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Post by Ken (INTJ) on Sept 25, 2018 4:12:12 GMT
"For people of color have always theorized ― but in forms quite different from the Western form of abstract logic. [...] dynamic, rather than fixed ideas seem more to our liking." Barbara Christian, The Race for Theory (1987)[1]
On June 27, 2017, the Castle Ruurlo opened to exhibit the works of Albert Carel Willink and Fong Leng. That Willink's third wife was a devoted patron of Fong Leng gives a pretext for the inclusion of a feminine orientalism in the museum, and serves as an attempt to soften Willink's supremely masculine Europeanism.
In Willink’s personal life, he was no strict racialist. He befriended the half Indonesian Edgar du Perron, who wrote extensively about his racial alienation from European society. Yet by 1950, Willink expresses a deep traditionalism and perennialism, in his publication De Schilderkunst in een kritiek stadium (The art of painting at a critical stage).[2] In this publication, Willink defines art as a representation of the the eternal struggle of order against chaos. Modern art, in Willink’s view, severs this tradition and thus destroys the meaning of art. Christianity and Marxism are seen by Willink as outmoded attempts to impose order on chaos. Implicitly, Willink’s pagan worship of Rome represents a third way between Marxism and Christianity back to tradition. What modern art calls “bevrijding,” “liefde,” and “menszijn” (that is, liberation, love, and humanity), Willink calls “ontbinding (dissolution).” Willink’s conservative credentials are further boosted by the fact that in 1966, he was proud to paint a portrait of mayor Joost Boot of the conservative Anti-Revolutionary Party.
De Chirico's metaphysical style.
Starting in 1931, Willink began to take inspiration from Giorgio de Chirico.[3] Chirico drew greatly from the German philosophies of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger, three philosophers who enjoyed unique favor in Nazi Germany. We can also note that Arnold Böcklin was favored by Chirico, and that, coincidentally or not, Böcklin was one of Hitler's favorite artists. De Chirico's own writing, specifically "The Return of Craftsmanship" (published in 1919) advocates a return to classicalism and argues against modern art.[4] Like de Chirico, Willink was first a producer of modern art, but later renounced it and became a neoclassical painter.
In his obsession with Rome, Willink creates a “Romanite” response to the Dutch Italianates of the 17th century. The Dutch Italianate genre brought visions of Italy into Northern Europe. Italianate paintings guide the viewer through the rustic life of ordinary people. Their agrarian or seaside scenes bathed in warm Mediterranean light create a kind of nostalgia for the rustic life and make foreign shores seem comfortable and familiar. The Italianate connection with the past is created through the placement of Roman ruins alongside the ordinary life of the average person, creating a sense of belonging and historical continuity.
An example of the Italianate style
In sheer contrast to the Italianates, Willink's Romanite colossi stand out ― not as ruins testifying to the passage of time, but as alien visitors from an eternal realm. Ideal forms, untouched by humanity, descend from a higher plane of existence. Willink forces confrontation with the greatness and fall of Rome, symbolizing a fixed, unchanging idea, the Western form of abstract logic. And I use this phraseology in direct response to Barbara Christian, a woman of color, who writes, “people of color have always theorized ― but in forms quite different from the Western form of abstract logic. [...] dynamic, rather than fixed ideas seem more to our liking."
Willink achieves his representation of Western idealism through an angular, architectural invasion of the mindscape. Willink's invasion is not the slow, gradual rising tide of color, or a swarm of insects. It is the imposition of pure quality of aesthetics over the sea of organic quantity. Even when destroyed, the colossi die a beautiful or horrific death, but they never give way to the silence and weakness of rot or decay.
Willink's pessimism can be contextualized against the metapolitical threats facing Europeanism at that time. Whereas today, Europe seems to be degenerating into a long slumber of ignorance and old age, from the 1920s through the 1960s, Europe still remained young, vital, and vigorous. The greatest threats against Europe seemed to be sudden and deadly: the Blitzkrieg of world war or the nuclear winter of atomic struggle. Europe’s struggles were internal, with the Chthonian 'mass man' of communism and capitalism against the Apollonian aristocratic element which found its heritage in ancient Greece and Rome. Willink's portrayal of this struggle forces us to either dignify the Apollonian element with awe, to retract in horror at its destruction, or to fear its terrible day of wrath, its renewed imposition upon a spiritually empty world. We can no longer ignore the spiritual war raging in our consciousness.
