Ruining Masterpieces to Hurt Feelings

What if we intentionally rebuilt Notre Dame not to restore its beauty, nor even to improve its beauty, but to destroy its beauty because it will really upset conservatives because they love old things? We'll call them the 'alt-right' to make it OK.

7 comments:

raven said...

I agree with him. Yes, that's the ticket- make our spaces modern. How about we fill his house with homeless drug addicts, used needles, and a pile of shit? Would that be "modern" enough for him? cutting edge enough?

The idea that something, anything, is worth doing ,if it distresses someone, even if it holds no reward other than another's anguish, is well on the far side of reprehensible, tending toward psychopathy. What a vicious little weasel.

Texan99 said...

Things are not always what they seem, and some of my enemies are not only inconsistent but legitimate objects of harsh criticism. We need to create a work of public art. It logically follows that the theme of the art should be "take that, you slime."

In a broader sense, things aren't quite the way I'd like in all sorts of areas of public and private life, ergo my message 24/7 in all communications is hatred. Andres Serrano is a good model for this.

Another way to look at it is the ritual of excoriation of bourgeois art, a/k/a iconoclasm. If you value it, you're off-base, because it's not my priority. We have to make you publicly renounce it, or stand by while we burn it alive. Whatever it is you have to renounce this week is not enough. Next week, when we learn we still don't have your undivided loyalty, we'll destroy your second-best. When all of you are gone, we'll turn to the most vulnerable outer circle of our own group, until only we pure few are left. Until only I am left. Prince of Darkness.

Welcome to diverse inclusiveness.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

He calls out his historian card, but it doesn't hold. I don't believe that the alt-right, or any right, holds that there was an original state of things we should return to. I think that is simply untrue on his part. That people have myths about the past is certainly true. So what? So does he. The idea that Medieval Europe was a crossroads of cultures and was not all-white...did they say at the time they were all-white and that was important to them? Nearly all of them happened to be white, the Moors being an exception. If he is defining the growing awareness of the people of the New World or dim knowledge that people in China looked somehow different, that would be entirely after 1500. "Middle" Ages? He is choosing his years conveniently, expanding and contracting.

His view is that what was cool was that there were more cultures in the awareness of the wealthiest and most educated people, and that's what he wants to celebrate. It's a very 21st C idea. I don't see why the 21st C should be privileged over all others.

ymarsakar said...

Humans acting like humans, full of dark energies and despair... why am I not surprised.

Humanity has much to learn from this Wheel and Earth.

Christopher B said...

I don't believe that the alt-right, or any right, holds that there was an original state of things we should return to.

I was listening to an interview with VDH on his book The Case for Trump, and he said something much like this in regards to Trump. It's a fundamental misinterpretation of the Make America Great Again slogan to see it as a call to return to a Golden Age past but it's the one most Trump opponents make because their teleology of America is that it was birthed with Original Sin (of slavery/capitalism/etc) and therefore must make penance until such time as it is perfected by adopting leftist policies. MAGA is a call to recognize that America was founded with exceptional ideals, and our greatness is found in our continuing struggle to achieve those ideals, not at some point in the glorious past or some hazy future date when we're safe for socialist democracy and the Green New Deal.

douglas said...

As an architect, it's curious to me how they keep pointing at the Spire by Violett Le Duc as an incongruent addition representative of the that comtemporary era. It clearly was not - Violett Le Duc was, as he mentions in the article, a Gothic revivalist. He was the very thing in that era that the writer is arguing against in this era.

He also quotes someone as saying "Nothing makes it from the Middle Ages to the Twenty First Century without being transformed along the way". Perhaps words aren't as fixed to meaning to them as to me, but I would defy them to explain to me what had been "transformed" from the original Notre Dame de Paris from the date of it's completion to a few weeks ago. Violett Le Ducs spire did not transform it, it amended it in a complementary style and with appropriate detailing and only by remaking that which had already been. Putting a 'Louvre like roof' on it is not at all in line with that idea.

These people are transparent in their ignorance, but do not see it.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Thank you douglas for that