-Billy Childish(b. December 1, 1959), the co-founder of Remodernism.
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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 love the dark and powerful music Australian singer Nick Cave made through 1980s to the early 2000s. Starting off with the nightmare postpunk band the Birthday Party, then forming his own epic Old Testament/Southern Gothic flavored anthem group Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cave survived addiction, angst and personal tragedies to become one of the elder statemen of alternative music.
Now Cave has intensifed his visionary explorations into another field, visual art.
“One can tell from viewing his work that Cave is serious about making art. In ‘The Devil — A Life,’ a honed and aesthetic sensibility is apparent in well-executed ceramics, which cleverly reference Victorian porcelain but which feature Lucifer as the main subject. The works relay a tempestuous tale that oscillates between good and evil and stirs corners of empathy in a strange sort of way, a way we might have felt before from his music. Cave loads in a lot of symbolism and draws on topics around death and violence, but also love and religion. Darkness is always paired with light…
These larger standalone pieces evolved out of so-called spill vases that he had initially started out making—Cave’s interpretations of Victorian vases that would hold a roll of paper or a twig, used to transfer a flame from one place to another in the house. ‘I wanted to make these because I wanted my work to be well and truly craft, so that it would not put me into the art world,’ Cave says. ‘On some level, it is the last place I wanted to end up as a musician—the track record is disastrous. I went to art school [and so] I had a lot of artist friends and making art was a serious thing; they put their lives into this. This idea that you can knock out some paintings between tours felt like a kind of a vanity. That’s why I wanted to make craft things.’”
Their folkloric style and craftiness, however, is exactly what makes them appealing. In an art world where so much work is just about a clever elevator pitch, the works Cave has made are sincere, clearly the result of an inner world percolating outwards, and products of an interest in process and curiosity. Maybe that is the irony—Cave’s attempts to avoid being read as an artist as such landed him in an art gallery. And that in-between state of Staffordshire ceramics (which he actually collects himself) as neither high or low art is what makes them so interesting to the art world, but also to Cave. ‘They are a bridge between craft and art, essentially made to bring a little joy into people’s lives,’ he says. ‘There is a naive innocence about them—no pretension.’”
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.
Ed Paschke “La Chanteuse” oil on linen 25 7/8″ x 48″ 1981
Chicago Imagist painter Ed Paschke was ahead of his time.
“Though images that reference digital culture may feel common today, La Chanteuse and Prothesian looked radical when they were painted in the early 1980s. Mimicking the visual language of technology, with its static and surging electric impulses, Paschke veils his figures in distortion, evoking the loneliness, disjointed communications, and deceptions of the modern age.”
Ed Paschke “Prothesian” oil on canvas 42″ x 80″ 1982
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.
Art is not an American male priority. With our focus on responsibility and practicality, art might seem frivolous. It’s considered a hobby, therapy, good for the kids. We have little sense of its potential power.
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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 continuation of a new series of Remodern America videos. These videos are possible due to the technical skills of my wife: I am the director, and she makes my vision come to life. It’s another fun part of our creative collaborations.
Video Number Five: Empire Follows Art
Over the last century, our way of life followed art away from reality and into a fantasy world generated by The New Aristocracy of the Well Connected, where they reign supreme. Art for them is just another form of propaganda to propagate their own power.
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 continuation of a new series of Remodern America videos. Number four is a video about painting and intellectual theory about “the end of history.” There is no end to history, just as there is no end to human potential. Great art reminds us of this.
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.
Richard Bledsoe “I Believe I’m Sinking Down” acrylic on canvas 30″ x 40″2023
In September of 2023, I completed the third work in a commissioned series of paintings.
I spent much of 2023 on this major painting, a depiction of the final act of a great American myth.
I’ve loved blues music since I was a teenager in the 1980s; the first purchase I ever made in the genre was a cassette of the Robert Johnson compilation “King of the Delta Blues Singers.” I’d read about the legend of how Johnson went to a crossroad and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly glory. The tale resonated with my interests in both spirituality and weirdness.
Those same fascinations drive my art. In 2021, I finished a major painting on Johnson’s tragedy.
In an earlier post I described how my depiction of “Hellhound On My Trail,” sold to an out of state patron. As this painting represented Johnson haunted by his diabolical deal, this patron requested two more works to show the beginning and ending of Johnson’s downfall. He wanted depictions of both the initial crossroad meeting and the ultimate consequences, when the devil comes to collect.
“I have visions. They come at the most random times. I could be washing the dishes, or driving to work, and suddenly the picture is there. It usually arrives now with a title, dimensions and suggestions for technique.”
I had to find the vision within myself for the paintings before I could commit. I was was blessed that inspiration struck, and I saw how I could tell those other parts of the tale.
The new version of “Crossroad” would be that moment where the man had to make that choice, hesitating right on the threshold of destiny and damnation, all taking place as some eerie moonlit blues.
The new version of “Sinking” shows the man where he thought he wanted to be, experiencing the glamour of being on stage, under the lights, unleashing the talent he sold his soul for. But he has never been more alone, singing to no one, in front a kudzu patch strangling the life out of a dark forest. Only an owl, a harbinger of death, witnesses his performance.
