Monument’s Men

Went to see it.  Here is the irony: all of the people in that movie, as far as I know, are left wingers, and the left wing has been systematically working to destroy our common culture, to destroy respect for “dead white men”, which is what all the artists involved were who were not modernists.

There is a sentimentality that seems to mesh well with the political left, particularly Sybaritic Leftism, which finds in passion a meaning of life.  So many people, I feel, want to be the sort of people moved by Michaelangelo’s Madonna, or the alter piece from Ghent.  They want to feel moved by poetry, passionate about life.  We see these people in movies, and we do our best to live vicariously through them.

But are not most of us stolid, unmoving dolts?  Yes, sentimentality is rampant.  We have that.  But at what level are most Westerners still able to partake in the sacred?  To what extent can we get at really deep feelings, really deep places, the places which alone distinguish good from great art?

If every original art piece in the world disappeared tomorrow, and it was not reported in the media, how long would it take most people to notice?  If their posters and generic art on their walls was unaffected, I don’t think most people would EVER notice.  Not one person in 100 would really, truly care.  That is my feeling.

And I have to say that multiple people groaned in the theater when they saw that a Picasso was burnt.  A term came to me for the work Picasso was mostly known for (I’m not counting the Blue Period): Ceremonial Ugliness.

Art is pageantry, too, is it not?

We look to it to unify our culture, but if we wanted to, could we not accuse all of the Monument’s Men of racism, since it was exclusively WHITE art they were looking for?  That is about the level most left wingers operate at nowadays.  Reason, decency, truth, fact finding: all gone.

And Picasso’s work is a big FUCK YOU.  I have always felt that way about him in particular.  He was a Communist.  He was cruel.  He is trying to stick a knife through the canvas into the capacities for empathy and reason of the viewer.

I’m a little irritable for some reason.  I may not mean that tomorrow.

But I probably will.

Rotating cogitation.