Contemporary Public Art Isn’t Just Bad; It’s Obscene--on SO many levels!

Following is heavily edited from a great, much longer piece titled "Contemporary Public Art Isn’t Just Bad; It’s Obscene," by the excellent "Peachy Keenan."  Her original is worth reading.
https://peachykeenan.substack.com/p/pubic-art

Until roughly 1950 big sculptures intended for the centerpiece of a public square or outside a government building were inspiring, even beautiful.  But starting around 1950 that began to change.  

Lots of Americans have probably wondered--quietly--why.  What we know is that in the 1950s one of the Soviet Union's international conferences on the faaabulous benefits of communism produced a list of ways to destroy American society, essentially by demoralizing Americans.

As another theory, Peachy notes that "the famously hideous Serge Gainsbourg" declared “Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts,”  So take your pick.

This week, a massive $10-million-dollar bronze sculpture honoring Martin Luther King Jr. was erected in Boston. Titled "The Embrace," the ugliness of this behemoth must be seen to be believed: two pairs of disembodied arms, hugging nothing.  Nothing inspirational or beautiful, but possibly "avant-garde."  

As with so much public art—or shall we say, pubic art—these days, “The Embrace” is a ten-million-dollar insult to your sense of beauty and intelligence.  But the Leftists who rule the art world--particularly the committees who award commissions for this crap--will swoon over it.

You may have noticed that government "committees" are busily tearing down lots of inspiring, graceful public sculptures erected decades or centuries ago, and replacing them with works that are hideously ugly--a confirmation of our total cultural surrender.  Call it Replacement Theory.  Or maybe "Reparation Art."

Almost everywhere you look in the wastelands of large U.S. cities is a gleaming eyesore daring you not to laugh.  But do not roll your eyes at these monstrosities, since facial recognition software is watching. Any expressions of disgust or horror are likely to be punished with a fine or prison.

Obelisks are *far* too obviously phallic.  Far more inspiring to behold a 50-foot-tall clothespin in Philadelphia. 

When Democrats in New York City wanted to erect "public art" outside the new Javitz Center in 1981, the Dem-ruled commission chose a 120-foot-long curved steel wall--designed to rust quickly.  Yep, very "artsy."  Perfect symbol of the modern city-state.

But the thing was SO impossibly ugly that in an unprecedent move, the thing was removed just 8 years later.  That needs to happen far more often.

[sf: Predictably, the artist *sued the city* claiming his free speech rights had been violated.  Ah...you created shit, got paid for it, and the city finally agreed it was shit and canned it...and you claim your rights were violated?]

The artist bleated that he saw his work as “as a way to expose and criticize the surrounding public space, not to beautify it.”  Bingo.

Art for the sake of creating disgust and depression, eh?  Seems like the communists were onto something.

Today all public art consists of multi-million dollar eyesores, commissioned by preening, virtue-signaling, low-IQ, semi-literate "officials."  It creates only one thing in the mind of sane viewers:  a crushing sense of defeat. “We gave up on life,” it screams.

The larger the piece, the more blatant its mockery of the  traditional purpose of art--which has historically been to inspire awe and wonder.  The demons who win today's commissions vehemently reject this.

People long to see works of transportive beauty.  Instead what the politicians choose is nihilism.  Enjoy, peasants.

“I hate this piece of **** but I'm not allowed to say so or I will be mocked.” The emperor has no clothes, and even the emperor knows it, but by now we've learned to ignore the insult, until the pols inflict the next, even more grotesque piece on us.

Why do globalists demand hideous public art?

The artsy crowd bleats that classical art--inspiring, beautiful--is boring, unchallenging, so what's needed is modernizing!  "Staying relevant."  See, they're sophisticated.  Trained.  You're just deplorable.

A prime example is from 2014, when Paris displayed a huge green...thing the artist cunningly titled “Tree.”  Cuz everyone likes trees, eh?  Take a look at the pic below and see if you know what it clearly is.

Oh, a "tree"?  Here's a clue: The so-called "artist"--Paul McCarthy--once filmed himself inserting a Barbie doll into his anus in front of a classroom of students at UC San Diego.  And yes, there seems to be a LOT of that in the world of modern public "art."  Also on the commissions that pay for it, apparently.

For example, the notorious Barack Obama oil portrait. Obama’s handpicked artist--an openly gay man named Kehinde Wiley--has a cutesy trademark: he decorates his paintings with oversize figures of sperm.  Think that's a myth?  In a 2015 interview Wiley said he often painted sperm cells on his paintings.



Another example: In 2020 the rulers of the University of Pennsylvania, home to Joe Biden’s pilfered classified documents, determined that they needed a piece of "art" at the main entrance to its campus.  In an obvious effort  to appease its militant black student body they commissioned the thing below:



From ancient times to 1950 or so, people of an advanced intelligence and confidence that dwarfs our own understood the power of inspiring sculpture.  So what do you think future generations will think about us when they see what the monsters ruling us saddled us with as public "works of art"?

Dynamite the concrete. Melt the bronze or iron. It’s been done before. We need to shut down the ghastly process for political pubic art.