The Idaho Project
Taking a break between jazz bands ( a fabulous interpretation of Coltranes Lonnies Lament by some young players) on New Years Eve we wandered upstairs in the Missoula Art Museum. I found myself looking at an amazingly life-like bust of Eugene Debs made of archival cardboard, sheetrock screws, gesso and glue, part of an exhibit called Big Trouble: The Idaho Project where artist Scott Fife has recreated the cast of characters who became associated with the assassination of Governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905 and the subsequent trial. This was a time of intense labor strife around the fantastically productive silver mines not far from where I live and there is a bust of the bomber Harry Orchard and the union leaders he ratted on like "Big Bill" Haywood, George Pettibone and Charles Moyer. There are also great reproductions of Ethyl Barrymore the actress, Debs the leader of the Socialist Party (and perhaps at that time the IWW), President Theodore Roosevelt, and Clarence Darrow who defended Haywood and managed to get him acquitted.
From the artist: "The sculpture speaks of class struggle, political intrigue, and the countries economic and social landscape of capitalism and populism."
I'm glad to see an artist interested in historical memory who recognizes the way these events of not that long ago get swept into the dustbin. As Guy Debord put it "With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, unchecked statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning." Sound familiar?
"One result which has proved negative" , he adds "once the running of the state involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge,that state can no longer be run strategically."
In other words they'll do crazy shit like invade the Pashtun region or become hostages to an elite Zionist minority or allow financiers and speculators to hijack the economy or allow the infrastructure, both physical and human ( education) to crumble...
Another positive sign for the coming decade ( the art installation,not the crumbling) arrived in the form of a poem in our local paper called The Last Night of COP 15 :
"The conference was dressed from it's head to it's foot
As a positive outcome though tarnished by soot
A bundle of ploys on the backs of the poor
Some new carbon taxes by the capitalists of war
They hold the worlds wealth in the grip of their teeth
While for us it's the usual funeral wreath
The author also had something of hers read on Grit TV by Laura Flanders the other day. Another local Wobbly perhaps?
posted by troutsky @ 3:18 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
I find artists often to be well intentioned. Due to how they get their funding, they are beholden to the grant subsidizers. Politically they think they are advanced, when actually they are no further than identity politics as feminism.
Ren,
Banksy? Have you heard of him? I would argue against your blanket statement about artists in cases such as his and many other street and graffiti artists.
Ren, what would you say about the photographers from Roosevelt's Farm Security Administration?
Took quite an effort by conservatives to end the program.
Another interesting chapter of art history in America is how we managed to transform the arts and crafts school into essentially a bourgeois movement.
You can't make this stuff up.
Lets see the developmentally disabledTroutsky goes into classic Marxist anti semitism. He repeats a classic canard about them Jooooos ( Commies are not jews) running the government.Commies use the code words Zionist and Neocon when they mean Joooo.
Artists have no special ability beyond their craft. Let Banksy spend 20 years in North Korea with
Che Sponge Bob's mentor Kim Jong
Mentally Ill. Artists that align themselves with Communism are stupid as Communism restricts their freedom of expression.
Duncy
We should abolish the NEA and make artists fund themselves. Commie's are always on the dole for a handout.
I remember when Coltrane released Afro Blues Impressions with Lonnie's Lament. Great song, even got radio play here. Back in the day when there were at least 6 jazz stations on the Boston dial.
Beak, for better or worse, art has normally been subsidized in some way. I would be very happy to discuss the Renaissance with you and various forms of patronage.
I assume you feel the FSA photographers (Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein , et.al.) were just lamers who were looking for a handout. Normals consider the FSA work a national treasure, you have an opinion?
Ren- The artists politics were not apparent but by presenting the subject of class conflict people could explore it further (theoretically) While it contradicts Debords insistence that the Spectacle is totalizing I know art is a small, small influence on overall pop culture.
Ducky, There is still a "market" for the sympathetic treatment of poverty in art but it changes very little in actuality.The iconic Appalachian mother is now next door.
Beak, Could you suggest some words I could use to describe Zionist or neocon that would not infer Jew? I am just learning the code.
troutsky, your point is well taken. A photo like Lange's "Migrant Mother" for all its merit does not develop a revolutionary context. It may help spark that idea but not on its own.
To the extent that it promotes sympathy and causes the viewer to act in a manner that values the charity more than changing the subjects poverty permanently it can be a negative.
Has there ever been a revolutionary art movement? That's a serious question. You can go back to graphic artists like Rodchenko in the early days of Leninism but that was all channeled by Stalin into "Socialist Realism".
It's also telling that Ayn Rand favors the socialist realist style and calls anything that hints of expressionism or abstraction immoral. So art catches hell on both ends.
Beak, as a follow up to troutsky's perplexity, could you tell me how to identify a non commie and is it possible for anyone to deviate from that definition without becoming a commie?
Troutsky
You are too developmentally disabled to realize how bigoted your comments are. Other ethnic groups lobby on behalf of their country, but you single out Jooooos.
The reason you do is anti Semitic bigotry is and has always been a central part of Communism. The grand alliance requires the abuse of populist antisemitism. Capos like Ren play up their biological ties while inciting the most vile expressions of bigotry and call it
"revolutionary authenticity".
A typical display of your dementia
is asking a person with relatives killed in the Holocaust about the
"gas chamber industry".
My family recognized evil and fought for Poland. They did not love Poland, but they knew evil when they saw it. Jews who fought for the Bolsheviks were considered lowlifes and shunned as traitors.
Even Ren's role model traitor Ethel Rosenberg was shunned by her father for being a communist.
Commies leave that history out of their accounts
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