It's smut, not art, Loveland protesters say

[blue]

Wow I think it’s stating the belief that (I will express my self, my beliefs, my opinions which will stomp all over your beliefs, opinions, and way of life simply because I can, and have no no NO responsiblity, consequence or repercussion). Freedom of speech or a cowards ways to trample on the rights of others?

 

[DarkNight]

critique of enrique chagoyas’ misadventures of the romantic cannibals

I found this very interesting article which criticizes the work from a number of different aspects including the "mis"use of primitive art form and the collision between Mexican Catholic tradition and North American tradition.

“And, of course, while many Hispanic Catholics are used to seeing icons of Christ’s torments, they would also be offended by this work.”

 

[spinoza1111]

Hello, this is Edward “spinoza1111” Nilges, the author of the post about Enrique Chagoya’s offensive Misadventure, where my post may be found at spinoza1111.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/notes-on-enrique-chagoyas-misadventures-of-the-romantic-cannibals/.

Moderator: If this post is too long, please let me know.

I was baptized a Catholic and practiced Catholicism for a number of years. However, I do not today believe in the divinity (as opposed to the human majesty) of Christ or the Magisterium of the Church. I have a Higher Power and a spiritual life.

Nonetheless I am very concerned about anti-Catholicism as was my father (Dr. Richard G. Nilges) who as a Catholic doctor spoke out on behalf of the right to life of the aging patient.

Enrique Chagoya is not a bad guy. But in academic and upper class Latin Americans, who romanticize pre-Columbian civilization, I detect a contempt for five hundred years of Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) civilization in Latin America.

This civilization was in many ways flawed. But unlike North American protestant civilization it was not, in the main based on slave labor, and outside of Brazil (which ended slavery in 1883) slavery was ended when it was still the mainstay of the South in the US.

It also generated its own “antibody” to its (very real) tendency to oppress and to enslave indigenous inhabitants in the form of a strong Gospel of liberation from Bartolomeo de Las Casas to Oscar Romero.

I do not believe God can be insulted or “blasphemed” since if God is a perfect being he would have neither need for praise nor be offended by mockery: He or She would just laugh as does the fond Father when his children tease him.

But I do feel that people can be insulted and even blasphemed. As I said, Chagoya offends Hispanic people who have imaged Jesus’ suffering and visited the stations of the cross for hundreds of years because they were living painful lives.

Chagoya insults the miners of Chile who called upon Jesus to save them. He insults Oscar Romero who raised the Host and was shot down by soldiers. Without I think knowing it, Chagoya makes common cause with goons who in Latin America have spat on the Cross when it was carried by union men.

A recent UN resolution affirms free speech while denying that we have a blanket right to defame other religions. Many people have found fault with this resolution.

However, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are inseparable. You don’t get one without the other. Therefore, we can tell where the one stops and the other starts…because we must.

Chagoya has the right to make pornographic claims about Christ in text form. However, if a parent, Hispanic or Anglo, brings his children to an exhibit, and that parent is forced to explain Chagoya’s Misadventure, then I think that parent’s religious freedom has been violated: because suddenly, she no longer feels safe in a public, civic space (a museum) and she no longer feels safe in a novel way.

A library has impious books: when I was a kid, we were encouraged to attend the public library by the nuns, but at the same time were warned that certain books were on the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum”, and it was our responsibility, starting at the “age of reason”, to avoid these books. As American Catholics, we learned that we, as an integral part of our religion, had to get along with and tolerate other faiths.

But learning this self-discipline also teaches one when one has crossed the line in a novel way, which is what Chagoya has done.

What I call “Brechtian” art (after the wealthy and successful communist writer who could not live under communism) is art whose centerpiece is “shocking the bourgeois”. But by definition this art has, to make its point, defame its target in the sense of the UN resolution.

Catholics, in my view, need in fact to make common cause with Muslims who don’t want their kids to see cartoons in which Muhammed is defamed, while at the same time supporting real free speech.

This takes a self-discipline which is no longer taught in the school.

