The genius of Shakespeare is his subtle explorations of the human condition. His insights are so universal that his works have been adapted and presented to take place throughout history, from ancient Egypt to outer space.
Now a researcher has gathered together an online collection of Victorian illustrations of the Bard’s classic scenes and characters.
While reading Shakespeare’s works is still a thrilling experience for literary fiends, illustrations can help bring a little of the stage’s magic to the page. Michael John Goodman—who describes himself as an “independent researcher, writer, educator, curator and image-maker”—has made this magic easy no matter what edition you have. His Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive collects over 3,000 illustrations from 19th-century British editions of Shakespeare’s Complete Works.
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My wife, artist Michele Bledsoe, found me this video. The old TV show Columbo is a comfort to us. The audience was shown right up front who committed the (usually tastefully presented) murder. The mystery was how would Lt. Columbo catch them.
The perpetrators were always elitists. Powerful people who thought they could get away with it. Columbo kept them off guard by coming across as a befuddled little working stiff, overly polite, clueless. Until he found his angle.
Just when the villain thought they were about to be rid of him, Columbo came back to ask, “Just one more thing.” This inquiry was always the beginning of the end for the murderers, who realized too late this funny little guy was not what he seemed to be.
Peter Falk was incredible in this role. I hope they never try a reboot, it could not be done without him.
It turns out the actor also enjoyed making art. This video displays a collection of Peter Falk’s drawings, set to the opening music from the old Mystery Movie of the Week.
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Apparently there is a celebrity singer named Lizzo being promoted by the indoctrination platforms such as Instagram, Tik Tok and the like. Since I don’t engage with those, I knew nothing about her – until she decided to add painting to her résumé. Let’s just say Lizzo is bringing her biggest asset to her new art.
Steven Crowder breaks it down in this NSFW video.
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
In the 1990s, after I graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, I stayed on in Richmond, Virginia. One of the city’s claims to fame at the time was Gwar-a metal band that mixed muppets, gore, and slapstick into a fake-blood soaked spectacle. I remember one show of theirs I attended where they must have put too much color into the various fluids they sprayed into the audience; even the hairs on my arm were dyed pink for days afterwards.
Gwar in Action
There came a point where Gwar was banned from performing in costume in their own hometown, due to the over-the-top grossness and silly obscenity of it all. They used to do local shows as Rawg, where they would perform the music without the theatrics.
At the time I was the chairman of the exhibition committee of Artspace, an artist-run cooperative gallery. I had a great idea: if Gwar can’t use their props and costumes in Richmond, what not put on an art show with them? I imagined national press attention, MTV coverage, and a spirited debate about free expression.
The Gwar guys didn’t act like rock stars. They were always just hanging around the local scene like anyone else. I was able to get an introduction pretty quickly. One afternoon I met up with singer Dave “Oderus Urungus” Brockie for a tour of Slave Pit Incorporated, the facility where they manufactured their elaborate outfits and gear. There were rubber body parts everywhere; I remember there was a big latex O J Simpson, who was very topical at the time. Brockie was gracious and supportive of the idea of an art show. It all would have made for a great exhibit.
Long story short, Artspace decided they couldn’t get insurance for an event like this. I think many of the gallery members were too intimated by the crassness as well. The idea was dropped, and Gwar continued to grow their international cult following.
Here is a relic of those times: a little rubber souvenir I found one day on the cobblestones of a Richmond alleyway:
Dave Brockie sadly passed away in 2014. However, the band continues to this day, as recently covered in Atlas Obscura:
Slave Pit Incorporated in 2017
This is the studio that creates custom costumes, sets, and stage props for two-time Grammy-nominated thrash metal band GWAR. The group’s costume- and FX-fueled live comedy-horror operas won international attention in the early 1990s and continue to disgust and delight audiences today. Concertgoers can expect things like huge, grotesque monsters raging amid fiery explosions, as band members dressed like satanic space-ogres shred on guitars with headstocks that spew fake blood.
The artists working here are responsible for bringing the show to life. They’re considered band members and work on everything from storylining albums and scripting stage productions to filming music videos and writing branded graphic novels. And sometimes they play monsters onstage. The team consists of two full-time artistic directors and a few dozen contract contributors. Most attended art school at nearby Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
“The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” (1991)
The arts are undergoing a crisis of relevance. People have been so alienated by the weird dysfunctions of the establishment art world for so long, there is little awareness of what is being advanced as the visual representations of our culture.
