Althouse: Art and politics.

May 14, 2023

Art and politics.

Just another weirdass piece of art, which they are addicted to. pic.twitter.com/c58hZzO6wn
— Shekhinah • PJ ✝️ 🇦🇺🕊🙏🏻 (@petahjaneishere) May 14, 2023

39 comments:

Tina848 said...: It is a statue of Mary, on mother's day. It represents, Rev 12. Woman with the moon at her feet. The icon is the Patron Saint of Argentina, from where the pope hails.; 5/14/23, 7:45 AM
Bob Boyd said...: If you zoom in on it you can clearly see it's that semi-famous depiction of the Virgin Mary running with the bulls by Fauvist sculptor Kees Van Weendongler.; 5/14/23, 7:46 AM
Sydney said...: That object is Mary, Queen of Heaven. She is standing on the moon and the sun is shining behind her.; 5/14/23, 7:55 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Catholics do.; 5/14/23, 7:59 AM
Robert Cook said...: Who is "they?" Catholics?; 5/14/23, 8:03 AM
Rusty said...: It's for summoning Satan. In case Jesus doesn't work out.; 5/14/23, 8:04 AM
Ernest said...: That is a statue of the Virgin Mary. The clue is the blue color, which is associated with her due to a title given to her by the Catholic Church: Queen of Heaven. This title stems from the Catholic doctrine of her Assumption into Heaven at the end of her life. The Assumption was declared an infallible dogma of the Church in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.; 5/14/23, 8:16 AM
RideSpaceMountain said...: There is a lot of semi-satanic weird symbology at the Paul VI Audience Hall. There's a lot of weird symbology at the Vatican period.; 5/14/23, 8:20 AM
rrsafety said...: I like how the conspiracy Protestants on Twitter chime in to attack some of the great works of Western Civilization as blasphemous. Fun bunch they are.; 5/14/23, 8:28 AM
Chuck said...: Did anyone else take it upon themselves to peruse the Twitter feed of "Shekkinah PJ"?

It's a festival of anti-vax conspiracism, anti-Roman Catholic bigotry, Trumpism and right-wing evangelical bible quotations. Photo comparisons of a young Joe Biden and Lee Harvey Oswald. Suggestions that Elon Musk is in cahoots with the Rothschild family.

She's warning her readers about "Project Blue Beam," a theory advanced by Quebecois conspiracist writer Serge Monast in the 1990's, which posits that NASA is attempting to implement a new age religion with the Antichrist as its head in order to institute a new world order. They had predicted it happening in 1983, and then when it didn't happen, in 1995 and also 1996.

I'm not going to be civil to these nutball conspiracists when they get into it with undermining western support for Ukraine. Go back to your fucking witch-covens or bible craft groups or whatever you do with your time. When you start fucking around with an important international crisis that has led to war, it's not funny anymore.; 5/14/23, 8:56 AM
Yinzer said...: Next make fun of the Muslims. I won't hold my breath. No one is afraid of us nice Catholics; they are scared to death of Muslims.; 5/14/23, 9:05 AM
n.n said...: Hah! Delivery of "Christ in urine", "baby... fetal-baby on a cold, gray slab", and other modern secular wokes (sic) of art were delayed.; 5/14/23, 9:06 AM
Ernest said...: BTW, I'm Protestant, not Catholic, but I wanted to state the Catholic position on Mary accurately.; 5/14/23, 9:30 AM
rcocean said...: THe Pope brokering a peace deal? Or Just cucking?

You make the call.; 5/14/23, 9:49 AM
Joe Smith said...: 'Next make fun of the Muslims. I won't hold my breath. No one is afraid of us nice Catholics; they are scared to death of Muslims.'

Exactly.

Everyone on the left wants to tear the pages out of bibles and talk shit about the Pope.

