Wrote Theodore Roosevelt, in 1913, in "A Layman’s View of an Art Exhibition."
"The Cubists are entitled to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored puzzle pictures of the Sunday newspapers. Of course there is no reason for choosing the cube as a symbol, except that it is probably less fitted than any other mathematical expression for any but the most formal decorative art. There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another."
Roosevelt was talking about the famous Armory Show, the one with the Duchamp painting "Nu descendant un escalier n° 2," which Roosevelt translated as "Naked man going down stairs" (on the theory that there would be an "e" on "nu" if the figure were female). Roosevelt contended that he had a nice Navajo rug that "on any proper interpretation of the Cubist theory, is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture," and if you just "for some inscrutable reason" called it "A well-dressed man going up a ladder," it would make as much sense as calling Duchamp's painting "Naked man going down stairs."
ADDED: The OED credits this essay with the first use of "lunatic fringe" to refer to something other than women's bangs. The phrase entered the language and is defined as "A minority group (esp. of members of a political or other movement, or adherents to a set of beliefs) regarded as eccentric, extremist, or fanatical."
I seem to remember hearing it more when I was young, but I see it's still in common use. Just to quote some recent appearances in the NYT:
• "McCarthy got his speakership by putting himself at the mercy of the lunatic fringe on his right, and now that fringe is behaving like … lunatics" (September 25, 2023).
• "But somewhere along the way, conspiracy spaces on the internet had become 'a haven' for the 'lunatic fringe' of the right wing, which in turn spilled back into the real world" (August 4, 2023).
• "The key difference between the left-wing conspiracy theories of yesteryear and their right-wing counterparts of today is the degree of acceptance within the broader public. Crackpot leftist ideas were almost always consigned to the lunatic fringe, and anyone expressing those ideas was disqualified from public office" (November 3, 2022).
• "Without those top-notch ‘lunatic fringe’ Jeep people down in the trenches, the Wrangler would have failed as an icon years ago. It’s the core people, the true Jeepers of the group, that kept it successful" (July 15, 2021).
• "Having sacked the Capitol, the lunatic fringe is now dreaming of a bigger, bloodier encore" (March 8, 2021).
• "Under the relatively secure conditions of 1928, most Germans viewed the Nazis as a lunatic fringe party, giving them less than three percent of the vote in national elections" (May 6, 2020)(article title: "Why Isn’t Trump Riding High?").
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Right now I am sitting in the Menger Hotel in San Francisco. He recruited Rough Riders in the hotel bar. Lots of TR pictures and a giant stuffed moose head.
Artwork in the lobby is old and not that good. I’ve seen much better at Omaha’s Joslyn.
See William D'Andrea's The Lunatic Fringe, historical fiction with Teddy, then NYC Police Commissioner, the detective.
TR is right about Navajo rugs.
Question for the Althouse community: Would TR be admitted to Harvard today?
TR invented the phrase “the lunatic fringe.” Today’s Dem party has been captured by the lunatic fringe. Vivek calls it “the tyranny of the minority.”
TR called 'em as he saw them.
How would the following account do: ``What I can see something *as*, is what it can be a picture of''?
What this means is: the aspects in a change of aspects are those ones which the figure might sometimes have *permanently* in a picture.
A triangle can really be *standing up* in one picture, be hanging in another, and can in a third be something that has fallen over.--That is, I who am looking at it say, not ``It may also be something that has fallen over'', but ``That glass has fallen over and is lying there in fragments''. This is how we react to the picture.
- Wittgenstein
"My bewildering brain, toils in vain........."
T Roosevelt. who as running as a third party guaranteed the election of W Wilson and the ascendancy of the "progressives." Within two years after this election we had an income tax and the re-segregation of the federal workforce.
Lunatic Fringe - Red Rider:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFVMMCwsss
JSM
Never cared for Cubism, tho Marcel Duchamp’s collection at Philadelphia Museum of Art is definitely something to view and divinely appreciate. My last visit there was 50 years ago, but still resonates in my head on occasions like your post. It and assorted Dadaist works from Man Ray & few others marked a fun and much need poke to the art world (IMO).
