Talking About Art While the World Burns

Sit Down John: A Portrait of John Adams by Gilbert Stuart

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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.

In my 2018 book, Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization, I described our descent into Postmodern tyranny this way:

“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.”

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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 a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

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Ever Get the Feeling You’ve Been Cheated? How the Art World Showed Us It Was Coming

No Fun: Rotten Reflects

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“Ah ha ha. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

So said John Lydon, AKA Johnny Rotten, lead singer of the Sex Pistols, as he squatted on the edge of the stage at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. It was the end of the band’s 1978 tour of America, and the end of the Sex Pistols too. Despite cashing in with member berry reunions in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Sex Pistols were spent as a creative force.

Lydon’s meaning was ambiguous and therefore multifaceted, open to interpretation. Was Johnny mocking the audience for enduring a lackluster performance from the group? Was he talking about himself, and how he had been manipulated by his scheming manager? Or was he still proclaiming the punk wake up call that the powerful are abusing the people?

All three possibilities can be true. In that moment the Pistols were still the unwitting oracles of art, acting as puny transmitters of cultural forces which rocked the world.

Johnny Rotten was a symbol not a just a man. This dead end Irish kid briefly manifested therapist Carl Jung’s comments on the role of the artist:

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is ‘man’ in a higher sense— he is ‘collective man’— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.”

Those who’d claim the Sex Pistols and punk in general were never a creative force to begin with just needs to look around at the world today. The music still gets played, the stories are retold. It is part of who we are now as “collective man.” It has endured the test of time, the most telling measure of art’s effectiveness.

Vast numbers of people display the tribal garb of artificially colored hair, torn clothes, tattoos and weird piercings that once signaled a determined, tiny subculture of would-be rebels.

The look is a cliché now, pure mainstream. A chuck of the populace is walking around wearing the skinsuits of a few outsiders who got aggressive and defiant about being cast as losers by the status quo, and decided make a visible and noisy issue out of it.

You might not like punk, but it prevailed. We as a people were transformed because it is art that shows us how to be. “Empire follows art, and not vice versa” was the assertion of an earlier rebellious English artist, William Blake. Empire in this quote can be read not as a specific political entity, but as the unifying ideas which direct a civilization. Hegemony is the word academics use for it.

Another Jung quote about art’s power is “All art intuitively apprehends coming changes in the collective unconsciousness.” Unfortunately, for over 100 years, the elites have been showing us through the art they promote their collective unconscious consists of an authoritarian insistence to worship power, enforced by fraud and force.

Galleries and museums are now chock full of off-putting and incomprehensible junk with insane valuations. The only reason it can be recognized as supposed art is because it is in a gallery or museum, placed there by the consensus of corrupted cultural institutions. Some examples of typical Postmodern masterpieces:

Maurizio Cattelan “Comedian.” Not funny.

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Performance Artist Marina Abramovic. She’s Definitely Not A Satanist or Anything Though

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Yet Another Banksy Half Assed Editorial Cartoon

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Huckster Jeff Koons

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We are being told to accept the lie that absurd trash is art because those in charge tell us it is. If we can’t see the validity, that is our problem for not being sophisticated enough to enjoy the emperor’s new clothes.

The establishment ordering us to accept fraud as art can be extrapolated into ordering us to accept the fraud in our elections. Once we capitulated to the first big lie, the rest come easier.

This Postmodern model, which demands we believe the groupthink dictated from on high instead of trusting our own eyes and instincts, has expanded outside of the arts and now is a global operating system. As I described in my 2018 book, Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization:

The arrogant ruling class is possessed by Postmodernism. They’re all in on the idea that tearing down the traditions and standards of Western civilization will cement their grasp on unaccountable power.

Once you understand that, the promotion of Postmodern art as the pinnacle of artistic achievement becomes understandable. It explains the Orwellian efforts behind the elevation of mindless attention-seeking as an attempted substitute for values, achievements and principles. Hyping soulless, unskilled art has a toxic, weakening effect on society as a whole.

Postmodern art is a tool of oppression.

Postmodern power relies on the people’s acceptance to dwell in an artificial construct shaped by the preferences of the powerful. This fake world just swallowed up yet another election here in the United States, and we are expected to go along with it.

The country is a mess, everything is going wrong, and in defiance of all historical trends, red tsunami pre-polling, and common sense, we are expected to believe we all voted for more of the same. To add insult to injury, the fake president told us they were doing it again.

I still can’t shake this bizarre feeling about Biden’s closing pitch ahead of the midterms. He said there’s going to be election deniers and that you must accept the results. Why would a President say this about a midterm that by all accounts he’s about to get crushed in? Weird.

— Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith) November 8, 2022

Unfortunately, as far as punk versus the corrupt status quo went back in the day, real reform is much harder to transmit than making a fashion choice. But art is once again showing a rising transformation which will rock the world.

In 2000, two English artists, Charles Thomson and Billy Childish, described a principled practical alternative to Postmodernism when they described an artistic philosophy they called Remodernism. Remodernism is a reboot of the culture which will wipe out the virus of Postmodernism. It was the harbinger change is coming to the collective unconscious.

Even those mainstreamers who’ve adopted the punk costume may intuitively know it means defiance. They are just unclear who it is they need to defy.

Our empire will follow art away from lies and back to authenticity.

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 a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

Stupid Climate Activists Make Stupid Attacks on Art

Art world links which caught my eye…

An Ignorant Assault On Civilization

For some reason environmental cultists have decided art vandalism is a nifty PR stunt for their hoax of an emergency.

The Washington Post covered the most recent revolting action in London where two “activists” from Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup on a Van Gogh sunflowers painting, and then glued their hands to the wall.