This stuff matters more than people know. Art shows us who we are, and it shows us how to be. Right now the arts are dominated by destructive nihilists. Look at what they do, to understand what the elites are trying to program as our way to live.
There is a longstanding artistic tradition of the momento mori: “remember you must die.”
The reality of our own mortality, and coming to terms with it, is a vital function of traditional art. Making something exquisite out of the way of all flesh is a transcendental act. It has been expressed in many ways. Throughout art history, skulls make appearances in paintings, on jewelry, on clocks and watches. Dutch masters painted beautifully naturalistic oil still lifes referred to asvanitas, which included images of bones, snuffed lamps, and hourglasses. They not only celebrated the refined talents of the painters, they implied pending decay.
Pieter Claesz “Vanitas Still Life” (1630)
The tradition continued over the centuries. In a more recent example, Modernist American painter Georgia O’Keeffe utilized animal skulls and flowers to similar effect. It’s the kind of universal communication that makes art so powerful.
Georgia O’Keeffe “Summer Days” (1936)
As Christians, we understand our true life is not limited to this earth, but is life eternal granted by the grace of the Son of God. Still, awareness of the briefness of our time here on earth is a powerful motivator. “I am writing this book because we’re all going to die,” mused Beat author Jack Kerouac. He was determined to deliver his story as a supplication to the Lord. Kerouac wanted to make something holy out of all his striving, opening himself to God before the darkness came.
Contemporary art has a different message for us: death as something awkward, gross, and shameful. This is typified by the richest living artist in the world: Damien Hirst.
Choke Artist: Damian Hirst
Hirst has been well rewarded for making death seem supreme. It’s said this hack is worth $1 billion. What put British artist Hirst on the fast track in the first place could be seen as a momento mori of a kind, but with some important caveats.
Hirst was trying to make that connection in his title. Called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, the 1991 piece was a fourteen foot long taxidermied tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde. Since its creation it has changed hands several times, for a price suggested to be as high as $12 million.
Now, Hirst did not catch the shark. He did not stuff the shark. He did not build the tank, or suspend the beast in it. He is a “Conceptual artist.” The idea of Conceptual art is all the artist needs is to have the idea. Others execute it, often by just putting some already existing item like a shark into a new context of a gallery or museum. The artist then acts as a well-networked and “controversial” spokesmodel for their commercialized brand. This business model was most visibly pioneered by Pop artist Andy Warhol, who made some vanitas himself.
Andy Warhol “Skull” (1976)
While Warhol usually sold product placements and celebrity portraits, HIrst’s brand is carcasses. It’s claimed nearly 1 million animals have been processed through his industrial scale artistic abattoir, ranging from butterflies to zebras. He’s advanced from having them merely displayed; they are sliced, diced, contorted and flayed, as per his “vision.” As Hirst has callously stated, he wants to “kill things in order to look at them,” and “Cut us in half, we’re all the fucking same.”
Damien Hirst “Piggy”
I don’t claim any special virtue for myself. I’m a happy meat eater, and I understand what that means. But what Hirst promotes is far from the traditional momento mori of art. There’s no acknowledgement of the urgency of human experience, the profound significance of life in the face of its certain end. The hands off approach from its originator removes the spiritual resonance of creation in spite of destruction. Hirst implies we are just meat to be manipulated and exploited. It’s an ugly and empty message.
Hirst doesn’t even provide quality in the work he has done in his name. Despite the hype, I’ve seen descriptions of encounters with the shark which say what was once was a magnificent animal looks about as impactful as an overstuffed sofa, lost in the white void of the museum. The original shark rotted away in its tank, and had to be replaced. The contemporary art market is place of such cognitive dissonance there is a hearty debate on whether swapping the shark out meant the artwork was now worthless.
My take? It was worthless in the first place.
Hirst seems to have gotten into the carrion business because he lacks real artistic talent or discernment. After Hirst became a brand name, when he wanted to come up with a mass production way to cash in, he produced the inane spot paintings. I can’t picture a bigger failure in imagination or interest than these generic Twister rip offs. Still, thousands of these have been cranked out by hired help, selling for tens of thousands of dollars each. It’s a way for tasteless but wealthy patrons to partake in Hirst’s rotten prestige in a sterile way, without worrying about formaldehyde leaks.
