Devolved Revelers of the Uniparty 2024. Acrylic on cardboard, 16 x 16"
Still proofreading and editing my upcoming book. Another book waits to be written—Poor Ronnie’s Anti-Ethnic Cleansing Almanac. I’ll begin that as soon as my Stuckism book is sent to the printers. Meanwhile, here is another sneak peak from Making Friends With Wild Dogs:
The Impressionists lived during the end of an era when boy soldiers from one nation shot and stabbed boy soldiers of another. They would line up in rows and columns as flesh and blood ledgers for old, rich men to debit and credit. Mostly credit. There were volunteer armies and conscripted ones, which was a travesty to artists then, as it is today. Unfortunately there persisted a faux-manly sense of honor (even among artists) that left federal politics off the hook and out of painting. After all, boys will be boys, and sometimes opt to shoot each other’s face off when commanded. One war-related truism European Impressionists would agree on in 1878 was this: Indiscriminate terror-exploding of civilian populations was inconceivable, a pure evil, and not to mention, very unmanly. If terror bombing suddenly became so common to fill newspapers and read widely throughout Europe, then a general outrage would ensue, and rage painting (reflecting life) would become salon-acceptable art overnight, else the salon be torched. This is not to say that rape and pillage were unheard of during wartime. That was unfortunate, bad stuff that happened in wars for thousands of years. Boys will be boys, and they do gross things when they’re left alone together to figure stuff out. However, in 1878, whole peoples weren’t being erased by push-button terror. Back in America, Secretary of War Tecumseh Sherman was normalizing terrorism in the Western territories. Likewise, colonial England already had a few episodes of child slaughter in India. But overall, they were called massacres for a reason, several decades away from being normalized as they are today. Literally, in the course of minutes, the world witnesses another massacre on Twitter. Whoops! There goes an extended family of Palestinians!
If art reflects life, then why is so-called “political painting” ignored today? Is not Israel committing a genocide as I write? Was World War II fire-bombing of Dresden not a paintable subject? If not, why not? And who said so?
Yet even in 1878, art did not mirror national life because artists, like all localized people of the age, were left in the dark. Perhaps the creation of nation states out of old, crusty monarchies actually made it easier to fool a public coalescing into cancerous in-groups to set national identities. In feudal Europe one was bound to vassals and lords. Kings were far off and not familiar. So although there might be a crusade to Jerusalem, it all began with local fealty, and not some big, stupid national identity like “I am German and proud,” Or “I am French and arrogant” Or, “I am American and so fucking frightened and violent it would make your head spin”.
To the point. Monet was a political ignoramus. Gauguin, van Gogh, the waitress serving the absinthe, were morons too. But not because they were insensitive. They simply lacked knowledge of daily corruptions of state, being local and in the dark. So they went home and painted flowers or naked girls, seascapes, churchyards, cafes, chairs — anything that was not going to offend too much. Thoroughly anti-artist, but forgivable in their time. Pretty image makers for the rich ladies with taste. Calculating businessmen. Still wearing suits in photographs, right up until the mid-twentieth century. As a Stuckist I reject artists who cannot reflect the times. And today, like yesterday, the times are this: You got a boot on your face. Paint something about it!
I do not understand contemporary artists who use the past to pretend the present — those who prefer to imagine art as “above politics”, and persist with the tired old themes of “anything that does not offend or affect change”. I call them ostrich painters, and it’s pretty much the majority, burying their brushes in the sands of time. I believe good people have been brainwashed to dislike the word “politics”, to the glee of the most gruesome maniacs on earth. Sure, politics can be defined as “the art or science of government”. However, it also means “the total complex of relations between people living in society.” I like to add “…and all life living on earth”, which includes the voiceless flowers, bees, birds, animals and landscapes that don’t have a choice but to suffer the brute power of specie-centric humans living in groups. And their pretty portraits continue to get painted ad nauseum by the timid artists as if no harm shall come by it. Some popular Ostrich painters enlist in the safe and accepted culture war. Transgender identity, gun control, poverty recognition, feminist art. They have artist statements to facsimile what has already been written by much braver non-artists on the front lines. It’s a lazy identity using art to propagandize popular movements. If the artist isn’t the first person to charge the fortification, then go back to painting pretty pictures and leave room for those willing to get their brains bashed in for change. You want some good feminist art that will affect change? Okay. Here’s an image: Your genocidal President getting drawn and quartered by the raped and murdered ghost women of Gaza. Or is that too feminist for you? A suggestion for too much change, too quickly? And from a privileged Caucasian man no less.
There is no such thing as political art. To marginalize subjects in art means infinite marginalization. For instance, Monet is not called a painter of “landscape art”, though he did many. He also painted portraits of people and animals, and flowers in gardens too. What if a Monet retrospective had 20 landscapes, two dogs, three cows in a barn, 30 flowers, a woman’s face, and a recently discovered painting of the Kaiser tearing a child’s head off? Is he now a political painter? How about a political/landscape/dog/cow/flower/portrait painter? You can see how categorization easily transforms into nonsense. But we do it anyway for “political painting”. For some reason, even today, in an Internet world of instant knowledge of total hell, one who reflects total hell back into the culture via his or her art, is deemed a “political painter”. But dammit I paint flowers too! And portraits of my wife, dogs, cats and landscapes. Don’t call me a political painter just because I expose a nation that financially supports the flesh-melting of children thousands of miles away. I’m a human being, and I’ll be damned if I can’t make you one too, asap.
I think a good art history of famous painters like Monet would involve an investigation into the universal avoidance of politics in their art. Pretend as they may, Impressionists were still painting pictures for Popes, so to speak. I think little has changed to this day. Popes are now establishment leaders of bureaucracy — galleries, universities, millionaires, billionaires, and the heavily influential fifth estate of popular culture, which is mostly set and promoted by corporate advertising to the middle class. I guess art-making for the career artist never stopped being service work for the rich. Time passing and goon persistence has rerouted artist neurons to have them believe that fine art is apolitical. That we are here, as sensitive peon painters, solely to praise the beauty of the world, and look the other way while our “betters” set it on fire.
I believe the flowers are all right. If their feelings were considered, they might ask us to stop painting their likenesses in dystopia. Stuckists make political paintings because they are “engaged with the study of the human condition” (see Stuckist Manifesto #16). It’s just a fact that without politics there wouldn’t be any people and people things. Seems like an important truth to keep out of the processes of human creativity. Maybe if Monet and pals painted their rage about nations gearing up for world war, we wouldn’t have had Hitler or Hiroshima. Maybe poppies would just be pretty red flowers to bloom in June and not the bodies of a million slain boys whose artists forsook them.