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Harvey » Tue Nov 16, 2021 8:45 am wrote:Overjoyed to have these wonderful comments, here's the dust jacket progress so far, hopefully a few more quotes on the way.
Harvey » Tue Nov 16, 2021 7:46 pm wrote:I'm not sure what you mean.
"The Sin" - Heinrich Lossow - c.1880
Lossow was a German genre painter who created pornography in his spare time. This painting references the Banquet of Chestnuts, the famous orgy held at the Vatican on Oct 30, 1501. The banquet was hosted by former Cardinal Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. The MC of the party, Johann Burchard, wrote about it in his diary, saying that naked courtesans crawled around between candelabras, picking up chestnuts with their mouths. Then prizes were awarded to banquet guests who had sex the most times. Why Lossow painted this scene in reference to the orgy and not one of courtesans and chestnuts, we’ll never know.
https://narrativepainting.net/?p=574
The Cruel World of Modern Art
To walk through an art gallery is to walk through the inside of a publicly subsidised bank vault. On the walls are festooned the accounts held by oligarchs in abstract sums, and such a display derives for them rent. This doesn’t deride the intangible aspect of art, which may well be worth the fee paid to seek it up close in an aura of its own historicity. But the tangible function of it, of its galleries, operate substantively no different than banks. That is, a depositor deposits art within a gallery, which keeps it safe while paying an interest to hold it, so it can be rented it out on a broader capacity to the general public. In other instances this art is donated for a fixed term and used to write off an appraised value in tax.
For this reason the arts industry is laden with a cultural legacy of old money financial dynasties, whose estates have ‘dissipated’ into more abstract, secure, beautiful, and scarce storages of value ever since paper currency was cut loose from its golden cinder-block almost a century ago.
In fact, the Jeffrey Epstein ‘scandal’, as the public have been introduced to it, began at the New York Academy of Arts where Eileen Guggenheim made the introduction between him and the first victim to go public, Maria Farmer.“Farmer first met Epstein at her 1995 thesis show at the academy. She told Artnet News that Guggenheim, who was then dean of students, made the introduction to Epstein and his companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, and urged her to sell a painting to the couple at a discounted price because ‘they are great benefactors of the academy.' Guggenheim denies that she ever made this introduction or encouraged Farmer to sell work to Epstein.”
– Source
Eileen Guggenheim and Jeffrey Epstein at Sotheby's event, 2014.
The Guggenheim family is one in a collection of German Jewish origin inter linked through a series of marriages to the most prominent, Rothschild, which has strong historic ties to the House of Windsor through the Austrian House of Habsburg, specifically that of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha.
Eileen Guggenheim had been a private secretary to Charles, Prince of Wales, before she moved on into a number of influential positions within various NY institutions during the 90s, one of which was the New York Academy of Arts.1
Interestingly, a ‘Charles’ appears in the flight logs in April 1999 alongside an ‘AP’; initials for which there remains some confusion over whether they were attributed to Prince Andrew or Epstein’s private chef, Adam Lang. 2
Prince Charles?
The New York Academy of Arts had actually been co-founded by Andy Worhol, a famous stencil artist and pioneer in the commodification of artwork. He was a prime mover behind a trend which saw the quality of art supplemented with the persona of its artist. Instead of artists living in the shadows of their creations, their creations became relegated to the periphery of the spotlight they sought. They came to think of themselves as ‘the art’ itself and a new kind of narcissism developed in the form of performance artists such as Marina Abramović. For more on her, follow the little green frogs down the rabbit hole.
What artists began to produce became nothing more than a signature, a sign post they’d piss on. This isn’t an exaggeration. Warhol could’ve walked up to a blank canvas during a gallery event in the 80s, pissed on it and bidding war would’ve broken out. The denial of this trend is a contention that such artwork is self-referential or meta-cultural, meaning it isn’t meant to be good as it is a tacit critique of that which isn’t good, thus making it good because it is opposing that which is bad. But the irony of ironic art is that its substance is just as dogshit as its form. There’s nothing there. What it supposedly condemns, is exactly what it creates. Which is an uninspired culture condemning itself as a means for it to reproduce. It does not attempt to change culture, as it relies on a culture it is able to mock.
Famous 15th century painting
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Famous 20th century stencil
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Famous 21st century pixels
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The New York Academy of Arts was founded on this vapid culture of value creation. And since talent took a backseat to fame, those running the shows, literally, could exchange fame to satisfy other appetites. For if the art doesn’t matter so much as its authorship, why wouldn’t talent scouts like Eileen Guggenheim pick out young, pretty, and financially insecure girls trying to make their dreams come true. A dynamic found in hollywood and high fashion too. . .
Want to be a thought-provoking artist? Want to be a standard of beauty? So ya wanna be a star kid? Talent isn’t the only thing scouted when the value of commodities produced are abstract. And because of this, a powerful class of people have figured out how to remain sexually active with each new generation well into retirement.
Anyway, the era of Warhol is over and he was replaced with Banksy. Let’s do a Banksy right now:
1) Take the classical scene and imagery of a monarch’s coronation.
2) Change the setting from a Church to a bank and give the clergy suits.
3) Change the monarch to an unpopular politician, such as Boris Johnson.
4) Make a stencil of this and spray it on a piece of public facing private property that is both provocative in fixture while detachable from the structure it is apart, as to be easily segmented and sold at auction.
If such a thing were to be spray painted somewhere within the City of London, that would be a Banksy. The only reason it wouldn’t be a Bansky, would be if he wouldn’t sign it. If he did sign it, no one would question it. How would you get it signed? You would go here. Thus, Banksy’s art work is really just his signature. He is a stray dog with golden piss, but who is he lifting his leg for?
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