He's not my favorite guy, but shit on Mohammed first and I might have some respect for you...; 5/14/23, 10:05 AM
Yancey Ward said...: It was gift to the Pope from Putin.; 5/14/23, 10:32 AM
Andrew said...: This is actually an Isiac amulet, similar to the one from the TV show "The Secrets of Isis." Maybe this will turn the tide.; 5/14/23, 10:40 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I visited the Vatican Museum in 1999. I don't know how it's changed since then, but the recent art section of the place was full of awful stuff.; 5/14/23, 10:55 AM
Fred Drinkwater said...: There's a nice passage in "A Canticle for Leibowitz" about the church's "grist mill" separating artistic wheat from chaff. It operates slowly, but "every now and then, someone gives the crank a turn".; 5/14/23, 11:48 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: More interesting is Z’s Ukrainian Action Team With Kung Fu Grip get-up. It’s a little fascistic. Buy a tie, dude.; 5/14/23, 11:52 AM
Charlotte Allen said...: It's an image of the Virgin Mary. That particular kind of image: Mary in a wide-hemmed dress holding the Child Jesus and standing on or next to a crescent moon (from the Book of revelation) is common in Hispanic culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_of_El_Roc%C3%ADo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Charity; 5/14/23, 12:41 PM
Sean Gleeson said...: This pope is from Argentina, where there is a strong devotion to Our Lady of Luján. That is precisiely what that "art" is.; 5/14/23, 12:41 PM
Tina Trent said...: Thank you, Tina 848, and others.

I live mostly among southern Protestants who have some degree of polite suspicion of the Pope and Marist iconography in general. I explain that I think the Pope is a commie too, that he is not supposed to meddle politically and does not represent our Church when he stoops to do so, and that our appreciation of Mary is our version of loving the human family in its complete and perfect form. This never fails to create comity and understanding.

We all love our mothers for carrying us. That is why the most popular iconography of art with Mary is the adult Mary holding the dead body of her son awaiting rebirth, the Mexican Mary with Christ exposed in her womb, and the Mary bending over her baby in the creche.

Althouse, to appreciate Catholic worship and Catholic artistic sanctity, I recommend the Basicila of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. There are over 80 separate shrines from different nations inside of it, fascinating historically, sociologically, and religiously, among many other artifacts and altars.; 5/14/23, 1:18 PM
Free Manure While You Wait! said...: "Art and Politics"

All art is politics. All of it.; 5/14/23, 1:35 PM
Free Manure While You Wait! said...: "The Assumption"

When you assumption, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "mption".

Just sayin'.; 5/14/23, 1:38 PM
Kate said...: That wall art with Benedict is kind of fabulous. It's got a GoT vibe -- c'mon, it does. But it also is Jesus rising and bringing everyone with Him. I love the energy and movement in the piece.

Also, swipes at Our Lady are the lowest form of anti-Catholicism.; 5/14/23, 1:47 PM
Original Mike said...: I think that big wall thing behind the pope in the 2nd picture is awesome. It'd be enough to scare me into being good.; 5/14/23, 3:11 PM
wildswan said...: I think Sean 12:41 got it - Our Lady of Lujan. Some don't like it but remember the Catholic Church is in all time zones, participating in all societies, creating art in all of them for all their members, and has been so doing for 2000 years. I would guess that Althouse would like Rouault or Chagall, painters deep in 20C sensibility rather than what might be called 19C sentimentality.

https://uploads4.wikiart.org/images/georges-rouault/christ-on-the-lake.jpg

https://www.jeffangiegoh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/The-Yellow-Crucifixion-Marc-Chagall-1943.jpg; 5/14/23, 3:38 PM
wildswan said...: I think Sean 12:41 got it - Our Lady of Lujan. Some don't like it but remember the Catholic Church is in all time zones, participating in all societies, creating art in all of them for all their members, and has been so doing for 2000 years. I would guess that Althouse would like Rouault or Chagall, painters deep in 20C sensibility rather than what might be called 19C sentimentality.

https://uploads4.wikiart.org/images/georges-rouault/christ-on-the-lake.jpg

https://www.jeffangiegoh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/The-Yellow-Crucifixion-Marc-Chagall-1943.jpg; 5/14/23, 3:38 PM
mikee said...: A statue of Mary is one thing.
It could have been a reliquary.
Don't ask about the reliquaries.; 5/14/23, 3:39 PM
Valentine Smith said...: Carl Jung stated that the assumption of the Virgin Mary elevated the feminine principle to perfect the trinity of God and in essence make the godhead a more perfect whole.; 5/14/23, 6:49 PM
Josephbleau said...: Only Europeans get upset by these things. Americans have been inured to criticism by being hated by those from New England.; 5/14/23, 8:18 PM
hpudding said...: Next make fun of the Muslims. I won't hold my breath. No one is afraid of us nice Catholics; they are scared to death of Muslims.

Not as much as nice (and not-so-nice) Catholics are afraid of their nuns and sometimes pedophilic priests.

