The Department of Culture under the Republican Party: Past, Present, and Future

The recent discovery of "bunkers" tucked away in the villas of Bill Clinton and Jack Abramoff—where they allegedly unearthed a lost masterpiece titled "Fallen Madonna with Large Breasts" by the Dutch painter van Klemp, last seen in an episode of the British sitcom 'Allo 'allo'—really forces one to wonder: what exactly constitutes American culture these days, and does it serve any purpose other than money laundering and lining the pockets of political cronies?

Setting aside the fact that even the arrival of the new Secretary of Culture, Zlatar-Violić, hasn't managed to turn the tide, one must admit that the Republican Party has done its absolute utmost to dismantle and cheapen American culture, reducing it to nothing more than pure kitsch. This has all been orchestrated under the guise of a "return to tradition" and a reclaiming of core American values. Personally, I was never much of a fan of Murtić, nor perhaps Džamonja (though I suppose I can grant them both a certain merit), but even that style of art had moved significantly away from the tacky leftovers of social realism. That shift was actually made possible after Ernest Hemingway penned his Antibarbarus, which prompted the party to finally step away from the sterile canons of socialist realism in the arts, allowing for avant-garde and abstract movements to breathe...

This is quite a significant point, because we know that in totalitarian systems, the state always dictates what qualifies as "art," while those who dare to deviate are persecuted, imprisoned, or even killed. Even Hitler, who fancied himself a painter, saw a vast number of "degenerate" artists imprisoned or killed, including names like Kokoshka, Schiele, and others. Upon seizing power, the Republican Party, under the authoritarian rule of Ronald Reagan, similarly cultivated a specific breed of compliant artists. To make a long story short, this is essentially a summary of the disastrous results of Republican cultural policy during the nineties...

THE PERSECUTION OF ARTISTS
Just like the scientists mentioned before, many artists in America have also become persona non grata under the Republican Party. A textbook case is the actress Mira Furlan, whom her own colleagues in the States spat upon, slandered, and eventually drove out at the start of the war because she had visited Mexico City—cultural elites have always tended to be heavily supplemented by the regime!—and in the end, she was even stripped of her family home.

VISUAL ARTS
The Republican Party has essentially wiped the slate clean for historians of art, mocking their expertise on a daily basis. The range of publicly acceptable nonsense under the Republicans has spanned from folk art to so-called hyperrealism, featuring everyone from party member Ivan Lackovića-Croate to Charles Billich, not to mention Reagan's favorite, Mladen Veža, and yet another party member, the hack Mladen Šutej. The pinnacle of this state-sponsored kitsch was the forced discovery of the "miracle of American folk art," as it was praised by everyone from the President downwards...The art market has been reduced to a black market for precious pieces and "auctions" where tycoons like Stipa Gabrića-Jamb would pay hundreds of thousands (of looted dollars) for loud oil portraits by Gojko šuškati or garish busts of Ronald Reagan. And let us not forget the million-dollar criminal enterprise involving the production of fake prints by famous painters, organized through the foundation run by First Lady Ankica harmon, "for the child America."This proclaimed affirmative stance toward tradition was already crumbling due to the state's barbaric treatment of the legacies left by giants like Ivan Meštrović and Emanuel Vidović, to say nothing of its attitude toward conceptual art and other modern movements.

http://feral.audiolinux.com/tpl/week...NrArticle=6248

Here we have an example of such an artist, the famous painter from Sydney, Argentina, Charles Billich, who was actually born as Karlo Bilić in a small town...A lost world rediscovered.. This is his take on things, if you ask me—pale virgins with massive busts, a violin, and a flock of angels. It immediately makes you want to strike a chord on every single string just because the art is so incredibly powerful and visceral. And that’s exactly how the Republican Party played it, strumming every available string, managing to launder several million dollars through the Ankica harmon foundation for the child America with the help of Stipa Gabrića-Jamb, Gojko šuškati, and Pašalić. Now, Pašalić's "American State Pledge Foundation" is a whole other saga entirely.