There hasn't been a president since TR who 1) could write so well and 2) have anything interesting to say about art (or Art).
Twilight fringe, liberal license, and progressive corruption. One stop forward, two steps backward.
"It is vitally necessary to move forward and to shake off the dead hand... of the reactionaries"
Why is this, as a general statment, any less arbitrary than proposing Cubism, in particular, as a move forward?
"there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement"
And as the history of "forward movement" since 1789 shows, the lunatic fringe soon takes over and becomes mainstream. Ask Robespierre, and remember the Vendee.
So, Teddy, tell us, at this late date, how do we guard against the lunacy of the lunatic fringe among the forward movers? Or could it be that forward movement always needs a lunatic vanguard to put the "reactionaries" on the defensive and eventually to quash them, the better to enshrine the power of the movers?
A song by Red Ryder, 1981... peaked at 11 on the charts in the US.
Menger Hotel is in San Antonio, TX.
When The Bangles first started performing, they were called, The Bangs.
Of all the modernist art permutations that we have seen globally over the past 150 years, about which I'm pretty enthusiastic, Cubism has produced the fewest works that appeal to me.
I happen to be 30% into The River of Doubt (thanks be to Althouse). Even before the Descent, it is clear that Teddy was a man who could speak from personal experience about the lunatic fringe (of exploration, rather than art).
My great great grandfather, son of Irish Catholic immigrants and whose mother could not write, was at Harvard with TR; was, in fact, in the same "house" as TR. TR wrote home that he liked his quarters which he shared with 16 others, "fifteen of whom are gentlemen", he noted. The other was my relative. In the family, we hear this story with triumphant smirks since my relative graduated with honors and was class salutatorian or some such. Moreover, since then the whole family has been college-educated, including - starting in the next generation - all the women. Received social opinion has never weighed much with us.
Modernist art was looked on as a welcome experiment and variation on standard representational are when it first came out, before WWI. No one thought it would supercede real art, except a few farseeing Germans and Frenchmen.
What's amazing is how few of the artists who followed Picasso and the others did anything worth while. Its a failed experiment.
It'd be amazing to read an essay by George Bush, Clinton, Obama, or Joe Biden on an art exhibit. Although I doubt you would get anything worth reading.
I think I would have liked TR. He and I are "of the same kidney", as the British say, on the merits of modern art.
As a Wisconsin immigrant from Maryland (land of sun), I think I can help bridge the culture gap in the Question of the Coat. Here's the simple fact to grip on to - when the temperature is 10 or less all Mid-Westerners know they are in danger outside. Yes, DANGER. For example, Ron DeSantis would die if he were out without a coat for half an hour, shaking hands or something. Yes, DIE. You have to bundle up - hat, scarf, coat, sweater, heavy socks, boots. You have to look like a walking pile of clothes. It seems ridiculous to folk from sunny climes who think that 50 degrees is cold and that you meet the cold by buttoning your coat. But the Mid-Western cold is dangerous. When you're new out here, your fingers freeze and ache as you button your skimpy, useless coat and a terrifying chill blows in between its fibres.
And so the candidates should understand what is being done on their behalf. Going to the caucuses is dangerous - your car might skid and dump you out into the cold, you might die before anyone gets to you. You have half an hour. Iowa People have four wheel drives and all the warm clothes they need and stay in touch with each other and they will probably caucus as usual. Ordinary danger. Trump, we're with you.
PS I wonder how EV are doing in the COLD. In the COLD, they have half the range of warm weather - or maybe less than that. Really they are quite dangerous in these conditions. Will people with Teslas refuse to go out? Will this be the Ford 150 (gas-powered) caucus? We'll see.
TR accepted to Harvard today? LEGACY, dude. No problemo. Until he got there and met his roomie in the dorms. Then, howdy!
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