The escape of the postmodernist is into irony, and the postmodernist will declare that Willink was not serious; that his painstaking realism was just a joke; that the contrast of Roman art to unusual scenes was funny or clever, or some kind of inside joke. This is not a serious analysis, but a psychological defense mechanism from a beautiful and terrible reality from those who fear its power and deep spiritual implications. Willink’s Zelfportret met Schede (Self Portrait with Skull, 1936) betrays more of a medieval memento mori attitude than that of the postmodern world.
One of Willink’s first works in his self-proclaimed style of Imaginary Realism is De laatse bezoekers van Pompeii (The last visitors of Pompeii, 1931). It shows men observing the ruins of Pompeii. One high-society man is bespectacled, another holds his cigar with great precision and poise. These men appear to be wealthy guests at a distinguished art exhibit, observing the ruins as if in serious rumination, with the outcome of their evaluation resulting in the exchange of millions for these broken columns. One man reaches out to touch a random bush, and another stands at the foot of two perfectly and abruptly broken columns. Vesuvius smolders in the background, transporting these men from the fashions of the present day into the ancient past.
As Willink develops his style, humanity shrinks before Roman art, which ascends beyond the realm of judgement and becomes a deity in its own right. It ascends beyond the awareness of human consciousness, and it cares not for the lives of mortals. Rome becomes frozen in a state of impervious resilience against the elements. Even in death, broken and lying prone on the ground, pure white marble is unmarred by moss or mold. They are recently shattered, not crumbled by time, but as if smashed moments before by some invisible hand.
Furthermore, there is an implicit violence and violation in the act of springing up hard marble forms against nature. The piece is teleported onto a background without any interaction between the object itself and the world it imposes itself on. In this mirage, the true scene is empty nature, but the imagination of the artist has imposed upon it his great idea. The land cannot react to Roman forms with vines or shade, as it remains ignorant and unconscious of the looming Roman presence.
Roman forms do become degraded and perverted later in Willink’s life, as in Evenwicht der krachten (Balance of Forces, 1979). Here, space flight seems to have usurped Roman tradition as a God to be worshipped, and so the Romanites fall into mold and moss.
In Onnodige getuigen (Unnecessary Witnesses, 1983), the effect seems to be that the nuclear power plants alter the genetic code of these “unnecessary witnesses,” making them into hideous mutants.
One painting in which Willink shows explicit violence is "Landschap met vechtenden (Landscape with fighters, 1937). Here, human conflict shrinks against the greatness of nature and the gigantic stone mountain. Eternal forms impose themselves once again over ephemeral human conflict. Occasionally Willink places animals or humans in an ''ignorant'' posture, where they wander around Romanite structures without the faintest idea of their surroundings. This is especially apparent in Trafalgar Square (1974). The children playing in this insignificant dead tree seem absurd in contrast to the gargantuan disaster befalling the ancient world around them. This is the perspective of the man who cannot help but see collapse as imminent, and sees his fellow humans as completely ignorant. In his paintings with exotic animals, the effect is vervreemding, or alienation.
When Willink places Roman statues and architecture in remote landscapes, one can sense the inaccessibility of their power and meaning. In De Tate Gallery verplaatst (The Tate Gallery moved, 1970), one is forced to imagine driving out into a wasteland and coming upon a perfectly preserved specimen of the ancient world. Looking at these scenes, there is a sense of loss. Artwork, meant to be worshiped, to be admired, to participate in culture, to enlighten and to create an ideal for a great civilization, remains alone and lost. Yet its potency is not gone. Like the portrait of a dead patriarch looking down with disapproval, Romanism intimidates and overpowers the viewer.
In Willink's magical realism, we discover ancient European temples on the surface of Mars. European history has become alien and foreign to its own continent. Rome has shown up unexpectedly, but it refuses to relent. One wonders what offenses we have committed to inspire the appearance of such Gods. If guilty for the sin of ignorance of their greatness, we bow in terror and offer sacrifices, or look away in horror. Willink makes the contrast between European technology and the barren wasteland of primitivism explicit in his Landing op Mars (Landing on Mars, 1969).
