Do you think McCarthy was unable to indict his own liberal art world audience with having fascist tendencies because
-he's beholden to the aesthetic he's built and it couldn't contain/express such an indictment
-he wants to maintain his status within the art world (he's kinda cucked)
-it simply didn't occur to him because of one or both of the above or something else?
...i'm asking because as much as this sounds like standpoint theory bullshit, it's hard for me to think an insider artist of his stature could even begin to indict his own audience with avant garde political analyses. It just seems structurally impossible. Curious what you think.
this is a great comment (I usually don't respond but your response here is very sharp). It's impossible for me to say why the quiet part isn't said out loud, or if McCarthy is as conscious of the content embedded in the work as I want to believe he is, so I can't know if it's a failure of courage or a structural limitation (perhaps both?). What I do know, is that the contradictions and failures of art to address the world in its full truth have never been more obvious. Left liberalism, seemingly every day, shifts the goal post further. Something that was totally normal yesterday is considered fascist or white supremacist today, etc.. The artists, like McCarthy and others, who actually have a political grounding will inevitably grow alienated as the culture they're embedded in becomes more censorious (many artists, and certainly lots of the late '80s postmodern shitlibs, were never that sophisticated of political thinkers anyways, so they have no problem shape shifting alongside the culture and pretending that they've always thought this way, I'm sure you could think of examples). We are already starting to see something new emerge. Basically anyone who openly disagrees with the ideological orthodoxies of left liberalism (from both the right and the left) have already been cast out and ostracized from the art world. And this has given us immense freedom, such as what I do here or what my friend Mónica does with Covidian Aesthetics and otherwise. But artists as famous as Paul have a lot more to lose, so they won't be able to confront these problems with as much fervor. But my most hopeful assumption is that, even though Paul didn't go all the way, there will start to be some authentic critique of these systems and this propaganda coming from more established institutional entities.
Think of where we are now. The Trump presidency should have facilitated some critical thinking about why liberalism has failed. Instead, our major left intellectuals, our activists, and definitely our artists collectively lost their fucking minds. Despite their lives probably having not changed one bit during the Trump presidency (they're all elites), they were the most fervently enraged. Consider how gross it really is for a bunch of rich New Yorkers working in arts and academia to look at poor working people who had their jobs shipped overseas by Democrats and their communities stuffed to the gills with opiates. I believe Paul is smart and empathetic enough to understand this, and I'm sure he's not alone. Perhaps my response is a bit all over the place, but basically what I'm saying is that McCarthy's show here might be a signal that more people than we thought are starting to understand these failures, are starting to become contemptuous of the fact that art is often little more than a propaganda arm of the left side of capital, and that so much opportunity is being lost. The same artists who posted about "children in cages" for four years are now silent, despite Biden's admin doing MORE deportations and keeping the migrant facilities open. The same artists who cried about fascism for four years are now silent when the DNC war machine drops bombs on Syrian children. The psyop that they've all been apart of is being exposed little by little. Their "morality" is little more than a rhetorical mask that they use to conceal their own class and political interests. What we will start to see is a. more artists openly expressing their disagreements with the state of affairs and b. even more vast and more vicious reactions from the radlibs. Expect more cancellations, etc.. But the more that are cancelled is the less that cancellation will mean anything. And a new freedom can emerge from that.
Excellent! Right on target
spot on...criticise them all Trump, Biden, everyone...otherwise its just a missed opportunity and predictable 'left outrgage'
Where is the image by McCarthy stating Hygiene is the Religion of Fascism? It used to be Google accessible.
Great stuff.
Do you think McCarthy was unable to indict his own liberal art world audience with having fascist tendencies because
-he's beholden to the aesthetic he's built and it couldn't contain/express such an indictment
-he wants to maintain his status within the art world (he's kinda cucked)
-it simply didn't occur to him because of one or both of the above or something else?
...i'm asking because as much as this sounds like standpoint theory bullshit, it's hard for me to think an insider artist of his stature could even begin to indict his own audience with avant garde political analyses. It just seems structurally impossible. Curious what you think.
this is a great comment (I usually don't respond but your response here is very sharp). It's impossible for me to say why the quiet part isn't said out loud, or if McCarthy is as conscious of the content embedded in the work as I want to believe he is, so I can't know if it's a failure of courage or a structural limitation (perhaps both?). What I do know, is that the contradictions and failures of art to address the world in its full truth have never been more obvious. Left liberalism, seemingly every day, shifts the goal post further. Something that was totally normal yesterday is considered fascist or white supremacist today, etc.. The artists, like McCarthy and others, who actually have a political grounding will inevitably grow alienated as the culture they're embedded in becomes more censorious (many artists, and certainly lots of the late '80s postmodern shitlibs, were never that sophisticated of political thinkers anyways, so they have no problem shape shifting alongside the culture and pretending that they've always thought this way, I'm sure you could think of examples). We are already starting to see something new emerge. Basically anyone who openly disagrees with the ideological orthodoxies of left liberalism (from both the right and the left) have already been cast out and ostracized from the art world. And this has given us immense freedom, such as what I do here or what my friend Mónica does with Covidian Aesthetics and otherwise. But artists as famous as Paul have a lot more to lose, so they won't be able to confront these problems with as much fervor. But my most hopeful assumption is that, even though Paul didn't go all the way, there will start to be some authentic critique of these systems and this propaganda coming from more established institutional entities.
Think of where we are now. The Trump presidency should have facilitated some critical thinking about why liberalism has failed. Instead, our major left intellectuals, our activists, and definitely our artists collectively lost their fucking minds. Despite their lives probably having not changed one bit during the Trump presidency (they're all elites), they were the most fervently enraged. Consider how gross it really is for a bunch of rich New Yorkers working in arts and academia to look at poor working people who had their jobs shipped overseas by Democrats and their communities stuffed to the gills with opiates. I believe Paul is smart and empathetic enough to understand this, and I'm sure he's not alone. Perhaps my response is a bit all over the place, but basically what I'm saying is that McCarthy's show here might be a signal that more people than we thought are starting to understand these failures, are starting to become contemptuous of the fact that art is often little more than a propaganda arm of the left side of capital, and that so much opportunity is being lost. The same artists who posted about "children in cages" for four years are now silent, despite Biden's admin doing MORE deportations and keeping the migrant facilities open. The same artists who cried about fascism for four years are now silent when the DNC war machine drops bombs on Syrian children. The psyop that they've all been apart of is being exposed little by little. Their "morality" is little more than a rhetorical mask that they use to conceal their own class and political interests. What we will start to see is a. more artists openly expressing their disagreements with the state of affairs and b. even more vast and more vicious reactions from the radlibs. Expect more cancellations, etc.. But the more that are cancelled is the less that cancellation will mean anything. And a new freedom can emerge from that.