It’s so quaint to read Tina Trent talk about all the love and understanding she wants to offer her bigoted southern Protestant neighbors. What a shame that she has to go along with accepting their prejudicial loathing of her pope - one of the first decent ones to come along in a while.

But I guess it explains why Catholicism (and Christianity) is ultimately just an extension of government. (See Constantine. And Reagan. And Trump). “Not supposed to meddle politically?” I guess that explains Pius XII’s acquiescence to the Nazis. Christians want nothing more than endorsement by government and the incestuous history of Crown and Church has been rife throughout Europe since Henry VIII. (And of course since, just in a less obnoxious manner - at least in the non-theocratic parts of the Anglosphere).

Anywho, interesting disquisition on this whole cosmic Mary gal, but it still seems that Catholics (or any similarly inclined Christian sects) would do themselves and everyone else a whole lot of good if they dropped all the and bodily purity sexual fixations and just focused more intently on what it means to do good to others, to your community, your country and world. Bergoglio seems to get that. So did Kennedy.

LH Oswald, Mel Gibson and enablers of southern Protestant bigotry, not so much.; 5/15/23, 12:37 AM
hpudding said...: Americans have been politely suspicious of popery since the Tudor Dynasty. (If we’re going to claim Magna Carta as a cultural inheritance then why not Henry and Liz a few centuries later?)

Anyway, there’s no way a bill of rights and constitution as enlightened as ours takes shape in any Hispanosphere country by the late 18th c. There’s a reason for this. Catholics are still taught obedience to a supernatural hierarchy on earth but the Anglicans had gotten over this silliness by the time Pope Clement VII had “meddled politically” in Henry’s need to divorce the mostly barren Queen Catherine of Aragon.

It probably also explains why the French Revolution was a bit bloodier than America’s. They had to undergo their own reckoning with the clergy’s hold (among others) on government and society - a process that they came to 2 centuries later than England had.

I’m sure there are nice (practicing) Catholics out there. But the ones who aren’t liberal enough to have questioned all that dogma on (at a minimum) sexuality and its role in European history are really too naive to relate to. The idea that celibacy should be a prerequisite for ethical, communal, spiritual leadership - esp. in matters of family relations - is so dumb as to be absurd.; 5/15/23, 12:57 AM
Tina Trent said...: Hpudding, it seems you are the one adolescently obsessed with sexual purity. And your interpretation of the role it played in the French Revolution is pure projection. Maybe watch less tv history, read more books, and stay in your lane, pal.; 5/15/23, 7:01 AM
Tina Trent said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/15/23, 7:01 AM
Tina Trent said...: Also, Hasty, I don't find my Protestant neighbors (actually political allies choosing to attend events) at all prejudiced, nor did I say so. And this pope is a commie. I don't need my Protestant friends to tell me that. Twist the words that come from your own pie hole all you want, but don't touch my mouth.

Also, I have a very good idea who you are. Stop harassing me here and elsewhere. Get a life, MK.; 5/15/23, 7:06 AM
Rusty said...: Hpuddin'
You know Maryland was a catholic colony, right? They seem to have managed to ratify our constitution just fine.; 5/15/23, 7:19 AM
hpudding said...: What kind of Stockholm syndrome must someone suffer from to selectively badmouth and disparage the good Mr. Francis’ willingness to not be a stooge to governments who oppress their poor, while lacking any criticism at all about the rank pedophilia that is rife within the strangely celibate, mostly matrimonially concerned leadership class ministering to the Catholics?

Pretty bizarre. But it helps explain how this global government has perpetuated its institutional abuses.

Not sure how that makes me obsessed with sexual purity, unless by that you mean perplexed at why a global pedophile ring pretends to mandate celibacy among its leaders. I never said anyone had to have sex - let alone how or, consensually with whom. Just that mandating a lack of it as a pre-req for spiritual leadership is weird, unnatural and cultish,

Commenting on a public statement is not harassment. Unless one is so entitled as to not believe in free speech. Not sure who MK is.

As for American Protestants supposedly lacking much prejudice toward Catholics (esp in the most conservative regions - whether perceived or not), this is so at odds with American history as to not take seriously,

As misguided as Rusty can be I appreciate his clarification on Maryland. In any event it was just one colony out of 13. Hard to see how much influence it could have exerted in going against the grain of the prevailing Anglo-American cultural norms.

And it’s Trinitariian religious toleration act was no picnic.; 5/15/23, 11:22 PM