As current events advance, Willink introduces the threat of nuclear war with Einde der Wereld (End of the World, 1963). With apocalyptic, Lovecraftian horror, Willink elaborates upon this theme in De eeuwige schreeuw (The eternal scream, 1964). This passage by James O’Meara in his discussion of Lovecraftianism could just as well describe Willink:
“ancient and amoral forces violently puncture the realistic surface of his tales,” drawing the reader “into the chaos that lies ‘between the worlds’ of magic and reality.” Davis calls this “Lovecraft’s magical realism” but we have elsewhere suggested that it also resembles what has been called “archeofuturism,” the continued accessibility of the past in the future, now.”(5)
And what is Willink telling us with his 1965 work, Naar de Toekomst (To the Future)? A small white figure, something like an astronaut or soldier, walks towards fire and smoke. Behind him are gargoyles, crafted long ago to ward off evil spirits. With open mouths, they shriek in horror to one another in shock: how can European humanity walk so assuredly toward its own destruction? Willink's pessimism in 1965 about de Toekomst finds itself in agreement with the perennial perspective.
Willink criticized the fact that government officials, fearing the slur of being labeled a ‘conservative,’ supported abstract artists at the expense of classical artists. Willink furthermore argued that abstract art is no longer avant-garde, but rather, status quo. He writes: “All limits have been exceeded, all limits have gone out, all screws are completely unscrewed.” For Willink, the word ‘transgressive’ has lost its meaning. This is surely a sentiment that the deep right can sympathize with 67 years later. Willink’s revolution against revolutionaries puts him in league with Pyke Koch, Giorgio de Chirico, and even Salvador Dali.
Finally, the power and ferocity of Willink contained within the absolute control and order of European geometry could even be compared to the sculpture work of his contemporary, Arno Breker. As two neoclassical artists and archeo-futurists, they stood as revolutionaries against the modern world.
(1) Barbara Christian, The Race for Theory (1987). The placement of this quote in this essay should somewhat resemble Willink’s Kameel in het park van Versailles (Camel in the park of Versailles, 1956). (2) trouw.nl/home/hoe-ver-is-die-schilder~a572b491/ (3) De Chirico's Ritratto di Guillaume Apollinaire (1914) is the first depiction of a Roman bust wearing sunglasses, which became a meme in Alt-Right "fash-wave” aesthetics. (4) Holzhey, Magdalena. Giorgio de Chirico. Cologne: Taschen, 2005, p. 60. (5) counter-currents.com/2014/11/ever-sacred-ever-vexed/
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Post by slotahimself (INTP) on Sept 26, 2018 18:17:58 GMT
The last visitors of Pompeii has a quality to it that I find disturbing and dislike it. The people seem like androids and totally divorced from the surroundings they're observing which is of course the point, thus it's an effective painting but nonetheless I find it ugly. Landing on Mars is without a doubt how you observed it. I see it as civilization in general and being erected out of the clutch of nature to impose order over the environment, no matter how desolate. The last painting is my favorite by far (and the only one I really like to be honest) and looking at it from left to right creates somewhat of a timeline of ancient to modern, and beginning to the end. The astronaut being to the right-hand side really demonstrates that notion in my eyes, demonstrating where humanity stands currently.
I have a question about the Barbara Christian quote in the beginning. How did you interpret her statement? Do you see her saying that being that the European soul seeks to stay within a certain lens at all costs? As if the Greco-Roman legacy is paramount to all of our efforts whereas other races are more willing to move outside of it with more fluidity? I might have that selective reading of that quote because I find it to be true.
I think you did a great job with this post and your analysis seems neat and astute in the perennial context. Despite the fact that I don't like much of the art on a purely visual-aesthetic level, they're all very effective and worthy of praise and understanding.<tmui style="top:1px; right:1px;"></tmui>
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Post by Napoleoff (INTP) on Sept 27, 2018 1:56:40 GMT
In my, very humble, opinion, Barbara Christian was only one in a yearly-lengthening (unfortunately) line of constitutionally-trashy so-called people embodying the kind of so-called philosophy (I say so-called because philosophia is supposed to be the "love of wisdom") that amounts to death for the European soul and quite frankly for all that's holy. There is no way we can work constructively with her so-called thinking and, for that matter, no way she could either. By their fruits shall ye know them of course, but this alas is the path many of our people are now following as well.