Some People Actually Pay For This: A Hirst Spot Painting
Hirst is still flogging dead horses and more to maintain his top tier art market status. His latest gimmick is ironically putting paint onto a canvas himself, though I wouldn’t go so far as to grace the efforts with the status of paintings.
Spotty Accomplishments: Hirst Cherry Blossoms
Ultimately elites celebrate artists like Hirst because they have a death wish: they wish the rest of us would die, or at least be as passive as corpses while the powerful abuse and pillage our society. The establishment contributes to our destruction by replacing art with icons of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual deterioration.
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Actor Vincent Price (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993), known mostly for horror movies, was also an connoisseur of art. Price’s knowledge and appreciation of art were so renowned that when Sears wanted to launch a fine art department, he was brought in to run the effort, as I wrote about before: The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art.
In this video, Price displays some unexpected singing talent as he celebrates the magic of painting.
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
A recreation of “The Power of Music” by William Sidney Mount (1847)
The painting the tableaux vivant is based on
Picture this: famous works of American art recreated on stage with carefully prepared sets, props, and actors.
The large-scale pieces of art displayed on stage at the Pageant of the Masters, a nightly summer performance in Laguna Beach, California, look as though they could’ve been plucked off the walls of some of the world’s most celebrated museums and art galleries. On closer inspection though, it becomes evident that each masterpiece is an illusion. A blink of an eye or a subtle shift in posture and suddenly audience members are well aware that what they’re looking at is a collection of tableaux vivant, or “living pictures,” and the characters in each piece are real people.
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Edward Hopper “Nighthawks” oil on canvas 33″ x 60″
At the time of its creation in 1942, realist works like Edward Hopper’s iconic Nighthawks painting were not trendy in the art world. As leading critic Clement Greenberg sneered in 1946: “[Hopper] is not a painter in the full sense; his means are second-hand, shabby, and impersonal.”
And yet Hopper’s work have stood the test of time much better than the abstract artists Greenberg and others championed at the time. Now the painting Nighthawks has inspired a new play. Nighthawks: A Theatrical Meditation on Solitude and Loneliness, is premiering in Chicago, the city where the painting is on display.
A little boy was trying energetically to climb atop one of the two lions that have long “guarded” the Art Institute as people poured through the doors on Saturday, becoming the latest of the millions of people who have gotten pleasure from the art inside.
Some of those creations have provided inspiration for artists in other realms — writers, musicians, playwrights — and the latest of these is June Sawyers, who has created a show titled “Nighthawks: A Theatrical Meditation on Solitude and Loneliness.”
“I call it a hybrid theater piece,” she says. “It is meant to establish a mood of loneliness and solitude. That for me is the essence of the painting.”
She does not remember the first time she saw Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” currently located in the Arts of the Americas-Gallery 262. But, she says, “It has always haunted me. It is my favorite American painting.”
RICHARD BLEDSOE is a visual story teller; a painter of fables and parables. He received his BFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. Richard has been an exhibiting artist for over 25 years, in both the United States and internationally. He lives and paints happily in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife Michele and cat Motorhead. He is the author ofRemodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization:
“Remodernism is not a style of art, it is a form of motivation. We express the universal language of inspired humanity.
“We do not imitate what came before. We find in ourselves the same divine essence of love and excitement which has inspired masterpieces throughout history. We are strengthened by drawing on traditions thousands of years old.
“We integrate the bold, visionary efforts of the Modern era into a holistic, meaningful expression of contemporary life. Remodernism seeks a humble maturity which heals the fragmentation and contradictions of Modernism, and obliterates the narcissistic lies of Postmodernism.
“Remodernism is the return of art as a revelation.”
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
From the old Batman TV show-the Joker goes conceptual.
An interesting take on a change that was actually occurring in the arts during the 1960s. It can be seen as a prophetic pop culture reflection of the shift from Modernism (the punny abstract painters) to Postmodernism. The Joker’s appropriated blank canvas, hailed as a work symbolic of “the emptiness of modern life,” could have come straight out of a contemporary art gallery.