Edward G. Nilges

 

[spinoza1111]

Yes, it’s called irony. If she did not like it, she could have just stayed away. She should be prosecuted, the same as if someone were to desecrate one’s church or synagogue. Protest is fine. Defacement of private property is not.

If a person or group of people cannot take pastiche cartoonism, then, well, they are behaving like the Muslims all fired up and mental over the cartoon of Mohammed.

Is it “irony”? Is irony saying one thing and meaning another? Gee, I thought that was lying.

Is irony “as easy as lying”, as Hamlet said when teasing Rosencrantz?

Irony in literature and art is like polyphony in music. It is not a blank check for lying and bullying (“oh they didn’t mean it, they are good old boys, they was just having fun with Emmett Till”).

Bertolt Brecht was a real funny guy, real ironic. Except of course about his personal comfort. Cf. Paul Johnson’s book, Intellectuals, even though Johnson’s a paleoconservative and I a flaming liberal. Brecht without irony ruined people’s lives when they got in his way.

Chagoya is not Brecht and seems to be trying to make amends. But Brecht led him into a trap, that of epater les bourgeois at all costs.

Now, as to “private property”.

Oh holy Private Property, we worship and adore thee
We sing thy praises every day because to own is gay!
We too will get some of you if we are good and clean
And let artistic bullies be so clever and so mean.

A-men.

That is: there is a Constitutional right in the United States to freedom of speech and religion but not to private property. Private property is protected as a non-enumerated right under the Ninth Amendment.

We know already that freedom of speech and religion are connected, inseparable. Hayek has shown that private property guarantees these two freedoms, and they it. Therefore we must always balance these acts.

The Loveland woman as an act of civil disobedience took responsibility for an illegal act and will be (rightfully) punished. But Misadventures was a deliberately crude and shocking artistic act which interfered with the free enjoyment of the Loveland museum by the taxpayers who support it.

If a Catholic no longer feels safe in taking her kids to a public place, this is a restriction on her freedom of religion, as long as her feeling is based on genuine church teachings.

In San Francisco in 1981, newspaper kiosks at child’s eye level invited people to sex parties. These were removed. That’s because jurisprudents decided that the freedom of people to go to sex parties (an important freedom in my view) was less important than the freedom of parents from anxiety when they took their kids downtown.

 

[larkin31]

Is it “irony”? Is irony saying one thing and meaning another? Gee, I thought that was lying.

Is irony “as easy as lying”, as Hamlet said when teasing Rosencrantz?

Irony in literature and art is like polyphony in music. It is not a blank check for lying and bullying (“oh they didn’t mean it, they are good old boys, they was just having fun with Emmett Till”).

Bertolt Brecht was a real funny guy, real ironic. Except of course about his personal comfort. Cf. Paul Johnson’s book, Intellectuals, even though Johnson’s a paleoconservative and I a flaming liberal. Brecht without irony ruined people’s lives when they got in his way.

Chagoya is not Brecht and seems to be trying to make amends. But Brecht led him into a trap, that of epater les bourgeois at all costs.

Now, as to “private property”.

Oh holy Private Property, we worship and adore thee
We sing thy praises every day because to own is gay!
We too will get some of you if we are good and clean
And let artistic bullies be so clever and so mean.

A-men.

That is: there is a Constitutional right in the United States to freedom of speech and religion but not to private property. Private property is protected as a non-enumerated right under the Ninth Amendment.

We know already that freedom of speech and religion are connected, inseparable. Hayek has shown that private property guarantees these two freedoms, and they it. Therefore we must always balance these acts.

The Loveland woman as an act of civil disobedience took responsibility for an illegal act and will be (rightfully) punished. But Misadventures was a deliberately crude and shocking artistic act which interfered with the free enjoyment of the Loveland museum by the taxpayers who support it.

If a Catholic no longer feels safe in taking her kids to a public place, this is a restriction on her freedom of religion, as long as her feeling is based on genuine church teachings.

In San Francisco in 1981, newspaper kiosks at child’s eye level invited people to sex parties. These were removed. That’s because jurisprudents decided that the freedom of people to go to sex parties (an important freedom in my view) was less important than the freedom of parents from anxiety when they took their kids downtown.

What a long rant against shocking and rude and unconventional art.