The painting was safely behind glass, and was not damaged.

Newsweek notes there have been about dozen of these attacks. So far no art has been damaged, but it seems like only a matter of time before these assholes escalate and maim something irreplaceable.

Being the darkness that makes democracy die, the Washington Post of course accepts the protesters’ wild climate premises.

Since the pandemic failed to crush society into a decimated docile serf class, now the elites have had to replace one overblown crisis with another. They’re trotting out the exhausted old climate change tropes again, but this time the kamikaze Marxists occupying the governments of the West are flying into action. They intend to catastrophically starve their populations of food and energy now to prevent imaginary problems in the future.

Astroturfed entities like Just Stop Oil and state run media like the Washington Post are sleeper cells that have been activated to reinforce the top down message of assumed doom. The hype generated provides a fig leaf for the disastrous deindustrialization the WEF insists on.

Columnist Philip Kennicot spouts the propaganda:

“When I see activists attack art, I feel the same revulsion most people do — and the sense of revulsion seems to be general and widespread. After two young supporters of the climate-change advocacy group Just Stop Oil threw cans of tomato soup Friday on a painting by Van Gogh in London’s National Gallery, social media accounts erupted in outrage. Much of this was from people who are no less committed to stopping global warming, including much of the art world, where the climate emergency is at the top of the agenda for many artists, curators and critics.

“But while I can’t defend the acts of Just Stop Oil, I can defend the anger of its supporters, who will experience the effects of global collapse further into the future than I will. They must grapple with existential decisions unprecedented even during some of the worst crises in human history, including whether to have children and continue the species, or to forgo offspring whose lives may be short and miserable.”

Kennicott’s big problem with the assaults on artistic masterpieces is that the vandals are preaching to the choir. The Postmodern art world already enforces adherence to leftist dogma as a prerequisite for participation. He protests that establishment art enthusiasts and cultural institution apparatchiks most likely embrace the climate alarmist narrative, and don’t need their opinions and actions tweaked by threats.

“Art attacks seem to be increasing. In July, the Italian group Ultimate Generazione (or Last Generation) directed its ire against Botticelli’s “Primavera” at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and in August activists from the same group glued their hands to the base of an ancient statue at the Vatican. All this is misdirected and counterproductive. It makes the urgency of the crisis seem ridiculous to people who are already disinclined to give credence to the science of global warming. And they create a false moral choice for those who love both art and the environment.

“As 21-year-old Phoebe Plummer, one of the two activists in London, asked during Friday’s incident, ‘Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people?’ The premise of her question, and the people whom she was addressing, are both poorly chosen. Very likely, given the self-selecting audience that visits the National Gallery, most of the onlookers would say: ‘Both.’

But the most disgusting part of the article is when Kennicott claims the defilers are attacking art because they just care about it so much. It’s classic abuser gaslighting.

“And if you look more closely at how these attacks are executed, it’s clear they express more a desperate love of art than mere rage or contempt for it.”

A twitter post summed up the reckless delusions of these masterpiece menacing guerillas.

The clueless crusaders don’t realize stopping oil without any effective, scalable replacement technologies means the death of millions and even civilization itself.

Radicals coined the term “useful idiots” to describe the dolts they tricked into advancing their agendas. I think we can remove the useful part.

pic.twitter.com/SbvTwJL9SL

— Rothmus 🏴 (@Rothmus) October 17, 2022

In my 2018 book Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization, I foresaw what actions the left would take, and what the stakes were.

The Modern age was the greatest liberation of humanity in history. As we became more efficient in providing the necessities of existence, we had more freedom to determine what kind of lives we wanted to live.
As Modernism rose to highlight the potentials of individual initiative, leftist political movements counterattacked. Their goal was to squash humanity back into undifferentiated, subservient masses.
The elitists understood to maintain power, they had to undermine resistance. That’s why the top down cultural forces have made Postmodernism so prevalent.
Using mass media to communicate their sickening message, the establishment made dispiriting Postmodernism the terrain we all must navigate, the atmosphere we all must breathe, the environment we all must adapt to.
But this effort at control loses its presumptive prestige once its mechanics and motivations are exposed. How can the spell of Postmodernism best be broken?
You can’t beat something with nothing, even if the something is as stupid and unfulfilling as Postmodernism. A credible alternative must be established.
Remodernism is the recognition that Western civilization is still mighty. Remodernism knows we can still use our talents to create unprecedented growth. Remodernism is understanding our best days are still ahead of us, if we make the right choices, and do the needed work.
We will demonstrate this in art, to begin with. Imagine a new, decentralized creative class not invested in trashing our culture, but in celebrating it. What a choice to present to our citizens. Uplifting, honest artistry will change the tone of our entire society. Where we go one, we go all.
Renew the arts, and renew the civilization.

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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 a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

DAILY ART FIX: AN ART EDUCATION IN POSTMODERN TACTICS

In August, I became a contributor to The Masculinist, a website exploring men, faith, and culture.

From August 20, 2021: AN ART EDUCATION IN POSTMODERN TACTICS

Cindy Sherman “Untitled Film Still #84” Photograph [Fair Use] Wikiart

There’s a common denominator to many of the problems our culture is undergoing. There has been a top down effort to drag society away from reality, and a mighty attempt to break the logical sequence of cause and effect. Based on administrative class manipulations, a politically driven preprogrammed narrative is supposed to overrule real life experiences, and all outcomes are to be filtered through ideological interpretation. We aren’t individuals with agency; we are divided into collective identities in conflict.  We’ve come to call this methodical corruption Postmodernism.

I have been aware of the Postmodern plot more than most because I first encountered this toxic mindset in a visual form, when I was an art student in the 1980s. Art is a leading indicator of social change, and over the decades since I’ve witnessed the distorted thinking I first encountered in the studio spread throughout society.

