Subtitle: The Gerard van Bladeren Appreciation Society
I would like to write about the parallel changes in cultural mores about sex and art since 1950.
Art
In a museum, modern and contemporary art is usually sequestered in its own wing. There are good curatorial reasons for this, not the least being chronological, but I believe it is also to save Mark Rothko and Piet Mondrian from the posthumous embarrassment of having their work displayed next to that of El Greco or Caravaggio. The gulf between the meaningless abstraction of the new and the meaningful representation of the old is as great as can readily be perceived.
Everyone who has paid any attention to art history knows that something happened in the last century and a half. Generally this has been described as a movement away from representational art and perspective towards abstraction, hence the oxymoron “abstract art.” The most common reasons I have seen for this massive shift in fine art are:
- The rise of photography with its theoretical ability to perfectly capture a subject rendered representational art of the kind that had been honed in the western tradition for a thousand years nearly superfluous.
- The collapse of Christianity and embrace of meaninglessness in upper/literary class sensibilities (read: art patrons and artists) in Europe and America, as well as the perceived meaninglessness of the Great War, led artists to approach art differently, from visual communication of meaning to visual communication of meaninglessness, or an absence of any communication whatsoever.
Now that this transvaluation of artistic values has been completed, it is not allowed to be questioned. I recently listened to an episode of the popular podcast 99% Invisible, which dealt with the work of Barnett Newman, the American abstract expressionist (whose work is pictured above). Newman painted oblique color block canvases which were meant to express (in some way) the horrors of World War II. The podcast episode centers on the vandalization of Newman’s work Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III by a struggling Dutch artist, Gerard van Bladeren, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1986. Van Bladeren later attacked Cathedra, another Newman canvas.
He attacked Newman’s paintings because he saw them as an affront to real art, which he believed was meant to portray things using artistic skill. Newman’s works don’t portray anything, and the amount of artistic skill involved is debatable. Even though this meaningless was intentional, and despite the fact that most people remain mystified by abstract art, no serious art critic can question its value. The emperor has no clothes, but anyone who points this out, for example Gerard van Bladeren, must be cast outside the camp.
The great tradition of western art continues in overlooked corners, but too often it is merely backwards-looking preservationism. The powers that be have decreed that artistic innovation in fine art must only move away from meaning, away from representation, towards nothingness.
Sex
The way in which people in rich western societies contract with each other for sexual relations has changed significantly since 1950. The age of young marriage, parental involvement in courtship, large families, and lifelong monogamy is over. It has been replaced to a great extent by an age of what is called sexual freedom. This includes late marriage (or none at all), resistance to involvement by parents or anyone else in courtship, transactional hookup culture, 1.5 kids, easy and frequent divorce, and legal and cultural recognition of sexual minorities.
Data show that the happiest marriages are long-lasting ones among conservative Christians who have managed to retain the old mores, but these are now decidedly rare. Everyone who has paid attention knows that something has happened, a radical change that has been described as the “sexual revolution.” Generally the movement has been away from societal norms and personal commitment towards sex as a transaction and marriage as merely a slightly more serious form of cohabitation. The most common reasons given for the massive shift in sexual mores are:
- Effective and cheap birth control removed some of the seriousness of sex by making reproduction less likely, making it easier to universalize and exploit the sexual marketplace that in an earlier age was confined to prostitution. This, plus the economic enfranchisement of women, seem to have made the old idea of marriage as an interdependent relationship between breadwinning men and homemaking women a thing of the past.
- The collapse of Christian sexual mores across society throughout the middle 20th century, including the de-glorification of monogamous heterosexual marriage and family life.
Now that this transvaluation of sexual values has been completed, it is not allowed to be questioned. A perfect example of this is Drag Queen Storytime, in which adult performers (usually men dressed up as women, but sometimes the reverse) come to public spaces to strut their stuff for kids. This is meant to acclimatize children to sexual noncomformity so that they feel comfortable with it in later life. It’s an ingenious cultural innovation because it is so baldly ambitious. The beauty and joy of lifelong one man/one woman marriage? Ha! I’ll see that and raise you the beauty of Queen Dragtanya reading books about You Can Be Whatever You Want to children at a local library.
The great and beautiful tradition of real marriage occurs in overlooked corners. It is something that the broader culture no longer even remembers. The great and beautiful traditions of representative art also still exist, and are almost as deeply forgotten. There are moments of cultural remembrance – when we realize that da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi is something of an entirely different nature than Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God, but these moments are fleeting. The powers that be have decreed that artistic and sexual mores must always only ever move away from the created order, away from goodness, towards license, towards nothingness.
Conclusion
The movement away from meaning in art had technological and moral causes, and the same is true with the movement away from meaning in sex. Both developments are worth studying in more depth, and despite the picture I’ve painted here, are not all negative. But it is inarguable that we have become unmoored, artistically and personally. But why stop now? Who’s afraid of modern art or modern sex? Slip the cable and let the boat drift free, wherever the waves may take it. It may be frightening and ultimately destructive, but it will at least be Authentic and Personally Fulfilling!
Coda
Gerard van Bladeren had the right idea. Certainly, his attack was illegal and an affront to private property rights. But Barnet Newman’s painting was not art. It was anti-art. There has to be a place for the “creative destruction” of anti-art, and anti-sex, in order to rebuild what we have lost: true art, true families, true service of God.
I intend to start the Gerard van Bladeren Appreciation Society soon. I hope you will join me.
INRI
“When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither.”
Man Against World 