Here we have the evidence. Conceptual Art is a tool of super-villainy, promoted by establishment useful idiots. Funny because it is so true.
Holy minimalism Batman!
PS – Cesar Romero was the best Joker, outperforming Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix.
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
“I’m only interested in an art which can change the ideology of society….”
-Marina Abramovic
Part of what I want this blog to do is highlight certain notable figures of the commercialized contemporary art world to a new audience.
I’d like to help educate all those good people who, up until now, have been uninterested, alienated, or even hostile to the efforts of today’s educated creative classes and their deep-pocketed supporters. From what I see, this potential audience of the disengaged is practically everyone in entire world.
What I want this newly attentive audience to appreciate is how correct they were to reject this garbage all along. This involves exposing the corruption festering away in the greedy and debased hearts of the institutions who have forced these toxins on an unwilling culture.
I also like to talk about inspirational figures and exciting new paths I see developing, but that’s for another post. I do see this as a time of renewal and opportunities. The future will be what we make of it, and I see a gathering of forces that ultimately will change the course of civilization. It’s part of what artists do; on an archetypal level we get the news before others, and help spread the word. Big changes are coming.
But the first step of recovery is to admit we have a problem, and the art world is a serious problem indeed.
Postmodernism rejects the combination of disciplined skills and inherent talent that made traditional art such a powerful human achievement. Postmodernism believes reality is shaped by manipulation and control of communications. It’s a form of magical thinking by the elites. They think they can break the endless chains of cause and effect, action and consequences, by stubbornly insisting on getting their way, always.
Marina Abramovic wanted to be an artist. In the 1970s she decided to become an artist not by making art, but by being a “performance artist.” This is when an artiste enacts some kind of public display, usually without the talent, coherence, or skills the traditional performing arts require.
Abramovic’s shtick was stupid rituals: playing with knives, cavorting around flaming pentagrams, and publicly undergoing drug intoxications. Many later pieces feature feats of endurance, sort of like the one-time trend of flag-pole sitting, but with the added cache of pretentiousness and snobbery. Her risky yet pointless acts took her far in in the debased art world. She made good connections in the years since.
How good? How about right to the pinnacles of political power?
Wikileaked 2015 “Spirit Cooking” Invite for the Podesta Brothers
That’s right, this celebrity artist was intertwined with the super-creepos Tony Podesta, and Hillary Clinton handler John “Skippy” Podesta. Tony Podesta’s “art collection” in particular is such a combination of unwitting confession and blatant horror show, I’ve never been able to finish the piece I started writing describing it.
The referenced “spirit cooking” seems to refer to an earlier piece by Abramovic which features a litany of nasty behaviors. The website Artsy was quick to explain away how any concerns raised over such ideas passing as art in the ruling class must be due to alt-right-nutsy-tinfoil-hatter-hater-fascists:
The email, which referenced Abramović’s 1996 performance piece Spirit Cooking, set off a false conspiracy theory concocted by the alt-right. It grossly misrepresented the email, distorted Abramović’s work, and drew the unsupported conclusion that Abramović, the brothers Podesta, and even Hillary Clinton were in cahoots as Satan-worshipping occultists…
It seems innocent enough: a dinner prepared by a controversial but influential artist whose work has been honored by prominent institutions the world over with large-scale exhibitions, honorary degrees, and more. (Her 2010 mid-career retrospective at MoMA, “The Artist is Present,” was one of the most popular shows the museum has ever mounted.) But members of the alt-right community decided to focus on selective facts about the performance, and in turn make massive “logical” (if that word even applies) jumps…
The ensuing bogus conclusions were inspired in large part by fairly buried documentation of a previously rather unknown 1996 Abramović performance and book of the same name. Unknown, not because Abramović had anything to hide, but because, in the grand scheme of her daring oeuvre, it wasn’t the strongest or by any means the most shocking piece she created. In it, a bespectacled, calm Abramović wrote absurdist phrases that resemble discombobulated, dark self-help mantras on the walls of an entire gallery in pigs blood.
Several of the phrases read:
“Fresh morning urine. Sprinkle over nightmare dreams.”
“With a sharp knife, cut deeply into the middle finger of your left hand. Eat the pain.”
“Mix fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk. Drink on earthquake nights.”