My Postmodern education started with a photographer: Cindy Sherman (b January 19, 1954). This internationally renowned artist was all the rage in the Virginia Commonwealth University art department. Students raved about her brave feminist stances, her creativity, her fiery social critiques.,,

Read the full article here: THE MASCULINIST – AN ART EDUCATION IN POSTMODERN TACTICS

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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 a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

Social Climate Change is the One to Focus On

Richard Bledsoe “The Conspirators” acrylic on canvas 24″ x 24″

I originally posted the painting above to this blog on March 31, 2019. This is what I had to say about it at the time:

My latest completed painting. These sinister characters lurk in the shadows and plot. It is them, and those of their ilk, which have woven the web of delusions that are driving our culture to ruin.

I spend a lot of time on the internet studying current events and bizarre phenomenon. I see something truly massive taking form that will change the dynamic of the entire world. I call these changes the dawn of the Remodern Age. I describe them in detail in my book, Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization.

Am I crazy, or ahead of the curve? Time will tell. In the meantime, here are another couple of sinister characters.

Richard and Michele Read the News

A year later, on March 31, 2020, we had just been informed two weeks to flatten the curve was just not good enough. Really. Flatten the curve, or flatten our civilization?

I am convinced the painting I made was a premonition of the Overblown Outbreak. What I did not take into account in the prediction made in my statement is before we reach the Remodern era, we have to survive the death throes of Postmodernism. We’re living that now, and it’s ugly.

The state of the culture is like that quote about the weather attributed to Mark Twain: everybody’s talking about it, but no one does anything about it.

Granted, there’s lots to complain about. Any sensible observer can see the social environment is rotting before our eyes. There’s endless commentary available on the latest outrages, and the hits just keep on coming.

It is important to call out the issues occurring. The first step towards change is recognizing there is a problem. But it’s only the first step. Once the problem is identified, it’s not effective to just keep recognizing it, over and over again. Action is called for.

Unlike the phony climate change hoax, the social environment is manmade. The cultural decay we are experiencing is the result of deliberate behaviors by specific people. They have intentions, and they make decisions. Funds are spent or withheld; access is granted or denied; viewpoints are encouraged or suppressed. The originating perpetrators tend to move stealthily, shielded by bureaucratic haze and patient incrementalism. Accountability is so defused, it is non-existent.  This is by design.

Much of the proclaimed Postmodern mindset is based on severing the rational connection between cause and effect. Popular Postmodern positions require accepting delusions like being born a particular sex does not determine what “gender” you are. Or that community crime is caused by too much of a police presence. Or that the most free, prosperous and diverse nation in human history is the most racist and oppressive.

The Postmodern philosophy tends to be a package deal; if you believe any of this junk, odds are you believe all of it. Easily verifiable evidence refutes these assertions, and scores of other crazy notions like them. And yet the evidence is not heard; it’s not even allowed to be presented. This is not an accident, not just chance or misfortune. It’s a carefully managed plan.

We don’t know the names of those who are ultimately driving these schemes. That’s part of the plan as well. What I can see informs me that these persons unknown are very aware of the reality of causation, and the destructive results of the ideas they promote. This isn’t a situation of unintended consequences.  The influencers aren’t deluded; they are manipulative liars, living embodiments of Doublethink double standards. They are superspreaders of delusion. They’ve weaponized it to advance their agenda.

Sadly, through covert campaigns, our cultural institutions are inundated by those working towards the death of our culture. Whether the participants are fellow travelers or just useful idiots, the end results will be the same.

Now, enough with the recognizing of the problem, again. Once recognition happens, it’s time to take responsibility.

What are we to do? I have great hope here. This human caused social environment crisis can be countered by other humans. Knowing most of our existing hierarchies are hopelessly compromised at the moment, independent action is called for. Let us be a joyous insurgency, each in our own way.

I have a soft target, in the arts. Establishment art has degenerated into an alienating money laundering racket. The audience for contemporary art is practically nil. Yet the creation and contemplation of art is an instinctual appetite for humanity. We still need it, want it, crave it even.

All you people who ever visited an art gallery or museum and left baffled or upset, I’m speaking to you. You were never the problem. So much of what our compromised cultural institutions present as art isn’t really art at all. It is propaganda meant to prop up the delusion. You knew they were failing to meet the genuine need for art you had.

I make art that comes to me in visions. Like dreams, the visions are full mysterious significance, and affirm the beauty and weirdness of the life God has granted us. My works will not be to all tastes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just know my paintings are the result of a sincere effort to share my particular nature in an attempt to reach universal connection.

Trust your own instincts, and find the art that appeals to you-or even better, try to make it yourself. It’s a rewarding experience, with endless capacity for growth.

Taking free actions, rejecting approved parameters of the officially sanctioned narrative, is how we can make actual climate change happen. It’s the Remodern way.

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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 a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

DAILY ART FIX: Art Or Heist? A Danish Artist Took $84,000 And Sent A Museum 2 Blank Canvases

Art world links which caught my eye…

I don’t know why this museum is complaining. This is the Postmodern model elitists have been promoting in action, taken to its logical conclusion.

The money was supposed to be used to create modern art. And it was — but not in the way a Danish museum expected when it gave an artist the equivalent of $84,000. In return, it received two empty canvases.

The artist, Jens Haaning, says the blank canvases comprise a new work of art — titled “Take the Money and Run” — that he calls a commentary on poor wages. One thing it’s not, he says, is a theft.

“It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work,” he said, according to Danish public broadcaster DR.

“The work is that I have taken their money,” Haaning stated.