Good thing that most people understand sometimes that in literature, and music, and art one must show some disrespect to jolt conventional thinking out of their complacency and self-righteousness.

Even Jesus knew this, and did it himself.

And Catholics have NO RIGHT to attend an art museum and not have their religious sensibilities challenged, or even offended. That’s just silly. Stay home if you can’t take a challenge in a museum.

 

[Aramis]

Whatever the image portrays, it cannot
Portray Jesus Christ, because no one
Knows except, a few saints and mystics,
What Jesus Christ looks like.

Iconography dating back to the 2nd century has been found. It’s all remarkably consistent in terms of the facial features up to about the 9th century. And the second century fathers included several who knew Jesus, admittedly, they were of advanced age. Most of the older art was destroyed in the Iconoclast heresy, but, indeed, we have a pretty good idea of what Jesus looked like.

 

[larkin31]

Iconography dating back to the 2nd century has been found. It’s all remarkably consistent in terms of the facial features up to about the 9th century. And the second century fathers included several who knew Jesus, admittedly, they were of advanced age. Most of the older art was destroyed in the Iconoclast heresy,** but, indeed, we have a pretty good idea of what Jesus looked like.**

I have never heard this claim made before. Can you refer me to something that I could read on this? This is a fascinating claim, and it is new to me. Thanks.

 

[larkin31]

Wow I think it’s stating the belief that (I will express my self, my beliefs, my opinions which will stomp all over your beliefs, opinions, and way of life simply because I can, and have no no NO responsiblity, consequence or repercussion). Freedom of speech or a cowards ways to trample on the rights of others?

What “rights of others” could you possibly be referring to? Are you claiming a right not to have your sensibilities offended by an artist making his own individual private art? Or are you claiming that displaying the art in a show somehow violated one of your rights? I don’t like the piece much, but I see no form of logic that allows one to claim that someone’s “rights” were violated by either the creation of this work nor by the display of it.

 

[spinoza1111]

What a long rant against shocking and rude and unconventional art.

Good thing that most people understand sometimes that in literature, and music, and art one must show some disrespect to jolt conventional thinking out of their complacency and self-righteousness.

Even Jesus knew this, and did it himself.

And Catholics have NO RIGHT to attend an art museum and not have their religious sensibilities challenged, or even offended. That’s just silly. Stay home if you can’t take a challenge in a museum.

It’s not a rant, and I for one am tired of the overuse of a word which allows people to tune out of discussions.

Conventional thinking is by no means univocal, if it ever was. Instead, communities (such as churches and academic departments) form around resources and power. This produces multiple (cf Foucault) and intersecting small vectors of power.

Within these communities, a form of code and convention arises.

Within the Stanford art department, it appears that the “convention” was that people of fashionable ages, genders and races may disregard the sensibilities of people of unfashionable ages, genders and races as some sort of educational process, which is completely absurd, for you don’t educate a person if you offend their beliefs.

Jesus criticized the wealthy Sanhedrin. He did not mock Mary Magdalene or other hard and ill-used working women which is what the vandal appears to be. Jesus spoke truth to power, which is a lot harder and far more dangerous than sniggering at the religious sensibilities of truck drivers. Genuine truth to power can get ya crucified, or shot down with automatic weapons while serving Mass by soldiers trained in the USA.

Can it not.

Catholics with children have a right to go to museums and libraries that their taxes support and they have the right to protect their children against novel and Brechtian assaults on their sexuality and religion. Children are naturally responsive and enthusiastic about modern art; my kid was bored at the Metropolitan by traditional painting but perked up in the twentieth century galleries.

Furthermore, Chagoya is assaulting Hispanic working class mores. He mentions the fashionable Latin American educator Paolo Freire at his Stanford Web site. But Freire called upon the privileged to listen to the working class. Hispanic working people are religious and they do not romanticize, as Chagoya seems to, the slavery and organized murder that constituted at least part of Latin America’s pre-Columbian societies.

 

[larkin31]

It’s not a rant, and I for one am tired of the overuse of a word which allows people to tune out of discussions.

Yes, it is. You are just trying to disguise this.