“Sitting on a copper chair. Comb your hair with a clear quartz crystal brush, until your memory is released.”
Yes, the phrases resemble incantations or recipes for storybook potions. And true, they make little sense. But that’s precisely Abramović’s point. Across her career, she’s tapped into and simultaneously questioned the influence of ritual and religion, highlighting both their potency and, occasionally, their absurdity. Spirit Cooking isn’t a ritual meant to conjure spirits or worship devils—it’s a comment on humanity’s reliance on ritual to organize and legitimize our lives and contain our bodies.
John Podesta Overlaid On Spirit Cooking Instructions
Did He Eat the Pain?
There’s more upper crust shenanigans Abramovic has been mixed up in, like the entirely-not-Satanic-at-all mock cannibalism soiree at the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art in 2011. Punk icon Debbie Harry assisted in butchering a life-size cake replica of herself to serve the A List guests.
Say it Ain’t So Blondie:
Marina Abromovic and Debbie Harry Stab It With their Steely Knives
Doubts about Abramovic’s infernal intentions have cost her. She has stated despite her denials of serving Lucifer, she fears some nut will do her harm. She even lost a gig with another super-rich creepo, Bill Gates. Microsoft had to pull an ad for her “mixed reality” holographic projection due to her controversial reputation. What a loss. Who wouldn’t want to strap secretive technology onto your head to summon a sinister crone into your presence? It’s like a variation of the plot of Halloween III.
I would never presume to judge the state of someone’s soul. The nature of Abramovic’s beliefs are between her and the Lord. I too am familiar with the often dark places the pursuit of art can lead. It’s something of an occupational hazard for creatives.
However, I can speak plainly on Postmodernism, the destructive deconstructive philosophy had enables cultural institutional support for absurdities and abuses like Abramovic’s body of work. In my 2018 book, Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization, I wrote of the revolting relativism which drives the Postmodern ideology:
Where the Modern age formed a mandate to question everything, the Postmodern age demanded we accept anything. At least that’s what the rhetoric advertises. Like most Postmodern assertions, the claims of impartiality do not stand up to scrutiny; it’s just more camouflage for self-serving attitudes.
The expansion of Western civilization had been nurtured by belief in objective standards, which originated from an underlying order. Whether this order was divine or merely natural was debated, but the acceptance of universal laws was pretty universal. Objectivity meant comprehending reality, which existed beyond our personal preferences. We held these truths to be self-evident.
Postmodernists understand such objective standards are an obstacle to their desire for unaccountable power. Where Modernist skepticism was believed to be a tool to gain deeper understanding, Postmodernists project the notion that all the questioning and differing conclusions means there are no underlying truths.
To the Postmodernist, the cosmos is subjective. There is no reality to know, no morality, no way to gauge effective behavior; there are only opinions. These opinions aren’t even our own, but are determined by whichever group identity we subscribe to. We have no individual responsibility. It’s impossible to judge the quality of anything.
To the Postmodernist, because feelings exist, there can be no such thing as facts.
For people who claim it’s impossible to judge anything, Postmodernists are very judgmental. No culture is better than another, they propose, unless it’s the traditions and accomplishments of Western civilization. The West, which has given rise to the most prosperous and liberated societies in world history, is automatically bad, and needs to be destroyed.
Here the mask comes off. It’s those same old Cultural Marxists at work, lusting after the social control the freedoms of the West denies them.
Postmodernism is a ridiculous conceit. It cannot make anything new, it only creates pale imitations of the achievements of the past. It could only be embraced by pampered people who’ve never really experienced the uncompromising roughness of life. And even then, while advancing this phony philosophy, the Postmodernists have to overlook the glaring hypocrisy of their own behavior versus their words. They are seething with cognitive dissonance.
I have no problem in saying Postmodernism is evil. It’s whole purpose is to switch off the Enlightenment, so the New Aristocracy of the Well Connected can rule over a new dark age. Fortunately, the new force of Remodernism is rising as the spirit of the reconstruction we greatly need.
As far as Marina Abramovic goes, I’ll be praying for her-and for us all, as we endure the chaotic death throes of Postmodernism.
Marina Abramovic
Why Would Anyone Think She Was a Satanist?
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
THE REMODERN REVIEW 