Your aesthetics vs. your politics.

Oh, hell, one of those westward expansion/manifest destiny things, that always piss me off, but I still am oddly attracted to... like this:

http://www.gaston.k12.nc.us/schools/highland/class/clagg/DBQ2002/melia/angel_3.jpg

http://whitemountainart.com/images/ab002.jpg

a) ousmane sembene - "hyenas"
b) vincent gallo
b) "big pimpin" - jay-z

(Ms. Laura's contribution, BTW.)

So anyway, I like the romaticism and idealism of how the west is portrayed, but am dismayed by the whole concept of Manifest Destiny and the fact that the land is not portrayed in its real beauty (of course, many of the artists had never travelled west of the Mississippi and were drawing from their own dreams or verbal/written descritpions they happened across). But I could happily spend much of my life surrounded by these images - well, actually, my father used to deal in art of this period, so I did grow-up with it hanging around me - maybe that's why I like it and it also ticks me off. Very Freudian/Electra of me, I'm sure.

Here's one more shot at this:

http://whitemountainart.com/images/ab002.jpg

(speaking of Prokofiev, his October Cantata is also pretty damn great, even if it's about the storming of the Winter Palace by Lenin and includes a "speech" by Stalin -- though there's always the possibility that it was meant to be sarcastic, since apparently Prokofiev kept the thing under lock-and-key till he died.)

Tracer, m'dear - why are you apologizing? (Actually, it's probably really obvious, but my brain is faded, again, and when I look at this thread tomorrow I'll immediately see the reference and smack myself hard in the forehead and say "For stupid!" and probably give myself a bruise and end-up in the hospital with everyone giving the SO's dirty looks for beating me up and stuff. And then I'd have a lot of explaining to do. And I'd look really stupid. And I'd be on the news as one of those "stupid people" clips. And maybe I'd even give myself a subdural hematoma and croak and then I'd make the 2003 Darwin Award List. And show-up on one of those "stupid Darwin Award winners idiot-a-day claendar thingys that people with superiority complexes keep on their desks and chortle about around the water cooler. *shuddering* On second thought, don't explain. The future is too bleak. Ignorance is bliss.)

So, um, are you related to Tracer Bullet? http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1961/ch_trace_90.html I've always wanted to ask that, but thought it was kind of forward of me. But I am tired of being all shy and demure and reticent and all of that other crap (are you rolling you eyes by now)? So are you related? Perhaps he's your namesake, or you're his? Or is this a pure coincidence?

(Useful contribution to this thread forthcoming.)

i had forgotten all about tracer bullet!!!

Nabisco's lovely comment on Patriotism--"basically the most beautiful and compelling and pitch-perfect evocation of a worldview it's essential that each person reject"--reminded me of one of my favorite novels, which I recently reread, Willa Cather's The Professor's House. Which is, among other things, one long and impossibly moving lament for the passing of the American race--that breed of bluebloods whose mettle was tested first in the East, then in the West, and whose culture was being pushed aside by the arrival of immigrants from E. and S. Europe, blacks, etc. It ties in to the genteel (but definitely pernicious) nativism which was a major element of American politics in the teens/twenties, but it is much more seductive than any political tract. Funny as my grandparents would have been among the hordes (Jewish, no less) that were arriving off boats--to Cather's dismay--as she was writing the novel.

can i also mention Chick Tracts?

http://www.chick.com/tractimages24621/0055/0055_04.gif

http://www.chick.com/tractimages24621/5016/5016_14.gif

i hate to say "inspired" wr2 Jack Chick, but ...

This is a harder thing to imagine for me, just because I've always thought that anyone who was completely oblivious to aesthetics would likely be fairly strident and boring w/r/t politics as well. Or perhaps its just that my politics are informed by my taste in aesthetics much more than the other way 'round. How about you?

this?

Now I'm imagining Norman Rockwell humming Suzanne Vega songs as he paints some picture of a kid running somewhere with his dog. Is this a good thing?

Actually, Rockwell's paintings and sketches outside the Saturday Evening Post covers are a little more interesting and strange; although, I only have the very large Norman Rockwell's America book to go on.

Yeah, most of Rockwell's subjects are entirely upper middle class white suburban life; and I can only imagine how little this connects to those who grew up in a different setting, country, or body. But I thikn there's something more to Rockwell's work than say your stereotypical white suburban TV advertisements. There's an AMAZING amount of detail put into each character. And there's something far more animated about even a typical Rockwell painting than your typical 50s/60s American TV sitcom or drama, for example.

I'd rather try to fist a minnow than to suggest that Johnny Hart's "B.C." is anything more than aesthetically dreadful.

:)

Tracer, you're correct. I was going more for the "other" types of people whose politics I do oppose who have claimed to see Rockwell's work as intrinsicly synchronous with their political views. My defense of Rockwell alone has nothing to do with politics.. just that I think he was a great artist, and was maligned a little too much by the more elite in the art world for "embracing" the borgeious.

I don't see a huge difference between Rockwell and, say, Charles Schultz. (There are differences, certainly.) But I think Schultz and Peanuts got away with more universal acclaim and praise than Rockwell did.

More aesthetics as aesthetics vs aesthetics, but I always liked the NIN logo and graphic design much more than the songs.
I also like Chick Tracts clean cover design but not so much the trash typography and prefer Clowes or Brunetti's retro drawing style over Chick's.