Conventional thinking is by no means univocal, if it ever was. Instead, communities (such as churches and academic departments) form around resources and power. This produces multiple (cf Foucault) and intersecting small vectors of power.

Within these communities, a form of code and convention arises.

Sure. So what?

Within the Stanford art department, it appears that the “convention” was that people of fashionable ages, genders and races may disregard the sensibilities of people of unfashionable ages, genders and races as some sort of educational process, which is completely absurd, for you don’t educate a person if you offend their beliefs.

Sort of true. So what?

Jesus criticized the wealthy Sanhedrin. He did not mock Mary Magdalene or other hard and ill-used working women which is what the vandal appears to be. Jesus spoke truth to power, which is a lot harder and far more dangerous than sniggering at the religious sensibilities of truck drivers. Genuine truth to power can get ya crucified, or shot down with automatic weapons while serving Mass by soldiers trained in the USA.

Can it not.

Sure, sometimes. So what? Jesus was God, no?

Catholics with children have a right to go to museums and libraries that their taxes support and they have the right to protect their children against novel and Brechtian assaults on their sexuality and religion

No. There is no such right. You are speaking of a courtesy, not a right.

Furthermore, Chagoya is assaulting Hispanic working class mores. He mentions the fashionable Latin American educator Paolo Freire at his Stanford Web site. But Freire called upon the privileged to listen to the working class. Hispanic working people are religious and they do not romanticize, as Chagoya seems to, the slavery and organized murder that constituted at least part of Latin America’s pre-Columbian societies.

Interesting. So what?

My ONLY point is that the “right” that you are referring to is no actual right at all.

 

[estesbob]

I have never heard this claim made before. Can you refer me to something that I could read on this? This is a fascinating claim, and it is new to me. Thanks.

Reminds me of the story of the Nun who asked her third graders to draw a picture of somebody they knew. She stopped by one little girl’s desk and asked her who she was drawing and she said “God.” The Nun looked at her and said “but honey nobody knows what God looks like”. The little girl replied “well they will in a minute”

 

[larkin31]

Reminds me of the story of the Nun who asked her third graders to draw a picture of somebody they knew. She stopped by one little girl’s desk and asked her who she was drawing and she said God. The Nun looked at her and said “but honey nobody knows what God looks like”. The little girl replied “well they will in a minute”

haha

perfecto

 

[spinoza1111]

Yes, it is. You are just trying to disguise this.

Sure. So what?

Sort of true. So what?

Sure, sometimes. So what? Jesus was God, no?

No. There is no such right. You are speaking of a courtesy, not a right.

Interesting. So what?

My ONLY point is that the “right” that you are referring to is no actual right at all.

Actually, the right to enjoy the goods of civil society including museums is a non-enumerated but protected right under the Ninth Amendment. It’s why we have laws against disorderly conduct.

“There is no right to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater”.

 

[larkin31]

Actually, the right to enjoy the goods of civil society including museums is a non-enumerated but protected right under the Ninth Amendment. It’s why we have laws against disorderly conduct.

“There is no right to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater”.

that’s about safety, not courtesy

You have no “right” to have your sensibilities protected from insult. As I have said, repeatedly. You need to take a different tack.

What you DO have the right to do is to protest, peaceably and lawfully, against the exhibit. Some protests even assault viewer bystander sensibility. No problemo!

 

[spinoza1111]

Actually, as one of the non-enumerated rights covered by the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, the general public, including parents with children, have the right to peacefully enjoy taxpayer supported public venues. While these venues may, consistent with local mores, present Modernist works that may disturb, this doesn’t give Chagoya a blanket right to offend.

Given that other vectors of power (notably the feminist vector) presents male artists from presenting pornographic performances because these may offend the fashionable gender, I say that Christians must likewise not be offended in novel ways, devoid of artistic quality as far as I can see.

I do not think Chagoya has compensatory artistic merit, unlike let us say Edouard Manet’s painting, exhibited in the 1860s, Dejeuner sur l’Herbe. Instead, it is my judgement as an art teacher and artist that Chagoya has deliberately dumbed down his technique relative to his earlier etchings in order to pretend to be a folk artist: when in fact folk artists such as tattooists strive to improve and not dumb down their technique.