The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg isn’t satisfied with that explanation, but that hasn’t stopped it from displaying the two canvases as part of its exhibition called Work It Out, which explores people’s relationship with work.

Read the full article here: Art Or Heist? A Danish Artist Took $84,000 And Sent A Museum 2 Blank Canvases

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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 a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

The Invisible Sculpture Sale is Symbolic of the Systematic Shams Elites Expect Us to Swallow

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet:

The $18,000 “Immaterial” Sculpture

The art world is in a crisis of relevance these days. Just about the only time art gets attention outside the culture industry cocoon is when it can exemplify stupidity, envy, or a combination of the two.

Stupidity comes when a PR hungry artist performs a silly stunt, like taping a banana to the wall. Or puts their dirty unmade bed into a gallery. 

Envy is invoked when a stunning sales price is announced. Most understand a high value for rarity and quality, such as a presumed work by a master like Leonardo Di Vinci; the uncertain Salvator Mundi sold for $450 million in 2017. People wonder how anyone could have that much money to spend on something made just to look at, and imagine what they could do those kind of funds.

But usually the art selling for inflated amounts doesn’t have that kind of legendary provenance. It’s in Modern and Contemporary art where foolishness and asset covetousness come together most clearly. It occurs when the general public sees obvious scams lavishly rewarded. The banana sold for $120,000. The unmade bed is valued at over $4 million now. The populace rightly scoffs at the sheer folly on display.

Salvatore Garau, an Italian trickster, produced a recent example of expensive non-art. His “immaterial” sculpture Io Sono (I Am) sold for $18,000. The piece does not exist. What the purchaser received for their money was the artiste’s word salad poor excuse for an explanation and a gen-u-ine “certificate of authenticity.” The patron must keep a 5 foot square space available for the nothing to be on display; fortunately, it does not require any special lighting or climate control. What a bargain.

There’s many unsavory factors festering under the surface in the art market. Money laundering, tax evasion, and insider trading doubtlessly drive the high financing. And yet there is something more sinister at work here than white collar crimes.

The villains aren’t the con artists who produce, or pretend to produce, ridiculous rubbish in the name of art. They’re just bit players. The real source of dangerous and deliberate derangement is the globalist New Aristocracy of the Well Connected. They’ve inherited and/or invented a whole phony world we all are expected to play along with.

The establishment has mislabeled hoaxes as art for at least a century. In 1917, a mentally ill woman submitted a urinal to an exhibit. The French charlatan Marcel Duchamp later took credit for it as a new form of expression; in fact, a higher form of expression, where something which is obviously not art becomes art by relying on elitist acceptance and support to function.

If you don’t accept a urinal – or an invisible sculpture, or a banana, or dirty linens – as art, well, that just proves you are one of those knuckle-dragging mouth breathers with deplorable Neanderthal thinking. The members of the club-they get it. Don’t you want to be a member of the club?

Art was just the thin edge of the wedge. It’s like visionary William Blake tried to warn us, “Empire follows art and not vice versa.” After the establishment weaponized art into an assault on reality itself, and made it a litmus test for social status, they’ve rolled out numerous other deceptive mandates to obey.

It’s so much worse than just having an opinion on an ambiguous situation. Again and again, the actual evidence contradicts the elitist position. Instead of accepting reality, our ruling class assume they can will their preferences into existence just by agreeing amongst themselves, insisting the rest of us go along with them, and blocking any channel for the truth to come out. It’s extra convenient for the in-crowd to advocate for any absurdity that comes along, because as elites they are not held to the standards of behavior they demand of others.

Our Postmodern Progressive overlords have developed a long list of required false beliefs for their followers to conform to: man made climate change is an emergency. Systematic racism exists. Citizens don’t need guns. The problem with the Middle East is Israel. Speech is violence and violence is speech, depending who the speaker is. Men can become women or women can become men just because they want to. Abortion is not infanticide. Defunding the police will lead to safer communities. The Woo Hoo flu is such a danger we must give up our Constitution. That same Woo Hoo flu was not released by the Chi Coms accidently on purpose. We did not just experience the most consequential and blatant election fraud in history. Joe Biden is not a perverted vegetable. Patriots are domestic terrorists. All will be well if we submit to our Postmodern Progressive overlords.

I bet if you believe one of these delusions, you believe them all. Congratulations, you’ve been successfully indoctrinated!

We’ve gotten to the point where there is such a disconnect between elitist desires and reality, it is a threat. The danger comes from just how far the establishment will go to maintain the illusionary world they’ve schemed into existence. The elitists believe they have power because they are just that much better than everyone else, not because they are willing participants in a consolidated combine of lies and cronyism. It will hurt to lose their prestige. They will defend it viciously.

Art is good place to start, to help ease the establishment out of their attitude of omnipotence. Hans Christian Anderson nailed the situation when he wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” We all need to be the little boy speaking truth to power.

The Emperors are naked. There is no invisible sculpture. And the whole Marxist program is based on lies.

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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 of Remodern 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 a book. Or a painting. 

Learn more About My Art: Visionary Experience

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

April 10 is Slow Art Day. Establishment Art Can’t Stand Up to Such Scrutiny.

Norman Rockwell “Art Connoisseur”

It’s an often quoted statistic that the average museum goer only spends 30 seconds looking at each artwork they encounter. 

The sad truth is, regarding much of modern and contemporary art, that’s about 27 seconds longer than needed.

The visual arts are in a crisis of relevance, largely due to dire mismanagement by our cultural institutions. Instead of being encouraged as a communion for all, for over a century many art administrators have favored art as a divider, an opportunity to flaunt elitist attitudes. Officially sanctioned art often emphasizes theoretical formal matters and sociological notions designed to exclude, rather than engage, the general public.

