Twenty-five years ago Camille Paglia cured me of
veganism. Her amazing art history
book, ‘Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertitti to Emily Dickinson,’
argued that art criticism needs passion, violence and sex, not PC
censorship. In a side note, she
said vegetarians are out-of-touch with nature because they work for a clean,
sinless world; real nature worshippers feel its cruelty. I love Camille Paglia.
However, this article will harshly criticize Paglia’s newest
art survey book, ‘Glittering Images.’
And you may be thinking, “Who cares? I’m into politics, not art.” But,
appreciating art is central to Western survival. Multiculturalists tell us that the West has no core
traditional culture to protect and promote. Western art refutes that and can
serve as a guide to our cultural revitalization. To make this point firmer, the
article will contrast Paglia’s work to Kenneth Clark’s marvelous culturist 1969
BBC survey of Western art, ‘Civilisation.’
The very title of Paglia’s ‘Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars,’ gives
away its weakness. Starting in Egypt makes her book explicitly globalist. Globalism is the flipside of
multiculturalism, it says Western culture is not particular to the West and so
not really Western. Globalism undermines our enjoyment of the art. When I see the Sistine Chapel or any other
Western masterpiece, I am proud, because my civilization produced it. And, as I am indelibly Western, Western
masterpieces inspire me personally. When presented as global, Western art is not mine, it
alienates, rather than inspires, me.
Paglia discusses the Acropolis and some Greek pieces. And, she speculates as to what they
might have meant to Greek culture. But, we’re not told what they mean to us,
collectively, today. Culturist art
criticism, to have an impact, must speak to our present cultural crisis. We can see the potential and her
failure in her coverage of the icon of Saint John Crysostom. Icons are, she tells us, “sacred
images that functioned as protectors of people and cities. In portable wooden
form, icons were carried by armies into battles.”[i] We learn that, “The icon endorsees a
fanatical devotion to God’s word, a renunciation of pleasure and mortification
of the body.”[ii]
That we see in John Crysostom’s “intensity of gaze.” Good stuff!
But, Paglia only incidentally mentions that the icon sits in
the Haga Sophia – a church that was converted into a mosque when the Muslims
sacked Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. From a culturist point of view, the West and Islam are still
battling. This means Crysostom’s
icon should still fill us with intensity and encourage us to battle for the
West. She discusses the
suppression of icons by the church, but never mentions that ’The Byzantine
encounter with Islam likely played a role” in this.[iii] She provides zero culturist context. Thus the icon is just a relic of a long
disappeared ancient world rather than an icon to our epic struggle for survival.
Paglia gives us some great insight into the pieces she has chosen. For example, I love the idea that Titians’ Venus with a mirror “blurs the lines between the erotic and the maternal. Perhaps revealing the deepest truth about heterosexuality.” But, then she doesn’t ask for a culturist interpretation. I mean, if fading beauty is joined to fertility, then perhaps sex is not a toy; perhaps sex is more profound and pathos laden than our salacious, promiscuous advertising culture lets on. Perhaps the West needs to take a more realistic look at life, death and fertility. This would be a moral, culturist reading. But for Paglia, art glitters, but it doesn’t speak to the management of our civilization.
Furthermore, Titian’s painting would mean more if occasionally
contrasted with Islam’s ban of art and Asia’s boring, static art. The West is the civilization that
moves, creates and ponders tumultuous questions about beauty, maternity and
mortality. Asian art barely has
people in it. This is a very Western
painting. We need to see it’s
philosophical query as a part of our glory!
Paglia’s globalism is in stark contrast to the Kenneth
Clark’s aforementioned marvelous culturist BBC series, ‘Civilisation.’ His title is culturist. As it is an art
history series, his title announces that art and civilization reinforce each
other. The title of the first episode, “The Skin of our Teeth,” refers to the
West’s precarious survival after the collapse of Rome. Clark explores this theme in order to
make us appreciate the West’s existence. Fantastically, in a shining moment of culturist clarity, when
discussing the Western invention of perspective, Clark suddenly stops, pauses
and asks, “But, has it anything to do with civilization?”[iv]
(Ep. 4) This is a question, Paglia
should ask of art.
For a supreme treat, take a listen to Clark’s culturist
discussion of Michelangelo’s iconic statue, David. He tells us that, David’s defiant face, “involves a contempt
for convenience and a sacrifice of all those pleasures that contribute to what
we usually call civilized life. It’s the enemy of happiness.” And, he notes
that though we may not think of these combative attitudes as civilized, in the
end, “civilization depends on man extending his powers of mind and spirit to
the utmost.” This, he continues, is what makes David a high point for “ Western
man.”[v] By way of contrast, Paglia tells us
that Egypt’s stagnation resulted from its ‘harsh desert environment.’[vi]
Economic determinism is always behind leftist thought. Ideas being paramount is
a culturist conviction. Their
vantage point on art entertains, ours builds civilizations.
