I just received my copy of the new book by John Cuneo, Good Intentions.
Cuneo has a unique voice in American illustration. When you think about his work, you need a whole different vocabulary: Penetrating. Scary. Brave. Upsetting. Frank. Epic. Scorchingly honest. How long has it been since such adjectives applied to illustration, or to any drawing for that matter?
And funny, lord is he funny.
For decades, scientists have searched for a deep salt mine in a remote location where they might safely store weapons-grade plutonium. Cuneo packages it in tiny spider web lines.
Despite his mostly dark and trenchant observations, there's even a "yes" to be found in this book.
Like Cuneo's other books, we get the feeling that he paid a higher price to create it than we pay to receive it.
111 comments:
There's nobody like Cuneo.
I'm amazed at the cover choice ('nsfw' yourself !), great stuff - cheers !
The humor barely registers as fun because he's such a psychosexual slob. Its depressing. Looks like an unshowered-for-days junk food, coffee, and porn type of guy. I'd hate to look at his studio under a black light.
~ FV
It’s hard for me to appreciate Cuneo’s illustrations because they are so damn ugly.
I love Cuneo's style, insight (both as an illustrator and as a humorist) and idiosyncrasies. But then again, I love Louis CK too.
Cuneo is brilliant but his drawings are not for children. People who can't deal with complexity or who have prettified sense of beauty shouldn't get ahead of their skis. They're better off sticking with My Little Pony.
JSL
Do you say to yourself repeatedly as you look at funny cartoon drawings of saggy tits, boners, and flab, "Now THIS is what a MATURE man does!"
'Bronies' are a lib thing, jsl. You need to catch up on your Dem. party memos.
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/10/7362321/9-questions-about-furries-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask
Anonymous wrote: "Bronies are a lib thing, jsl. You need to catch up on your Dem. party memos."
Really? Somehow this has to become a political thing too? I need to start a separate blog to siphon off the bile and saliva, and focus this blog on aromatherapy candles to put some of the agitated minds at ease.
A different anonymous wrote: "cartoon drawings of saggy tits, boners, and flab"
Those of you who think women's breasts are ugly because they don't look like they do in the comic books should take a little time out for self-reflection.
Well, not saying all must be pretty, but he does wallow in uglification beyond any real & non-ideal. Which, of course, is fine.
(Yes, bronies incline left. Which is the least of their inclinations of concern. Ask the hotel cleaning staff at their conventions)
Kley did it better, and yes David it seems today(sadly) everything is about politics.
https://cafans.b-cdn.net/images/Category_13622/subcat_146143/Kley.jpg
Kley was mentioned a lot in earlier Cuneo posts, too; I don't see much in common.
Cuneo's toilet-wall agitated line and content is reductio ad scatium by choice, but not somewhere you'd want to inhabit.
Kindergarten Art and Culture Policeperson says Little Bobby must think all breasts are beautiful. And if he disagrees, Little Bobby must go sit in the corner and have a 'time-out' to reflect on his thought crimes until he is ready to obey all-powerful all-loving totally nonjudgmental Devouring Mother, Globalhomo, & Cuck Male Inc.
"Everything is about politics" because left activists have overrun academia, the soft research fields, news media, sports, corporate boards, the publishing industry, comic books, movies, science journals, the fine arts, most professional associations, female spaces and sports, key cultural institutions, late night comedy, the judicial system especially DA offices, national holidays, HR departments, television commercials, advertising, and the government bureaucracies.
Enjoy the backlash. You caused it.
This is a place for intelligent people to discuss art. Would you fucking children please go someplace else for your Nazi rallies?
"Art" isn't the reason "intelligent mature adults" look at sex jokes. Get over your pretentious self.
Personal opinions: The crocodile puppet one is amusing. I don't get the distractions one. The other ones seem gratuitous.
As far as the drawing, these seem more slapdash than usual. And I strongly suspect that, since the subject matter is so "low", that excellent delectable drawing must be brought to bear as a countervailing aesthetic force; which is to say, the material fairly screams out for complementarity. Somewhat like the idea that horror needs some humor, and drama needs some romance. There must be real diamonds in the mud that make the mud worth wading through.
A lot of endeavors or interests are spoken of as mature or sophisticated: Medical, familial, and financial issues, unremitting responsibilities, pain and loss, civic duty, the commons, the proper raising of children, and so on.
However, in any endeavor where the end goal is pleasure for its own sake, the use of terms like "adult", "intelligent", or "sophisticated" seems akin to the weird rituals one finds in strict sectarianism; attempts to hide base appetites behind high symbolic accessorizing and status plays. If you want to get off, high, or drunk, that's your business. But don't put lipstick on that pig and tell me she's a lady. ;)
"Those of you who think women's breasts are ugly because they don't look like they do in the comic books should take a little time out for self-reflection."