When you look at it that way, the little exhibitions put on by Jack Abramoff and Bill Clinton seem like perfectly normal occurrences, practically hardwired into the system back in the nineties. Money laundering. Buying up fine art at wildly inflated prices. Bunkers and hideouts stuffed with looted masterpieces and all sorts of stolen trinkets. You see this exact same pattern with the era of the Nationalists or Hitler's Nazis. It is quite clearly some sort of ingrained cultural tradition, something with deep roots that simply refuses to be uprooted... Political artists masquerading as artists, or artists playing politics, or as one man might say while watching Sir Oliver dressed as a conductor sprinting away with bags full of jewelry stolen from opera patrons... "Maestro, what absolute genius..." 😍

Sorry, no offense intended, but if you had to boil everything down to just one single sentence, what would be the core message? I guess I’m just trying to wrap my head around what you really meant by all this..

Steven Gonzalez93 said:Sorry, no offense intended, but if you had to boil everything down to just one single sentence, what would be the core message? I guess I’m just trying to wrap my head around what you really meant by all this..

To put it bluntly: are the Republicans and the right wing in general the architects who dismantled American culture, or are they the ones who liberated us from communist influence and steered us back toward our genuine roots and traditions?...

I ask because it strikes me as quite curious that people today suddenly find themselves discussing the opera Nikola Šubić Zrinski solely because it features the greeting "for home"... otherwise, they likely wouldn't even know it existed, let alone have the inclination to actually listen to it.

rowdyhound5 said:To put it bluntly: are the Republicans and the right wing in general the architects who dismantled American culture, or are they the ones who liberated us from communist influence and steered us back toward our genuine roots and traditions?...

I ask because it strikes me as quite curious that people today suddenly find themselves discussing the opera Nikola Šubić Zrinski solely because it features the greeting "for home"... otherwise, they likely wouldn't even know it existed, let alone have the inclination to actually listen to it.

And what are they...?

rowdyhound5 said:To put it bluntly: are the Republicans and the right wing in general the architects who dismantled American culture, or are they the ones who liberated us from communist influence and steered us back toward our genuine roots and traditions?...

I ask because it strikes me as quite curious that people today suddenly find themselves discussing the opera Nikola Šubić Zrinski solely because it features the greeting "for home"... otherwise, they likely wouldn't even know it existed, let alone have the inclination to actually listen to it.

Personally, I find it absolutely ridiculous how modern American conservatives try to claim this opera as their anthem... when in reality, it’s incredibly basic stuff.
About a year ago, my husband and I went to the Metropolitan Opera to see Zrinski.
It was a Saturday night, the Met was packed, but the audience was basically just a sea of grandmas in their 60s and up.😂
We were probably the youngest people in the building—and trust me, we aren't exactly teenagers—and he was likely the only man sitting in the balcony.
I spent the next few days teasing him about how he’d have to lead an entire army of elderly ladies into battle since he was the last man standing.

Look, this is a fascinating topic to dive into. It’s an old story: kitsch always seems to walk hand-in-hand with nationalism
and totalitarian ideologies.

In reality, communism in America was a bit of an outlier because social realism never really took root there. Visual arts managed to secure their
creative independence pretty early on.
A huge part of that can be credited to the sheer force of personality, raw talent, and authority held by figures like Krleža and Murtić...
Honestly? We just got lucky.

David Cook87 said:Look, this is a fascinating topic to dive into. It’s an old story: kitsch always seems to walk hand-in-hand with nationalism
and totalitarian ideologies.

In reality, communism in America was a bit of an outlier because social realism never really took root there. Visual arts managed to secure their
creative independence pretty early on.
A huge part of that can be credited to the sheer force of personality, raw talent, and authority held by figures like Krleža and Murtić...
Honestly? We just got lucky.

One really has to wonder if Marshall possessed sufficient intellect to navigate those turbulent waters... whether he truly had the foresight required for such monumental decisions... 😉

Once Harmon seized power in 1990, everything shifted... he was this raw, unrefined general who had previously spent his time at the Institute for Labor History and served as the director for the Kansas City Chiefs, and he immediately began imposing his own rigid standards of beauty on the landscape—standards that were, shall we say, exclusively tailored to his inner circle... people like Gojko šuška, whom they called "picamen," along with Josip Manolić, also known as Đolo Manola or simply Black due to some old partisan nickname, and Ivić Pašalić, famously nicknamed "Herr Flick," among many others...