One wonders for whom Carel Willink painted since, if he thought European man was in a terminal state of collapse (and I'm not arguing that he did), his life's work would have been from his own perspective futile. His is not as art produced by confident and virile people but instead is as that of people who have lost their way in the universe. With some exceptions his paintings are distressed and clearly share some of the aesthetic feeling exhibited by the more degenerate works of the period, perhaps involuntarily absorbed from his contemporaries. Having looked at Giorgio de Chirico's work, I would argue that it would qualify largely as degenerate, and maybe Willink took some of his feeling from that, but I wouldn't call Willink himself a degenerate artist because of his artistic skill and the cold beauty he nested within the distressed scenes. It's still unsettling to look at for the most part. Some of the paintings are ugly as well, like the ones with the mutated statues. Maybe in a different time Willink would have been a man who painted beautiful harmonious whole compositions as opposed to only having some harmonious-looking elements in otherwise-dissonant paintings.
I see 'The Last Visitors of Pompeii' as being a dissonant painting after this style, and it seems to symbolize a capitalistic commodification of beauty such as has only worsened since his lifetime. It also got me thinking about ISIS and their destruction of ancient ruins across the Middle East.
Also, your piece along with the paintings got me thinking about context, because clearly nature can also be awe-inspiring and beautiful as well and these Roman forms are juxtaposed with natural landscapes. Unlike man-made colossi, nature's beauty is dynamic and it has been commented that natural landscapes are often more perfectly-composed than any painting, even if the trees and clouds and shades are constantly-changing.
Anyway, great polished well-researched piece and the inclusion of the paintings is much appreciated.
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Post by Ken (INTJ) on Sept 27, 2018 3:31:35 GMT
With some exceptions his paintings are distressed and clearly share some of the aesthetic feeling exhibited by the more degenerate works of the period, perhaps involuntarily absorbed from his contemporaries. Having looked at Giorgio de Chirico's work, I would argue that it would qualify largely as degenerate, and maybe Willink took some of his feeling from that, but I wouldn't call Willink himself a degenerate artist because of his artistic skill and the cold beauty he nested within the distressed scenes. I would be careful with the term "degenerate art." We might call pornography degenerate art because it only appeals to the animal senses and has no moral content. But prior to the Reformation we can still find artwork which is negative or disturbing but not necessarily harmful to civilization. Take depictions of hell, demons, and gargoyles. Would we call Poe and Lovecraft degenerate artists? I believe that in some ways Willink is a painter of the "horror" genre, and horror is not necessarily bad. Perhaps we should be horrified that the Graeco-Roman ideal is not longer at home and no longer in harmony and no longer welcome in this new global civilization. Willink's paintings are prophetic like the Book of Revelation. They powerfully represent a certain feeling... When you contemplate the greatness of divinity, and at the same time contemplate the ugliness of postmodernism.
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Post by Napoleoff (INTP) on Sept 27, 2018 10:36:20 GMT
I would be careful with the term "degenerate art." We might call pornography degenerate art because it only appeals to the animal senses and has no moral content. But prior to the Reformation we can still find artwork which is negative or disturbing but not necessarily harmful to civilization. Take depictions of hell, demons, and gargoyles. Would we call Poe and Lovecraft degenerate artists? I believe that in some ways Willink is a painter of the "horror" genre, and horror is not necessarily bad. Perhaps we should be horrified that the Graeco-Roman ideal is not longer at home and no longer in harmony and no longer welcome in this new global civilization. Willink's paintings are prophetic like the Book of Revelation. They powerfully represent a certain feeling... When you contemplate the greatness of divinity, and at the same time contemplate the ugliness of postmodernism. You know what? You're right. No I don't think Poe, Lovecraft, Dante or Michelangelo were degenerate artists. Your reply made me think of the Late Middle Ages genre of Danse Macabre:
I never said Willink's work is not powerful because it is. I also posted my reply before you added the painting of the Roman road with the fallen statues, which is not really disturbing like some of the others and is extremely beautiful as a whole composition. The one with the children in the tree trunk you added is also very beautiful, and the one with the temple on Mars. And even 'Naar de Toekomst' (To the Future) has a mysterious beauty to it.