All surveys of Western art must, at some point, discuss our
dropping classical realism in favor of increasingly abstract modern art. In one
of his relentless culturist gems, Clark tells us, "All the great
civilizations have seen themselves as part of history. Both as heirs and heirs
transmitters." (ep. 4) Modernism, with its freeze on the past,
rejects Clark’s fundamental insight.
This is likely why he only discusses modernism in the last episode of
his series, and then only sparingly, despondently, behind the theme of, the
‘triumphant materialism.’ In
contrast, Paglia transitions to modernism less than half way through her
book. There she writes, the “Salon
juries in Paris expected important subjects from painting – ancient myths,
Bible stories, glorious episodes of French history in polished neoclassical
style.”[vii] Thus, parroting modern art history
orthodoxy, she rejects pre-modern art.
But, as orthodox as Paglia is, she is edgy and iconoclastic
enough to have reservations about modernism. She admits that, in comparison to what had come before, “Impressionist
pictures . . . seemed pointless.” Quite. And, in her trademark quippy tone
Paglia tells us that impressionism fits well in ‘hotels, offices, and doctors’
waiting rooms.”[viii] Yes, they
fit in offices and hotels as they help convince ill-educated globalists that
they belong to no particular civilization, thus easing their conscience as they
sell out their civilization’s economic basis. Modern art is needed in doctor’s offices, because in an
increasingly diversified West, having overtly Western icons could offend the cultural
outsiders in our land.
But, modern art is not only unworthy of the West, it is
increasingly anti-Western. We see
this in Paglia’s unfortunate inclusion of the horrid, ‘Chillin’ with
Liberty.’ This photoshopped
complaint features a female black character sitting on top of the Statue of
Liberty’s head. In a fit of
noxious virtue signaling, Paglia writes the black woman’s “masked face and
penetrating eyes suggests she is contemplating and transcending centuries of
atrocity and suffering.” She says
the black woman, “is welcoming the future, but forgetting nothing.” Forgetting nothing, indeed. Being a culturist art historian, I can
say what the Puritans would say; liberty cannot be won by complaining or
‘chillin.’ The inclusion of this piece
marks the saddest moment of Paglia’s book.
The final piece from Paglia’s book that I will consider is Pablo
Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
(Though, as she notes, he just called it, ‘My brothel.’) Insightfully, she
says it recapitulates art history.
The figure on the left represents Egyptian art, then several western
works are referenced, finally, on the right, we see a reference to “scarified
tribal masks from Africa.”[ix] The West’s
history is progressive. We are
better than stupid Old World cultures.
Connecting us to Egypt severs us from our roots. And, saying our art history culminates
in Africa, in any way shape or form, is revolting, multicultural, globalist
blasphemy.
Lastly, two points that Paglia does not discuss:
First, we have a history of culturist art criticism to
revive. Plato was a culturist art
critic. Separating moral art from
immoral art corresponded to his main criticism of life. Matthew Arnold, (1822 – 1888), the
first person to be called a ‘culturist’ practicing ‘culturism,’ created a great
body of work showing how culture could keep the West from anarchy. And, of course, Kenneth Clark was a
major culturist art critic. We have a long tradition of culturist art criticism
to weave into our narrative.
Secondly, whenever you discuss art with someone, you must
bring up the Sistine chapel. It
destroys the multicultural myth that we have no core culture. It undermines the
narrative wherein Western history consists of nothing but material exploitation
and horror. It never fails to inspire.
Moreover, comparing modern works to the Chapel is a sure guide to estimating
whether a work is a symptom of the West’s decline or rebirth.
[i] Paglia,
Camille, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Arts from Egypt to Star Wars,
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), 35.
[ii] Paglia,
Camille, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Arts from Egypt to Star Wars,
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), 37.
[iii] Woods,
Jr., Thomas, E., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization,
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2005), 116.
[iv] Clark,
Kenneth, writer / narrator, Civilisation, Man: The Measure of All Things,
Episode 4. BBC, 1969,
[v] Clark,
Kenneth, writer / narrator, Civilisation, The Artist as Hero, Episode 5. BBC,
1969,
[vi] Paglia,
Camille, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Arts from Egypt to Star Wars,
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), 8.
[vii] Paglia,
Camille, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Arts from Egypt to Star Wars,
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), 97.
[viii] Paglia,
Camille, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Arts from Egypt to Star Wars,
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), 97.
[ix] Paglia,
Camille, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Arts from Egypt to Star Wars,
(New York: Pantheon, 2012), 105.