The same gurus that managed to marginalize a potent and universal human tradition which is older than agriculture are concerned over their waning influence in the culture. They’ve come up with a great solution: spend MORE time looking at the crappy, off-putting junk they’ve chosen to clutter our museums up with.

This need to reengage is made more urgent than ever due to the massive financial impacts of the Overblown Outbreak, the Woo Hoo Flu. Of course, museum administrators are status seeking and striving players in the New Aristocracy of the Well Connected. They were strident and vocal advocates for fear, shutdowns, and hysteria. Now, after leading the charge for the destruction of society, our cultural institutions are concerned about their fiscal futures. Actions and consequences, how do they work?

So the same places that chased away the populace by presenting pretentious artifice instead of art, and then demanded we all cower under house arrest indefinitely, now want people to turn out, and linger. Globalist mouthpiece the Washington Post reports on the dilemma in their article:

THE WASHINTON POST: The ‘Slow Art’ Movement isn’t Just About Staring Endlessly at Paintings. It’s Also About Accessibility.

“This year’s Slow Art Day — April 10 — comes at a time when museums find themselves in vastly different circumstances. Some are just reopening. Others have been closed for more than a year. Many are facing unprecedented layoffs or embroiled in controversies over diversity. But across the board, they are grappling with questions about who feels welcome in their spaces….

“At Slow Art Day events, museums generally ask visitors to look at five objects for 10 minutes each — enough time, often, to keep them looking a little longer.”

There is evidence abstract art’s 20th century dominance was a part of a CIA psy op, initially meant to increase America’s international prestige in the fight against international communism.  Now that communists are running the Agency, abstract art is yesterday’s news, but it is still revered as a pinnacle of highbrow taste.

Check out the blather of the would-be thought leader who wrote the Post article, waxing poetic about the fine embroidery on the Emperor’s New Clothes:

“After an hour spent in the cosmic, yellow world of Mildred Thompson’s “Magnetic Fields,” I noticed the alarmingly bright canvas subside into alternating tones of restraint and exclamation…”

Mildred Thompson “Magnetic Fields“

Would You Willingly Stare at This for an Hour?

It’s just like Nietzsche said: when you stare into the vapid void, the vapid void stares into you. As I described in my 2018 book, Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization:

Nonrepresentational abstract art is a safe space, a compromise for those who wish to appear cultured, while still remaining in compliance with the establishment status quo.

Abstraction underwent a process of gentrification. Once it was the rough slum of the art world. It was considered evidence of the breakdown of the social order captured in random paint. No matter that artists claimed they were seeking to purify their art by removing references to the surrounding world. There was a generalized suspicion abstract artists were covering up a lack of actual artistic skill.

But the elitists seized on the broad dismissal of abstraction as a way to differentiate themselves from the general public they despised. Abstraction furthered their goal of changing art into a rarified status symbol. Removing the demand for recognizable talent from the equation, abstract art enabled an elitist crony system. Art world insiders got to pick and choose which people they acknowledged as “artists”. Abstract art was also in sync with the materialistic Modernist mindset. The rich and powerful moved on abstraction in a big way, renovating the neighborhood, as it were. Savvy upper middle class social climbers followed their lead.

As Modernism died and the high elite moved on to the anti-art of Postmodernism, abstraction remained as a stolid bourgeois default. This is possible because abstract art can succeed in one facet of what art does. It can be used for decoration.

All too often, abstract art fulfills a role much like a throw pillow: merely an accent, just another piece of the décor. Abstract art can be pretty, and even give a nice imitation of intensity, while remaining tame and non-committal.

Abstract art serves as a simulation of art for those who want to create the appearance of having art, without actually partaking in any of its most significant substance. Try to be tasteful, wind up bland.

Real art is many things, but it is not timid.

…Abstraction falls short in art’s most essential function: communication. Abstract artists may claim to pour intensity into undefined colors and shapes, but it’s hard to recognize. One paint smear looks much like another. It’s difficult to discern the intention behind them. It’s challenging and rewarding to convey a sense of the actual into art, however stylized it may be. More importantly, by representing reality, artists tap into the infinitely rich world of symbolism.

A symbol is when something is shown that expands into greater significance which is not literally shown. A symbol demonstrates that life is more than only what appears on the surface. A symbol gives clues towards the underlying mystery of existence…

Humans understand life through stories: patterns of events that illustrate ideas, incarnated by people taking action in a tangible environment. Abstract art misses out on these basic intrigues. Artists and patrons who don’t partake in representational art are losing the most powerful and worthwhile aspects of art. They fail to experience meaning.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying an uncomplicated, pleasant aesthetic experience. But art is capable of delivering so much more. Looking at abstract art, I want to ask: “Is that all you’ve got?” I’d expect a higher standard of performance from human beings, with all of our ingenuity and dexterity.

But the folly of trying to wring significance out of museum-cloistered smears and spatters may soon be a much rarer opportunity. The establishment has new version of empty not-art to virtue signal with: racialist propaganda.

As an example, the Syracuse Everson Museum of Art sold off a notable 1946 work by the notorious king of the abstract expressionists, Jackson Pollock, so they could bankroll diversity impulse buys. I bet the museum’s wiser board members are pissed, but are too afraid to say anything. Everson got $14 million to invest in treasures like these:

Sharif Bey “Protest Shield #2” 2020

Ellen Blalock “Bang Bang You Dead” 2018

These works stick obvious Cultural Marxist tropes where the nuanced and rewarding experience of art should be. They are visual one-liners. Patronizing maneuvers like these will do nothing to address the crisis of relevance in the visual arts. Swapping poorly executed icons of snobbery and obscurity for poorly executed icons of affirmative action and activism is just a new flavor for the same old failures and alienation our cultural institutions have been serving up for decades.