The lights reveal the man’s soul demonically twisted into oozing corruption. The end is near.
It was intense to return to this large work over and over again throughout the year, slowly bringing it into full realization.
Here is the full story in the order of occurrence.
Richard Bledsoe “At the Crossroad” acrylic on canvas 30″ x 40″
Richard Bledsoe “Hellhound On My Trail” acrylic on canvas 30″ x 40″
Richard Bledsoe “I Believe I’m Sinking Down” acrylic on canvas 30″ x 40″
I will look forward to doing more paintings exploring America’s rich heritage and mysteries.
As I worked on “Sinking,” I took pictures charting its development, some of which I share below.
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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 launch of a new series of Remodern America videos. Number one is a video about British Conceptual artist Damien Hirst, memento mori, and vanitas paintings. Unlike the inspirational art of the past, the current establishment contributes to our destruction by replacing art with icons of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual deterioration.
Please like, subscribe, and share, thanks!
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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.
Sit Down John: A Portrait of John Adams by Gilbert Stuart
Art
Founding father John Adams had personal priorities he was able to extrapolate into a vision of progress for the United States.
In a letter to his wife, Adams explained, “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
Adams believed an emphasis on art had to come after at least two generations worth of work on practical matters before we, as a people, earned the right to luxuriate in matters of beauty and taste. It seems like good advice on the surface. Societies do need stability and peace before artistic efforts can thrive.
However, what Adams unfortunately did not realize is art too can be a weapon of war, and a means of politics. Even more concerning, those who miss how subliminally influential art is to the way society works are vulnerable to having the power of art used against them.
The bad news is, the damage of corrupted art already happened here.
Over the last century or so, the captured art world was used by our enemies to sever our cultural roots. Western values were undermined by the stealthy conquest and transformation of art from a timeless human practice and communal celebration into a Cultural Marxist scorched earth hellhole.
Our way of life followed the direction this corrupted art led us, because like it or not, acknowledge it or not, a culture’s art shows the people who they are, and informs them on how to live. It’s not the only factor shaping our principles, but it is a powerful one.
That is why we need to look at and consider art’s ramifications even as practical matters degenerate all around us. Historically, establishment forces have always used lies to further their interests. However, before we had the current massive global scale of fake news, fake elections, fake pandemics and more, our elites trained us to accept falsehood by pushing fake versions of art.
Art will not be the only solution to the crises we face, but it is a vital resource that must be addressed in order to stabilize the situation and stop the bleeding.
Where to begin? First, defining the problems. Most people are alienated from art. However, when people complain about the poor quality of Modern art, they do not understand technically Modernism is now a bygone era which was only the thin end of the wedge of the artistic assault.
Modernism was a mixed bag of both successful innovations and failed experiments, which in art gained prominence in the 1800s and was spent as a cultural force by the 1960s.
The idea that began to take form for nineteenth century intellectuals that most of humanity suddenly lost the capacity for art is a cruel lie and an insult against the spiritual nature we all share, the spiritual nature traditional art appealed to.
The conceit that art is only accessible to an elite few, takes special esoteric knowledge to enjoy, or can be discarded from the human condition, is absurd in the course of global human history. Even agriculture, a cornerstone of civilization, is tens of thousands of years more recent than the production of art. Art is a legacy for us all.
Not all Modern art was bad. Many artists considered in their day as outrageous examples of Modernist degeneracy actually participated in the enduring values of art, albeit in new, and therefore poorly understood, ways. We can know them by seeing those who have survived the test of time, and are now recognized and beloved by the masses. Van Gogh, Monet, Chagall, Dali, Magritte, O’Keeffe, Kahlo, Klimt, Munch, and more, all were Modern in their own ways. They fulfilled the Modernist doctrine to use an individual vision to express universal truths about life, and they did not follow the demands of the church, state, or aristocracy. Posterity has rewarded them with generalized popularity.
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Van Gogh, Magritte, Kahlo, Dali, and Munch: Modern Art Enduring the Test of Time
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The failures of Modernism, and why it is and was so unsatisfactory to so many, comes from those notorious creatives who withdrew their art practices so far into abstraction they became non-objective, severing art from the natural world. The general audience recognized these as inadequate attempts at art because extreme abstraction robs art of two of its most vital elements: the display of masterful skills, and the ability to communicate. The works of players like Pollock, Rothko, De Kooning, Twombly and Stella embodied the reputation of fine art as both pretentious and something a toddler could produce.
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Pollock, Rothko, De Kooning, Twombly, Stella: How To Alienate An Audience
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The Modernist sequestration of art from the masses, which abstract and non-objective art accomplished, was coordinated by leftist operatives who rushed into the vacuum left by America’s initially benign indifference towards art. The push to make abstraction the pinnacle of art was the work of materialist Marxists such as critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. In retrospect it is not surprising this undermining of art also received assists from the villainous conspirators of the CIA.
