Items of Interest, Secret Painter Edition
"The council demanded its removal, because passing drivers were slowing to admire it."
Michael Shellenberger, You Can't Trust The People Who Say They Hate Civilization To Run It. “I don’t think Newsom, Bass, or anyone else in power in California was ever secretly rubbing their hands and twisting their mustaches, fantasizing about the destruction of California. … But it’s also the case that the same progressive Democrats who took measures that have directly undermined Western civilization have, for decades, declared it evil, and fantasized about its destruction.”
Zachary Small, Trump Executive Order Prompts National Gallery to End Diversity Programs. “It was a rapid turnabout for a museum that adopted a new vision and mission statement in 2021 and said that as a strategic priority it would ‘focus on diversity, equity, access and inclusion throughout our work to diversify the stories we tell, the ways in which we tell them, and our staff.’ That year the museum unveiled an $820,000 rebranding campaign that redid its logo and signage and highlighted its commitment to diversity.”
, Politics is Cruelty. “Cruelty is the main emotion that politicians pander to. And cruelty is what every politician strives to deliver. They don’t want to make everyone happy. They want to make their friends happy by making their enemies suffer. Which requires them to not only identify enemies, but create an endless queue of enemies lest they run out.”1Good Taste, Bad Taste, No Taste, Why Taste? A Salmagundi Symposium. “This is how disputes about taste characteristically devolve. Once there is more than a single, agreed-upon standard, the people who care most passionately about art will find themselves in the frustrating and increasingly futile position of talking past one another.”
Douglas Murray, The Zionism of Martin Luther King. “He often stated that Israel’s right to exist as a state ‘is incontestable.’ He looked with great favor on Israel’s democratic institutions, and consistently resisted the Black Power movement’s drift towards antisemitism. He also highly valued the contribution of Jewish leaders to the Civil Rights Movement. And just over a week before his death, on March 25, 1968, King spoke at the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly in the Catskills, where he was introduced by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a progressive rabbi who three years earlier had marched with King in Selma, Alabama.”
and Michael Rosen, Freedom Caps and the Pursuit of National Harmony. “Hundreds of black marchers wore yarmulkes as they marched through Lowndes County. They called the head coverings ‘Freedom Caps.’ A reporter noted, ‘The demand for yarmulkes was so great that an order has been wired for delivery of 1,000 when the marchers arrive in Montgomery later this week.’”Andrew Martin, The Secret Painter. “[W]hen Eric Tucker died, aged 86, in 2018, more than 500 paintings were found in the small council house he had long shared with his mother. The works, of the highest quality, depicted mid-20th-century working-class northern life. … He did a painting of a horse, which was displayed in the window of a Warrington bookies, until the council demanded its removal, because passing drivers were slowing to admire it. He had art books mingled in with his boxing magazines.”
Matthew Gasda, The Death and Life of Bohemia. “Bohemia is the material substrate through which genius emerges. The unique conditions of the Village produced an environment in which genius could make sense of itself and wheat could be separated from chaff (or Dylan from wannabe Dylans, who became so numerous that they inspired the famous Bob Dylan sound-alike contest). The mid-century Village was a layered, organic, seething society: multiethnic, multigenerational, transclass, ideologically open and experimental. You needed the GI Bill; Robert Moses threatening to tear the neighborhood down; the influence of Parisian existentialism. You needed immigrants threatening gentrifiers; new highways bringing in out-of-towners; beatniks, gays, union organizers, slumlords, and dope dealers. You needed cheap dives and esoteric bookstores. You needed beautiful, dignified architecture to offset the squalor.”
, The Poetics of Social (In)Justice. “My cancellation helped me clarify my values and forced me to dig deep to find the courage to act in alignment with them. It revealed my strengths and weaknesses and taught me who—and what—are important. It made me less afraid of being judged and disliked. And it opened my eyes to the way groupthink and authoritarianism on the far-left are corroding Western culture.”Min Chen, ‘Historic’ Bernini Sculpture Lands in Rijksmuseum After Centuries in Private Hands. “After centuries in a private collection and hidden under a dense layer of overpainting, a Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpture is finally coming to light at Rijksmuseum. Its arrival at the Amsterdam institution makes it the only sculpture by the Baroque master in the Netherlands.”
Coming soon: “Lauriston Avery: Outer Ones,” February 6—March 9 at Dutton.
Content at DMJ is free but paid subscribers keep it coming. They also have access to Dissident Muse Salons, print shop discounts, and Friend on the Road consultations. Please consider becoming one yourself and thank you for reading.
Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is Art in America 1945-1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism by Jed Perl. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.
This is based on an idea presented in Making Comics by Scott McCloud.
“authoritarianism on the far-left are corroding Western culture.” Is a quotable quote, appropriate this morning as the delightfully named Karen Bass of Los Angeles, the incompetent mayor who saw a third of her city torched, announced that the vast Palisades will be rebuilt “equitably” and “sustainably,” and dictated by an “outside consultant.” Dog whistles for not you and not as it was. The oblique answer of why owners were told permission to put their houses back would take 18 months (rhymes with never). Property rights are so vieux jeu and the “trained Marxist,” her words, sees opportunity in their incinerated homes. She is the ultimate authoritarian: what’s yours is now mine, because I know better.
The Bernini modello is delish. Like buttah.