What we are seeing is the death throes of Postmodernism, the exhausted system of manipulation and deceit the elites have been using to rule over us for decades. The great critic Robert Hughes summed up the art experience Postmodernism does not provide in his landmark 1980 series, The Shock of the New. As he purred in his patrician Australian accent:

“In the 45 years I’ve been writing about art, there has been a tragic depreciation in the traditional skills of painting and drawing, the nuts and bolts of the profession…Painting and drawing bring us into a different, a deeper, and more fully realized, relation to the object. We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art, art that holds time as a vase holds water. Art that grows out of modes of perception and making whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel. Art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in ten seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep running in our natures. In a word, art that is the opposite of mass media.”

As Postmodernism is devoured by its own doublethink and frustration, the replacement philosophy of Remodernism is simmering and growing among the people, looking for new ways to manifest itself. This Invisible War is not over.

By all means, spend time with some real art. You will know the art that resonates with your taste when you see it, and no one can tell you that what you like is wrong. Better than just visiting for ten minutes, fill your home, and your life, with it. My wife and I are both painters, and the walls of our house are covered in original works. It’s like living inside a treasure chest.

Who knows, some probably genuinely love the abstraction and agitprop favored by the self-aggrandizing gentry class. However, probably most people “like” it because they believe it’s what is expected of the social status they aspire to.

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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 a book. Or a painting. 

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers! Please visit other posts for more discussion about the culture.

COVID, THE ARTS, AND OUR SKIN SUIT WEARING ESTABLISHMENT

Governing Class Manipulations are the Worst Pandemic of All

I was never a big Twitter user. So once they started in with the Stalinist censorship, it was easy for me to boycott them, as every freedom-loving person should.

I assume the pithy humorist Iowahawk is no longer on the platform. I may be wrong, but I won’t give them a single click to try and verify. Iowahawk’s little stilettos of wit were Wrongthink incarnate; whether he got kicked off or joined the stampede away from @Jack’s totalitarian tactics, I couldn’t say.

Over the years, one of Iowahawk’s greatest hits became a recurring meme on the blog Instapundit. Our Cultural Marxist dominated culture gave plenty of opportunities to apply it.

Back When Twitter Still Mattered: IOWAHAWK Nailed It

After the kamikaze elitist coup against reality that was 2020, it looks like our entire establishment is now attired in the flayed husks Iowahawk described. They’re strutting around like so many lamb silencing Buffalo Bills, decked out in, um, recycled finery, the rotting remains of what were once our enduring cultural assumptions. We peasants are supposed to look up from the pit they’ve thrown our society into, and tell them how pretty they look. It’s a grotesque display. 

I was reminded of the catastrophic lies we are expected to accept when I read a recent article about the Overblown Outbreak and the arts:

USA TODAY: Why We Need the Arts and Humanities to Get Us Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

“In addressing these issues, among others, society needs the work of scientists and health professionals to be informed by, and infused with, a wide range of human insight, experience and values,” the authors, Dr David Skorton and Dr Lisa Howley,  opine. “We need not just science but also the arts and humanities — and a union between them.”

Sounds reasonable, right? It ought to be, but you have to understand the bait and switch lurking in their sentiment. These doctors are wearing many layers of skin suits. They assume they can deceive us because we will still honor the institutional memories of the norms leftists have massacred and mutilated in their pursuit of unaccountable power.

First, they invoke Science. We are supposed to rely on it as our only hope:  “For 2021 to be brighter than last year, science and scientists must continue to play their indispensable roles, and must be taken seriously,” they intone.

But what is on offer is not science like it used to be, with careful collection and measurement of data, facts and evidence, tested and verified, peer reviewed and documented, to produce a reasonable, repeatable result. That is the skin we are supposed to see.

The truth behind the mask, and the masking, is “Obey me, because Science.” What we’re actually getting is Establishment Science, which is arbitrary, factless, incoherent, and nonsensical. We had to shut down the world for a virus with a 99.98% survival rate. The infection counts are based off unreliable tests which have found that samples of Coca Cola and papayas have Covid. The death counts are wildly inflated by claiming anyone “with” Covid died “of” Covid, which is not the same thing at all – let alone all the cases of flu, pneumonia, cancer, and even accidents, fed into the cooked Covid stats.

The demands of the Science they wield make no sense. We can go to Walmart, but not to church. Can’t go to school, but go ahead and join in with mass protests and riots. Even with a so-called “vaccine,” we are to remain masked and distanced forever. Why?

Consider the contradictory gyrations over time of a certain Dr. Fauci. He said at first no masks were necessary. Then he said that was lie he told the public (great ethics there Doc!) because medical professionals needed the masks and he didn’t want to run out – even though at the same time he said any old piece of cloth would do as a face covering. As if a bandanna could stop a virus. More recently he said two masks good, then recanted, then reversed again. Why anyone with a memory would believe anything this erratic bureaucratic hack says at this point is beyond me, but he is held up as the Voice of their specious Science, and we are all supposed to follow his deranged proclamations.

The authors treat the arts and humanities with the same misdirected appeal to long squandered creditability. They segue from science to the arts with a quote from a revered figure: “As no less a mathematician than Albert Einstein put it: ‘All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree’ because all serve the same larger purpose — to uplift the lives of human beings.” But then they go on to define what they mean when they say art: “imagination and curiosity, communication and empathy, critical thinking and social advocacy (emphasis mine.)”