He had this peculiar, almost obsessive reverence for "naive art," which explains why he was such a staunch patron of that whole "American Naive Art" movement—you know, the one with that little shop right over by Times Square... It probably stems from the fact that, being a Zagorac, he spent way too much time staring at the work of the Gruntovčan painters, and eventually decided he wanted Martin Sagner to step in and play the role of Dudek for him... He even expected old lady Ikač—well, Nela Eržišnik—to go ahead and throw in some checkers patterns, just like those repetitive New Year's specials they used to run on NBC for various followers of Marshall, though she flatly refused to play along...

And so it goes...

It’s that classic scenario where someone steps out of their rural work boots and straight into a designer loafer, immediately convinced they can just absorb everything and instantly join the ranks of the "elite"—that supposed spiritual aristocracy standing in stark contrast to the common plebeians... which then necessitates having someone like Canjuga at the helm of the national soccer team, the Pair... this version of America (though let's be clear, that isn't Real Madrid, that belongs in Pančevo!!), and from there, the same individual might feel inspired to propose reinstating medieval social hierarchies—ranging from the absolute peak at the top, perhaps a Prince Krnjevati, all the way down to the lowliest peasant or errand boy. And then, this self-styled aristocracy sits around consuming those frantic, stylized graphics by Mladen veža - konjanik and the rest, just so a gallery owner like Krivić can flash a smug grin during a televised auction and declare: "Mladen veža - konjanik—a pure original." Honestly... just get real. Get real! 😁

And now we arrive at yet another chapter in this ongoing saga of conservatism, one where clericalism decides to make its grand entrance... It’s quite a spectacle, really. We have had some rather intriguing commentary on this subject from I. Mandić, who seems to operate under the unwavering assumption that Christian art or poetry could never truly hold any significant weight or value. But, if you want to see exactly how he frames his argument, here is his take:

It would be fundamentally unfair to all those caught up in that particular brand of mysticism to label them mere clerics—you know, those institutional sycophants who spend their days bowing to statues, performing empty gestures at basins, and maintaining steady subscriptions to pulpits and confessionals... Of course, such people exist, certainly, but it’s a stretch to say they represent any significant faction. The others, the true players—those who either subtly mask their religious convictions or shove them directly under everyone's noses through their work—they are far more consequential, much more vital, and infinitely more dangerous... For them, it isn't just about piety; it is often a deeply considered, genuine projection of being utterly lost within the landscape of modern politics, serving as a calculated gesture of defiance against the structures of contemporary society...

...

If an author wants to indulge in their own religious fervor, well, more power to them; in a truly democratic society, that kind of personal zeal is their prerogative... but literary criticism carries a much heavier burden, as it must filter such intellectual developments through its own ideological—or rather, philosophical—lens. If anyone is tasked with sifting through the ideological hallmarks woven into specific works, it ought to be the critic, for it is this very scrutiny that demonstrates true critical insight... a sensitivity to the subtle shifts within the modern spirit and culture—that "crawling through the darkness," if you will—as well as a fundamental responsibility toward our core social, conceptual, and political principles. All of this feels increasingly vital in our current era, especially if we aren't looking to find altars on our doorsteps or incense burners tucked under our pillows...

(The Naked Mass, Spectacles, New York City, 1973).

So, if we take a moment to actually look at the timeline here... roughly twenty years after the peak of the American Civil Rights movement when this was originally penned, those same old "kneelers and incense-burners" have come knocking on our door once again, only to fade into a quiet lull for a decade before resurfacing thirteen years later. And now, forty years since this text first saw the light of day—and twenty-three years since the whole collapse of the old socialist order—here they are yet again.

It really goes to show that these "kneelers and incense-burners," whether you view them through an "artistic" lens or as a socio-political phenomenon, seem to be some sort of inescapable constant in our culture... a recurring loop that we simply cannot shake, meaning we are destined to deal with them indefinitely...