I do not think, as a working artist, that Chagoya’s work would be saleable in the free market. Therefore, public funds support his work’s being shown at Loveland giving the community some say over its content.

And I can say this while at the same time agreeing that the millionaire Rockefeller was wrong in the 1930s to cancel Diego Rivera’s commission for a mural because Rockefeller didn’t like the references to Marx in that mural.This is because the mural had labour-value and is pleasant to look at while at the same time making the viewer think. Chagoya’s Misadventure is crapola. I hope he learns from it and goes back to following Goya, who saw far worse things than Chagoya but controlled his brush and etching stylus to the end.

 

[larkin31]

Actually, as one of the non-enumerated rights covered by the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, the general public, including parents with children, have the right to peacefully enjoy taxpayer supported public venues. While these venues may, consistent with local mores, present Modernist works that may disturb, this doesn’t give Chagoya a blanket right to offend.

There is no such thing as a “blanket right to offend,” and no one claimed that he had such a thing.

Given that other vectors of power (notably the feminist vector) presents male artists from presenting pornographic performances because these may offend the fashionable gender, I say that Christians must likewise not be offended in novel ways, devoid of artistic quality as far as I can see.

What? “The fashionable gender”? What is THAT? Pornography is not against the law because it “offends a fashionable gender.” Where are you getting this stuff?

Chagoya’s Misadventure is crapola.

I don’t disagree. But this point hardly matters. And it is all you have to say on this, really.

 

[spinoza1111]

Pornography is against the law not specifically because it offends the fashionable gender but because the fashionable gender became politically active. That’s what made it fashionable, and what Foucault would call a vector of power.

Whereas American Catholics tend not to get rowdy, and as a result their religion is not fashionable. Many non-Catholics think of priest abuse when they think of Catholicism, not worker priests and others (such as Thomas a Becket and Oscar Romero) who spoke truth to power.

What I’m saying is heresy, of course. It was that “liberation theology” was on the right track, and that if American Catholics got rowdy on behalf of the least of their brethern this would make clowns like Chagoya think twice before dumping his garbage in a public space.

But, they disempower themselves to the extent they identify with power and think of themselves as part of the establishment in the USA.

American Catholics need to get rowdy, in the tradition of Dorothy Day about the excesses of capitalism and the monopoly of culture space by cheap anti-Catholic garbage insofar as in excess of free speech, an artist is interfering with freedom of religion.

 

[livnlern]

The Loveland woman as an act of civil disobedience took responsibility for an illegal act and will be (rightfully) punished. But Misadventures was a deliberately crude and shocking artistic act which interfered with the free enjoyment of the Loveland museum by the taxpayers who support it.

If a Catholic no longer feels safe in taking her kids to a public place, this is a restriction on her freedom of religion, as long as her feeling is based on genuine church teachings.

In San Francisco in 1981, newspaper kiosks at child’s eye level invited people to sex parties. These were removed. That’s because jurisprudents decided that the freedom of people to go to sex parties (an important freedom in my view) was less important than the freedom of parents from anxiety when they took their kids downtown.

I agree with you in this. A person’s right to create and exhibit “art” in a publicly funded museum shouldn’t trump the right of a normal person to visit that museum without being subjected to alarmingly blasphemous images. Especially when children will be exposed to this type of “art”. I appreciate your attitude on the anti-Catholic bashing that goes on in modern society.
What I’m curious about, and I don’t mean any offense by this, is why do you refer to yourself as Catholic if you are non-practicing?

 

[larkin31]

Pornography is against the law not specifically because it offends the fashionable gender but because the fashionable gender became politically active.

what is “the fashionable gender,” and why are you calling it this?

 

[larkin31]

American Catholics need to get rowdy, in the tradition of Dorothy Day about the excesses of capitalism and the monopoly of culture space by cheap anti-Catholic garbage insofar as in excess of free speech, an artist is interfering with freedom of religion.

Art does not interfere with our Constitutional “freedom of religion.” The ways that you distort the first amendment are very curious to me.

That Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law…”