The first five descriptors are the skin suit we are to recognize; traditional ideas of what art can do. It’s what art used to provide. However, if these deceptive doctors were honest about the current state of our cultural institutions, they would eliminate everything except the last item on that list, “social advocacy,” which corrupt totalitarians want to tack on to every facet of human existence these days. When these characters say the arts and humanities, what they really mean is “poorly camouflaged leftist activism.”

In Establishment art, social justice warrioring holds dominion over all. Instead of unifying us during this time of Corona, they want us to bask in the uplifting experiences like those available from the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art: “The pandemic of racism, the pandemic of lack of food access, those pandemics have been going on for many, many, many years.”

And from gallerists like the fellows at Passage Arts: “Their conversation spanned inequity, racism, the mis- and underrepresentation of indigenous voices, and the unequal power dynamic between galleries, artists, and collectors.”

Artist Charles Gaines offers up, “There’s another part to this, which is that I wanted to undermine universal notions. That came out of my lived experience as a Black person. If you’re Black, or if you look Black, there is a different set of rules than if you’re white. Being white has been [considered] a universal expression of humanity, and racism played into that by marginalizing people who are not white.”

Funny, it seems to me art is universal, and encompasses all times and all cultures. Art is as human as the opposable thumb, and just as prevalent. It’s older than agriculture. The arts and humanities could be a force bringing us all into harmony. But some cultivate fragmentation and factionalism in the arts, and in society in general, thinking it will bring them personal advantages they would otherwise not achieve.

It’s telling how Gaines describes the evolution of his own art: “… because my work of that period was not political. [Politics] really entered my work a decade later. To the world, it just looked like my use of grids and numbers was a continuation of the conceptual enterprise—and it took me a little while to understand the politics of that. My work just couldn’t get past a certain level of interest…But I reached a ceiling where I couldn’t get writers to write about me and curators weren’t interested in putting me in shows. The way I look at it, if I had got a bigger public profile, then I think Dia would have been interested.”

Paint by Numbers? Detail of artwork by Charles Gaines

The fast track these days is to cynically exploit progressive virtue signaling as a means of career advancement. Being a proclaimed activist artist allows mediocrities to garner attention while producing dull, dead end rehashes of ideas better explored by other artists.

The contemporary art world Establishment solicits proclaimed victimhood as a means of advancement, and it has devoured the industry. There’s no uplift to be had in preaching grievance, displaying covetousness, and trashing the mighty achievements accomplished by our forefathers. All this posturing is just another form of Cultural Marxist social engineering, which they accomplish through the manipulation of language, or to put it another way, lies.

The suffering and decline we are undergoing is meant to bring us to heel. What we are witnesses to is the practitioners of the toxic philosophy of Postmodernism making their big move to enslave humanity forever. As I state in my 2018 book, Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilization:

A quick way to summarize Postmodernism is to describe it as a kind of magical thinking among the intelligentsia. They have convinced themselves and each other that language shapes the world, and by controlling the social narrative, they can force the universe into obedience.

The Modern era questioned truth and the nature of reality. Postmodernists flatly declare there is no such thing as truth, and “reality” is determined by the preferences of the powerful. Since they have maneuvered themselves to be in charge, the elitists behave as if reality had to conform to their theories, not the other way around.

Our would-be masters wove a make-believe world where their particular skill sets dominate. Because of the strategic way the establishment infiltrated their ridiculous conceits into society, they made great progress in remaking our civilization in their own corrupted image. For too long we’ve been enmeshed in their Matrix-like web of relentless misdirection, distraction, and subversion.

 Since the past is full of examples that contradict their assertions, Postmodernists attempt to deny, destroy, and redefine it. Since freethinking individuals might not agree with their stances, Postmodernists attempt to divide everyone into collective groups which can be manipulated into divisive conflicts.

Postmodernism is a cynical, despotic fantasy. It’s like a mafia made up of spoiled children. Because a lot of influential people have embraced it, we have the current ongoing disasters in our society. They are deadly serious about trying to make us all submit to their sense of entitlement, which is exactly the reason they need to be thwarted.

It’s a good thing these elitists are so profoundly ignorant of anything outside their ideological biases. They don’t understand actual history, only their pretend revisionist versions of it. They are so convinced of their own invulnerability, they overlook the inevitable fate of tyrants grown rigid.

The two doctors finish their pious piece with “The arts can not only help heal our bodies during these difficult times, they can help heal our souls.” While only God can heal our souls, art could be there for those seeking the solace of beauty, order, and inspiration. Unfortunately the current state of the institutional art offers only propaganda and proselyting. They don’t want to comfort, they want to convert.

Under Postmodernism’s tyranny, the arts and humanities don’t offer concord – they are meant to be a means for conquest.

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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 a book. Or a painting. 

My wife Michele Bledsoe has written her own inspirational book, Painting, Passion and the Art of Life.

Remodernism Video: BEFORE THERE WAS FAKE NEWS, THERE WAS FAKE ART

Visit other posts for more commentary on the state of the arts.

Please send any inquiries to info@remodernamerica.com. Thank you!

TRUMP VS POSTMODERNISM

President Donald Trump is Ending the empire of Lies

So on Saturday November 7, 2020, all the colluding factions of the entrenched establishment unleashed The Big Lie #6,675,309. Based on unverified votes from four infamously corrupt, fraud-ridden cities, the fake news media now gets to certify the election, and declare Chinese takeout-brained child groper Joe Biden as President, at least until Komrade Kamala gets the nod to basement him permanently.

To borrow a phrase, that’s not how any of this works. But people too dumb to know better took to the streets to rejoice, forgetting all about the phony plague which enabled the mail in vote hoax in the first place. What we are seeing in this immense disconnect between belief and reality is the result of the cultural coup known as Postmodernism. Postmodernists believe they can rule merely through the manipulation of language and will power. It is the governing philosophy of globalism.