My problem is I've recently been trying to purge myself of ugliness and psychic distress and have been reflecting, "why does everything have to be so damn ugly and disturbed all the time, why can't we have nice harmonious art for a change?" In this context I am clearly overreacting to the horror content of Willink's paintings and projecting some of my own psychological state onto them. But Willink's art is meant with the highest spiritual sentiments and he had the skill to back them up. Arnold Böcklin's art is also a welcome discovery for me, and I can definitely see in it similarities with Hitler's attempts at painting so it makes sense Böcklin was one of Hitler's favorite artists.
Also interesting is how he mainly uses Roman instead of Greek colossi. I think the difference generally-speaking is that Greek architecture and statuary has harmony and balance in an intellectual sense, whereas its Roman equivalents have these things plus the element of raw power and might and scale which makes them intimidating in their beauty - think the Colosseum, the triumphal arches including that of Titus, the baths of Caracalla, the aqueducts and the paved roads stretching off toward exotic climes in distant corners of the Roman Empire. It certainly evokes the power of the divine.
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Post by slotahimself (INTP) on Sept 27, 2018 13:03:12 GMT
I don't think you overreacted. In fact you did a better job articulating the things I found conflicting about it. His paintings are effective but just viscerally gross. There's a quality of mocking to it, like being subject to one who conquered you and having to kiss their feet. I get the same discomfort you get in a Philip K. Dick book, where he states (and does wonderfully at it, I love it) that the point of his books is always something invading another's realm. Physically, mentally, both, it's an invasion from one realm to another. Reminds me of the computer game Dark Souls, where phantoms bleed in to your world and pervert and haunt you and it's another player getting enjoyment and gain out of corrupting your realm. I see the same thing in these paintings, the invasive and domineering modernity mocking the ordered and beautiful realm of being.
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Post by Ken (INTJ) on Sept 28, 2018 2:31:54 GMT
"Maybe in a different time Willink would have been a man who painted beautiful harmonious whole compositions as opposed to only having some harmonious-looking elements in otherwise-dissonant paintings." He was capable of harmony and beauty. The exclusion of ugliness from art can become cowardice, and this cowardice is feminine -- the desire to avoid conflict. Pragmatic art, such as fascist or totalitarian art, whose goal is to pacify, to unite, and to strengthen a populace, will remove conflict and ban it as "degenerate" or "counter-revolutionary." There is a modern conception of "Christian art" that discourages all depictions of ugliness with a similar justification (which totally contradicts medieval Christianity). Truth itself is beautiful. While the physical objects and reality that Willink portrays may be ugly, the truth of his metaphysic is beautiful. Here is his self-portrait as John the Baptist:
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Post by vennyflennard (ENTP-A) on Sept 28, 2018 11:35:16 GMT
There is obvious elements of Dutch golden age art here, without necessarily any loss of standard of quality in technique, as well as this one would have to possess a knowledge grounded in both European and art history to understand the context (had not Ken explained them here in this informative video) of the symbols at work here, so I think its unfair to label Willink as guilty of degenerating any traditions. I think the use of juxtaposition rather than allegory or religious symbolism actually speaks more straightly and honestly to the uninitiated who may view the paintings. I also see the Lovecraftian influence, I really like the idea he is mocking the modern art scene in this sense or at least the idea that initial reaction that had started with the romantics against particular values of neo-classicism has been carried so far and art itself perverted to such from as to render a generation unable to comprehend the scale of vision that originally brought it about,and that the art being produced itself is essentially an unfit vessel for the unity of theory, thought and vision that they had inherited and squandered. I personally feel by removing from his paintings a pure realist style, he is highlighting the absence purer ideals, logic and intellect and cosmological grounding achieved by the classical or renaissance artistic legacies without sacrificing the talent and accuracy of the standard of brushwork that realism influneced art movements in europe had also been able to achieve.
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Post by Napoleoff (INTP) on Sept 28, 2018 23:24:05 GMT
He was capable of harmony and beauty. The exclusion of ugliness from art can become cowardice, and this cowardice is feminine -- the desire to avoid conflict. Pragmatic art, such as fascist or totalitarian art, whose goal is to pacify, to unite, and to strengthen a populace, will remove conflict and ban it as "degenerate" or "counter-revolutionary." There is a modern conception of "Christian art" that discourages all depictions of ugliness with a similar justification (which totally contradicts medieval Christianity). Truth itself is beautiful. While the physical objects and reality that Willink portrays may be ugly, the truth of his metaphysic is beautiful. Those two pictures are beautiful and harmonious, which gives the context that the disharmony Willink put in his other paintings was elective. This puts a much different spin on things.
