephants are a keystone animal in African ecosystems. So much life depends on it, it spreads seeds and fertilzes fallow ground. This was the idea the artist was tying to the Madonna in that piece.
"The arrangement seems like an exercise in diluting and offsetting him. That, ironically, is an expression of a deep, persistent belief in white male supremacy."
Correct. Might the persistent belief actually be, you know, true?
Question: are there any significant fields of human endeavor, including war and crime, in which white men are not supreme?
Sure, quite a few Asian men have created marvels, great math, and massive mayhem.
Still, in terms of achievement per capita, white men are supreme, no?
It's a heavy burden to POC and women, I know.
Neither one of Tom Wesselmann’s paintings that Ann linked to is "not worth a bucket of warm spit." (John Nance Garner, 32nd vice president, FDR). My dog could create better paintings.
That white man got the shadows wrong on the radio circles compared to the shine on the orange.
Wesselmann will be known by an orange (instead of the orange's shape-mate, the breast)
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Only the fake ones.
Sex is redefined, suppressed, reduced. Gender is neutralized, liberalized to normalize inclusiveness, or at least its perception. Burdens are relieved in darkness. Social progress, social justice, and all manner of euphemistic deceptions.
"... a deep, persistent belief in white male supremacy."
It's a fair cop.
Day in and day out, my life is almost entirely devoid of art, music, cinema, and television. I read in silence. I could happily live the rest of my days without seeing another painting or watching another movie or hearing a single note of music.
"Culture" is the trivial province of social-climbing white women, their gay pets, and a few POC mascots and tokens. It should mean less than nothing to any ordinary capable man. There is vastly more meaning and beauty in Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism or the Euler identity than in all the art produced by human hands since the Stone Age.
"No nudes is good nudes."
David Cross concurs...
There is vastly more meaning and beauty in... the Euler identity...
Straight white male?
The Wokeing Dead's prudery is like that of the Taliban.
Great American Nude's model must have been a blow-up doll.
Speaking of nudes, is this a great country or what? If I do a googlyimage search for "Laura Linney naked" I get photos of Laura Linney. Nekkid! Nice breastsesses.
My wife kept telling me that Amazon Prime Video was available to me on the TV, so I finally went looking at the app offerings. Found some wonderful classical music items--I've been watching the Beethoven Piano Concerto series with Leif Ove Andsnes conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra from the keyboard.
#3 last night, #4 this afternoon, and #5 tonight maybe. I think some of the cadenzas are Andsnes's; he's really amazing, and the camera work is not randomly distracting as so often happens.
Narr
Classical music isn't dead until we bury it
Vargas Girls
Ann, did your kids watch Gary Gnu and the No Gnus is Good Gnus Program?
https://external-preview.redd.it/hak7iaMhsVrQ7_qS0Nn9GNcQ9BNV1RsiMwWvN_5GvWI.jpg?auto=webp&s=50572aa2bb0d02302d9d1d4b19630367405d2165
I'm not going to apologize for sharing chromosomes with the people who brought you the modern world. That's racist.
Shambling down the pike to an art gallery near you: Woke "Degenerate Art" exhibitions.
Woo-hoo!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_Exhibition
I had renewed my MoMA membership just before their half-year shutdown. Now that they’re open, I went recently. Before I could get past the front door, a security guard hands me a mask because my bandana wasn’t good enough. Once inside, I’m instructed to stand on the black shoe prints on the floor as a machine 6 feet in front of me shines a purple light in my eyes and makes frightening electronic sounds. It supposedly took my temperature six feet away but it seems the real point was to emulate the airport security experience. Finally inside, I get to see the work of all those rebels who stuck it to the man.
Skookum John said: ""Culture" is the trivial province of social-climbing white women, their gay pets, and a few POC mascots and tokens." I agree with this premise if not his conclusion. It's a shame our self-called 'betters' have ruined so much.
OK, so maybe this is an effort to dilute and "de-center" a white male. Having looked at the painting that was replaced, however, two alternative explanations occur to me. One: the nude figure is a slender blonde white woman. This may have raised concerns from staff who see it as objectifying, misogynist, Euro-centric and/or fat-shaming -- though I suppose the current curator cohort contains some sex-positive feminists who could counter some of those arguments. Two -- and this I suspect is the real reason "Great American Nude #75" was banished -- the background contains elements of the American flag: red, white and blue fields of color, and a prominent star. That, plus the title itself, is likely to be triggering for many on staff and in the audience.
You don't have to know anything about Wesselmann's race to see the painting as a celebration of America and sex. And we can't have that.
I think that's a good take, Eugene Dillenburg.
I'm not sure I understand the difference between culture and "culture."
Narr
Narr like culture. Culture good. Culture STRONG!
The art must serve the party, and if it doesn't the SJW's who run the galleries will concoct some PC reasoning to explain how it really does.
So, white art bad, diverse art good. The modern liberal is creating the fascist state they tried to pin on President Trump the past 4 years. A guy who was a New York Democrat most of his life.
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