CULTURIST ART CRITICISM AND THE SALVATION OF THE WEST

The Last Judgement

by John K. Press

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.

MODERN ART: AN ARTFUL SWINDLE

by Buffalo Jenkins

The first and most sweeping swindle perpetrated upon the West by its enemies was the obfuscation of the definition of Art.

Starting with Kandinsky’s ‘Expressionism’ and bolstered by Clement Greenburg’s ‘Artspeak’ criticism, this new abstract creativity overwhelmed all tradition in art. Swept away in this nihilist flood were traditional art tutelage, inherited skills dating back to prehistory, high culture, good taste, standards of hierarchy, naturalism, symmetry, decoration, technical merit, self-determination and ‘becoming’ in art. Styles in painting, sculpture, and architecture that had evolved from European antiquity came to a crashing halt on the pages of ‘art theory’ criticism – a ridiculous construct of universalism that tried (successfully!) to embrace pure abstraction as progressivism in art.