Some good points you make here. Your Willink essay and your replies to me on this thread have also helped me to make the connection of "truth" to the fixed ideal represented by the Romanite colossi in Willink's paintings. There are certain peoples whose star has risen and whose blood is surging in our time who have not inherited this European ideal and whose idea of truth is flexible, base, particularistic as opposed to universal, terribly utilitarian and opportunistic. Well-represented in this thread by Barbara Christian, dynamic "philosophies" of this sort can seem irresistible and virile, but they are not founded in truth and are therefore not capable of producing sublime divinely-inspired and aristocratic beauty. Perhaps, as you captivatingly suggested in the essay, there are grounds to expect the return of the aristocratic principle and "to fear its terrible day of wrath, its renewed imposition upon a spiritually empty world".
This is really what it's all about, isn't it? That the "fixed" core of Western abstract logic implicitly and foolishly derided by Barbara Christian, the core from which springs the idealized forms of Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture, is truth; cold, hard truth from which "dynamic" ("frivolous and asinine") ideas as touted by Barbara and her ilk can, on the highest level (aristocratic/Apollonian) of analysis, never bring deliverance. Barbara can run but she can't hide and neither can anyone else.
I suppose you could argue that truth is beautiful no matter what. Truth is certainly fixed as opposed to dynamic, and I think the best art taps into the deposits of truth that are all around us and draws its power therefrom. I prefer idealistic art to pragmatic art and the more I think about it the more I come to realize that Carel Willink's spiritual orientation was similar to my own (and I think by that token similar to that of anyone else traditionally or perennial oriented).
Great art based in truth is simultaneously light and heavy; light in its aesthetic qualities instantiated by the subtle touch of the artist and heavy in its intellectual and spiritual content. And in turn, this heavy spiritual and intellectual content also feels light and airy because it comes from divine truth.
Great stuff.
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Post by Napoleoff (INTP) on Sept 28, 2018 23:56:00 GMT
There is obvious elements of Dutch golden age art here, without necessarily any loss of standard of quality in technique, as well as this one would have to possess a knowledge grounded in both European and art history to understand the context (had not Ken explained them here in this informative video) of the symbols at work here, so I think its unfair to label Willink as guilty of degenerating any traditions. I think the use of juxtaposition rather than allegory or religious symbolism actually speaks more straightly and honestly to the uninitiated who may view the paintings. I also see the Lovecraftian influence, I really like the idea he is mocking the modern art scene in this sense or at least the idea that initial reaction that had started with the romantics against particular values of neo-classicism has been carried so far and art itself perverted to such from as to render a generation unable to comprehend the scale of vision that originally brought it about,and that the art being produced itself is essentially an unfit vessel for the unity of theory, thought and vision that they had inherited and squandered. I personally feel by removing from his paintings a pure realist style, he is highlighting the absence purer ideals, logic and intellect and cosmological grounding achieved by the classical or renaissance artistic legacies without sacrificing the talent and accuracy of the standard of brushwork that realism influneced art movements in europe had also been able to achieve. See my reply to Ken above. Also, on your statement that Willink's juxtaposition speaks more straightly and honesly to those unfamiliar with art history while he still encodes sophisticated meanings to people au fait with art history and European history in general, yeah I think that's true.
A particularly salient point you make is how the art scene, having been separated from neo-classicism by revolutionary reaction, lost its way because younger generations had no idea about the original intellectual and spiritual milieu in which their revolutionary forms were conceived or the original reasons for such. It's analogous to how people in the postmodern world used irony so much that they rendered themselves incapable of expressing themselves in the earnest way that people used to in the old days, and how irony is so normalized that nobody knows who is or isn't being ironic anymore. It's become so convoluted that people have now started being unironic for ironic reasons, a tortuous path to truth but perhaps a necessary one.
On that note, here's a riddle for you: what happens when they start forgetting that the original reason they started speaking truthfully was that they were trying to be ironic?
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