This blog is usually about art, though the various outrages of 2020 have been pulling me outside the normal scope of that topic. My perspectives on the dysfunctions of the contemporary art world have informed my insights of the great assaults occurring against Western culture. The weaponizing of our institutions against us has been a long term Marxist project. Extrapolations of the absurdities and abuses I first encountered in 1980s art school education are now informing our politics on a vast scale. And because the Left insists on trying to cram its preferences down everyone’s throats, now everything is supposed to be political.

Undermining and toxic ideas have been strategically fed to us for decades. And now the elites are trying to reap the harvest they have sown: a substantial percentage of the populace incapable of accurately understanding events happening right before their eyes. The preprogramed will reflexively follow the orders disseminated from on high. As I wrote in my 2018 book, Remodern America: How the Renewal of the Arts Will Change the Course of Western Civilzation:

“Postmodernists are parasitic. They are so other-directed, they can’t
lead an independent existence.

“Postmodernists rely on a mob mentality to support and reinforce
their irrational ideas and behaviors. As their intellects cling to group
identification instead of independent thought, and their stunted emotions merely mirror groupthink expectations, Postmodernists are
primed to sell their souls to fit in. They deny there is any such thing as
a soul anyway, so it’s easy to give it up.

“The price doesn’t even need to be high. Postmodernism is a poverty-stricken ideology, so its practitioners have meager expectations.

“Most will never live the jet-setting lifestyle of their globalist masters.
These influencers don’t have to operate within the perimeters they
inflict on others. Postmodernists strive for the opportunity to bask in
the reflected glory of their controllers.

“As Postmodernists are in thrall to the limiting collectivist fantasies
of Marxism, it makes them anxious followers. They want to be in with
the in-crowd, part of what they are assured is the inevitable winning
side of history. It is the dream of every progressive to join the most
favored status clique, where their ilk gets to call the shots.

“This conceit plays into the leftist assumption that in the utopia to
come, some animals will be more equal than others, as Orwell predicted. They acknowledge no God that created all men equal.

“Leftwing rhetoric of fairness for all is just hype designed to deceive. Once triumphant, the radicals will punish their enemies and
reward their friends, just like Postmodernist President Barack Obama
urged them to do. Postmodern minions want to make sure they are in
good with these brutal inquisitors. Postmodernists will commit acts of senselessness and violence when top-down social pressure is applied.

“The Postmodernists have stolen the forms of religion to serve their
aims. Original sin is now race, or carbon footprints. Indulgences can
be purchased by reciting the catechisms of social justice. To prove
loyalty to the cause, the SJWs eagerly throw blasphemers into the fire.
Since they don’t know history, Postmodernists don’t see the predictable Marxist pattern that today’s obedient flock will be tomorrow’s
barbeque.

“The spiritual life of Postmodernism has been misdirected from
transcendental and enduring values to ponderous politics. Nothing is
sacred. There is no sense of continuity; only the needs of the moment
matter. Where there should be a human spirit engaged with the eternal choice between good and evil, Postmodernists substitute slavish
devotion to those who reduce morality to dominance.”

This is what we Americans are facing off with today: lying bullies who plan to extinguish our way of life, and to also extinguish as many of us as it takes to make that possible.

If you think this country’s bad off now, Just wait ’till I get through with it.

Another famous Marx is credited as saying: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”* Our Postmodern-indoctrinated brothers and sisters will accept the assertions of supreme leader Rufus T. Firefly over evidence and facts every time. It’s what they’ve been trained to do.

*(I know that’s a misquote of a line actually said by Chico. Forget it, I’m rolling. )

But despite the fast moving events unfolding, I actually feel very positive about the ultimate outcome. Because something happened that was not according to the Postmodern plot, and it ruined their timetable. The enemies of liberty had their hand forced. They’ve been exposed, and had to strike too soon. This is a miracle. If we’d have another decade of Postmodern manipulation, the American experiment would have been lost forever.

So what happened? Postmodernists did what they do best: they were so busy preening and gloating over their assumed superiority and omnipotence, they missed the reality taking form right before their eyes.

When Washington Democrats (and Republicans too) conspired to the crush the grassroots Tea Party which broke out to resist their excesses, they assumed that was the end of that. Their arrogance led them to overlook how the Tea Party energy crackling through the country found a champion: the skilled builder, executive, and class traitor Donald J. Trump. He left behind the luxurious lifestyle of a celebrity billionaire to confront and reverse the slow poisoning of our society.

I think it’s no accident he comes from a construction background. He understands having to confront and overcome tangible, complicated challenges, with the final results clear for all to see. This is an entirely different skillset from the Postmodern establishment, which specializes in word games, sycophancy, perversions, and criminal behaviors.

Because President Donald Trump does not conform to the poses and assumptions of the Postmodern elite, they didn’t take him seriously. They still continually underestimate him. This fraud-ridden election is coup #3 attempt against this man who pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to rescuing the United States from destruction. He’s seemed to thrive while doing it.

President Trump knows, better than any of us do, this is it. It’s crash or crash through. There will not be another chance if we fail at this key moment. American rule of law advises us that we follow a process to address this outrage of a stolen election. We will follow that process until it is exhausted before we take whatever next steps are needed to save the Republic. But we will give proof through this night that once again, our flag is still here.

It would be unimaginable that this world changing individual walked blindly into an office-ending ambush of voter fraud. President Trump has literally been describing and warning us about it for months. I don’t know what measures he organized to counter it; I expect we’ll find out soon enough.

If you are silly enough to think Trump was unprepared for this latest challenge, you haven’t been paying attention. Or maybe you are a Postmodernist.

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