- That's a misread. Cuneo draws them ugly, not 'real'. It's how he draws men and women. And, pretty often, the sexual-squalid. Nothing should prevent anyone from acknowledging, satirising or parodying that side of things. But there's an element of wallowing in it, too. Decadence is rot, it smells, and will make you sick if you breathe and hang around it too long.
Not my thing, but a lot of his work, especially when the emphasis isn't on the downward-spiralled, is excellent.
Cuneo's take on women's bodies would qualify as bitter in a misogynist sense, were it not for his portraying everything, including men, in the same manner. It's humorous commentary, you obviously wouldn't want to take it seriously as world-view (unless you dallied with a mild sociopathy).
Kev Ferrara wrote: "attempts to hide base appetites behind high symbolic accessorizing and status plays."
First let me say, "Hallelujah! Someone who actually tries to respond to the art!" I was afraid that everyone here was using Richmond Valentine's SIM card. It seems to be the sickness of our age that, rather than pause to read or check facts, people just burrow down further into their own bitterness with each successive exchange.
As for your point, I am more persuaded by music historian Ted Gioia who wrote, "The shameful elements of songs-- their links to sex, violence, magic, ecstatic trance and other disreputable matters-- are actually sources of power, serving as the engine of innovation in human music-making." He writes about the roots of jazz, and about shamans tapped into the forces of rhythm in the service of transcendence, how folk songs of the working poor defied social structures with glorifying sex and violence, and how even the undeniable power of anguished slave singing shaped the music of the west.
Michael Chabon wrote about similar sources of power in literature, and we find it running through great books going back to Chaucer and further.
The roots in visual art pre-date language, to sheela na gigs, to the wooden penis that Isis fashioned for Osiris so that Horus could be conceived, to ithyphallic statues and fascinum. I've certainly written here about how "fine art," when it found itself on the verge of becoming overly civilized and desiccated, returns again and again to what you call "base appetites" for renewal. The pagan sacred spring of the vienna secession, Picasso's turn to tribal art with its forbidden rituals, and as contemporary art became more thin and vapid we've seen artists from Warhol to Koons to Prince (Richard, that is) to Currin steal from pulp magazines, comic books and even pornography in an effort to regain power from the wellspring. Koons is the one who is concerned with "putting lipstick on a pig" because he is concerned with whether you and the art establishment think she's a lady.
My guess is that Cuneo doesn't give a damn whether you think she's a lady, he does what he does because he can do no other, which makes him just about the most genuine illustrator working today. Why else would anyone go looking for trouble from sniggering adolescents who see only "flabby tits and boners"? Michelangelo had to live with similar schoolboy taunts when he depicted David's penis in the public square, while the church orthodoxy wanted him to focus instead on whether Adam and Eve, having never been "born," could be depicted with navels. (One is reminded of Edna St. Vincent Millay's country of hunchbacks "where the strong, straight spine [is] jeered at by crooked children."
I'm a little surprised to get the "base appetites" argument from you. First, I always thought that one of the key reasons to focus on illustration and comic art is to collect interesting ideas and intellectual ferment from the outskirts of civilization, rather than the edulcorated fare that had been approved for museums. Why else are you here?
Second, commenters who think these drawings would be sexier to look at if the breasts were more firm seem to miss the whole point. People who want to "get off" (as you put it) are better off going elsewhere.
People used to question why Alfred Hitchcock would waste his directorial genius on a lowly subject like "thrillers." He was undeterred and after a while, the people who mattered figured it out.
"Second, commenters who think these drawings would be sexier to look at if the breasts were more firm seem to miss the whole point."
- did anyone say, or even imply, that ??
See my comment ('Cuneo's take on women's bodies...' etc ) above.
(Contd.) The 'saggy tits, boners, and flab,' comment was meant, I think (it's not mine), as a riposte to the one that preceded it, which had a ridiculous premise. Not the "Oh, you must love comic-book bubble-gum boobs" you deduced from it.
Cuneo has produced a lot of work that makes human grotesques enact scenarios suggestive of sexual and psychic breakdown. No reason why he shouldn't. But there are questions as to what the purpose is is - recogise self or others ? Satirise ? Aloof commentary ? Participate on some level ?
Keeping a detached distance from some of his scenarios (and female portrayals, for that matter) is a healhy position, imo, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who didn't.
...and there's no denying 'sniggering adolescent' itself is part of a lot of the work, despite the bookshelves.
This blog has been around for many years. I've noticed that in recent times, as levels of hostility have risen, the number of "anonymous" comments has increased to the point where it's difficult for people to respond to specific comments. I attribute it to the Ring of Gyges phenomenon. But I'd remind any commenters who are interested in a dialogue that it would help to leave an identifying word or number or mark.
I've just been reading a lot of the earlier posts, including the ones on Cuneo, and the 'hostility' if anything was worse in the early 2010s (just not directly political). You can (of course) freely ignore unsigned comments without offence (as far as I'm concerned, anyway, regarding anything I've put above.).