Once the Marxist infiltrators had completed their march through the institutions, they proceeded to shape the art world in ways leftists always do: abusing their authority to manipulate language and change the meanings of words, throttling accessibility of resources, curtailing dissent, and cultivating an us-against-them mentality.
In the isolated, overlooked fiefdoms of fine art, these cultural influencers bred a monster: the soul crushing totalitarianism of Postmodernism. This is the world we are living in today. Postmodernism emerged as a culture force in 1960s, and now is the operating model for the globalist elite.
Postmodernists claims the preferences of the powerful overrule reality, and they expect us all to support their delusions of mastery.
“Postmodernism started off by redefining art into anti-art. It’s now spread. Like a virus, Postmodernism converted every institution it infested into a factory for producing more of the Postmodern disease. Postmodernism makes every worthy cause betray its rightful mission.”
Koons, Hirst, Emin, Banksy, Wiley: The Highs Costs Of Making Fake Art
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Postmodern art reflects and advances this corruption. The major artists pushed today by the corrupt art world offer irrelevance, carrion, excrement, pornography, debris, and propaganda.
The works of Koons, Hirst, Emin, Banksy, Abramovic and Wiley are examples catering to elite decadence with divisive, ludicrously pricy non-art.
In the years I’ve participated in the arts, I’ve watched the blue chip artists most emphasized by the Postmodernized cultural institutions gradually mutate from the abstract, to ridiculous Conceptual artists in 1990s, to now promoting identity ideology, all the time.
The mask is finally off, establishment art is just another cog in the Maoist Cultural Revolution our elites are fomenting.
Call Postmodernsim what it really is: a euphemism for a communist power grab, which is itself ultimately thinly veiled Satanism.
However, even as the captured art world subtly spreads toxicity throughout society, few are actually engaged with current art practices. I don’t have firm numbers to support this, but I would not be surprised if a good 90 percent of the population is not buying what elitist culture is selling.
The people do not understand though ignoring the bad art is not enough, because the fake art still taints public life.
So how do we fight back in the arts, the culture, and the downstream politics?
In a way, it will be easy. Art is up for grabs.
Art has been so mismanaged, next to no one is engaged with it. The arts are in a crisis of relevance, not because there is anything wrong with art itself, but because the powerful have committed a bait and switch. So much of what is offered up by museums, galleries, the media and academia does not earn the status of real art.
Properly situated, art is a powerful resource. So we fight back by making art great again.
We don’t want to try to beat Postmodern propaganda with propaganda of our own. We beat propaganda with real art, displaying the skill, meaning, beauty, and significance our culture has been denied by the compromised cultural institutions.
We out evolve those who’ve betrayed humanity by abusing art while pursuing their own personal power.
We show them the traditions of the West unleashed will trample the kingdom of deceit they’ve built.
I was inspired to take on this challenge by two British artists, Billy Childish and Charles Thomson. In 2000 they identified the fraud of Postmodernism as the enemy of human potential. They proposed Remodernism, a cultural reboot, an open source art movement for the 21st century. The experimental individualism of the Modern age must continue and regenerate society, but it can only do so enhanced with the holy revelation that in art and life, God is central.
Now that Postmodernism rules the world, the stakes are even higher.
The left does not expect a counterattack from the arts. They assume the arts are thoroughly conquered territory. But once again, Postmodernists have mistaken their own usurped authority as the only reality which matters.
A counterattack from the arts, made by real artists making art for the people, would devastate the Narrative the globalists push. It would expose them as the frauds they are, with implications far beyond art.
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Culture at the Crossroads
Richard Bledsoe “At the Crossroad” acrylic on canvas 30″ x 40″
Update: Welcome Instapundit Readers! Please visit other articles for more commentary on the state of the arts.
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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.
Richard Bledsoe “Squidgate” Oil on Canvas 36″ x 48″
In music, a greatest hits collection puts together the popular songs of a group or performer into one convenient package. Sometimes a new offering or a rarity is added as a bonus, or the selection is out padded out with not-quite-a-hit tracks.
After 8 years of serious blogging, I realize some of my more significant posts get lost in the shuffle. They won’t come up in the Top Posts sidebar unless they get rediscovered and receive a large number of views in a short time period.
To share some highlights, I’ve added a Greatest Hits widget to the side bar of the Remodern Review.
Instead of going strictly just by the articles with the biggest numbers of clicks, this collection is curated with the articles which mean the most to me, in addition to having large numbers of views.
I will periodically update the list to rotate through my favorites. The first list includes:
Marcel Duchamp was the precursor of today’s useless, corrupt art world. This article exposes his chicanery and the possible fate of the most infamous work attributed to him.
I’ve heard the authorship of the Postmodern manifesto is disputed. It doesn’t matter who wrote it; it is a deadly accurate description of the enemy’s mentality. Beyond Jordan Peterson’s devastating video takedown of Postmodern immorality, I have not found a better summary of the toxic philosophy which is destroying the world.
My interview with the cofounder of the Remodern movement. Thomson’s ideas and art are a great influence on me, it was an honor to get him to share some insights.
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I hope you enjoy some of my greatest hits!
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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 