On which, your own earlier question seems to slightly approach one of mine
"if Cuneo is able to hit the target better than most of his peers, exactly what target is he hitting?" - https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-cuneo-aiming-for-invisible-target.html
Anonymous [ no. ??? ] wrote: "the 'hostility' if anything was worse in the early 2010s"
Historically there have been commenters who've identified themselves and become known for their divergent but knowledgeable opinions about art history or different styles or artistic processes. Some of them have logged years as artists or printers or art directors. They've expressed strong views-- sometimes in stronger language than I would-- about issues such as the acceptability of photo reference or the legitimacy of digital tools but they are willing to explain their positions, often with examples that help educate me and readers. That's very different from all this gratuitous nonsense about leftists overrunning the judicial system.
As for the question, "if Cuneo is able to hit the target better than most of his peers, exactly what target is he hitting?" that's really getting back to the art of it. In previous generations, the target could be easily defined and a bullseye could be easily confirmed. Did the artist get perspective right? Are the skin tones realistic? But those days are gone, at least for a while. The previous targets have been unseated by photography and photoshop, by cultural disenchantment and expressive dissatisfaction, by history and by commerce. So what replaces them? How do we distinguish between an abstract painting and an explosion in a paint factory? The criteria for success become much more challenging.
I've argued here that the success or failure of a work of art has to depend in large part on what the artist hoped to accomplish. The art world is glutted with artists with feeble and unfocused targets, and with success that is measured by the amount that investment bankers and hedge fund managers are willing to pay for a picture. In my view, Cuneo's targets are strange and wild and daunting, and he has to pass through fire to get to them. You can't measure the success of his drawing by whether he got perspective right.
There are commenters like Kev Ferrara, above, who will argue that Cuneo's line work is "slapdash," but for me his line work is excruciating and wise and true. That's an honest debate that I don't mind having. The day that Kev starts ranting that Cuneo's line is the result of a woke culture and Dear Leader Trump is leading the cultural backlash, that's when I start ignoring him and moving on to more relevant comments.
Thanks. Alongside arguments about art, there are scrolls of diatribe, though, easily the match of 'libtards!' vs 'hitler!'. Anyway, that's beside the/any point.
I much prefer the work from Cuneo you featured in those earlier posts to the ones above. And that's not to say anything against the new book because I just looked at his instagram from this morning and he has a flick-through of it and there are some really great pictures the equal of the best I've seen from him in it.
I took your "exactly what target"-question to mean the same as mine. I wouldn't go as far as ~FV, above, but there is a disturbing darkness there.
An excess diet of political art mostly is depressing in its biliousness, whatever your stripes. These pictures aren't political, but the - ahem - diet of dicks and sexual and other disfunction can similarly be like staying in a room with bad air for too long. Alleviated by the humour (the "cellulite is a deal-breaker" from the sub-Adonis...), and portrayal is justified by there being real-world things they mirror.
I don't know if this matches in any way what you meant by 'Cuneo's targets are strange and wild and daunting, and he has to pass through fire to get to them'.
Although I find myself agreeing with Anonymous ~FV about what Cuneo's work possibly reveals about Cuneo's character, I can separate this view to some degree from the aesthetics of his formal, that's to say plastic, language. The 'Yes' tinted drawing of the copulating couple I think best demonstrates my point. The broken, interrupted seismographic line Cuneo employs to broker the relationship between form and its enveloping air gives his illustrations a plastic unity of positive and negative volume, matter and space. This means that the forms somehow 'live' into being rather than sitting there as symbols of nameable objects. Earnest Shephard's illustrations do the same thing but by different means and to serve, what I feel to be at least, more gratifying purposes.
(Just to clarify, Chris, about the 'negatives'/darkness, I mean some of the subjects given attention, and maybe 'why', not impugning the artist's character)
(...unless there really are serrated teeth on the oven gloves in the Cuneo household)
After reading the comments and especially David’s defense of Cuneo’s work I googled for more and was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed most of what I found. Must be the subject matter, anyway live and learn.
"The shameful elements of songs-- their links to sex, violence, magic, ecstatic trance and other disreputable matters-- are actually sources of power...”
Lots of terrible illustrations use sex and gore to attract the eyeballs and excite the senses. Kant’s point about disinterestedness prevents us from granting such cheap limbic hacks the status of artistry. Additionally, some of the worst trance-inducing music of all time fills the club dance floor with ecstatic jigglers. I’m sure you wouldn’t stay for a second song without earplugs.
Other mindless intensities tasked to provide “power” are equally hollow and cheap: bigness, loudness, hyper-saturation, explosivness, radical distortion, obnoxious or incessant accents, surface agitation for its own sake, Dutch Angles and other forms of disorientation, and various hypnotist patternings (to name a few). The primitiveness of all of the above tricks tells us something about sensationalism, and vice versa.
Though I’ve bongo’d and bellowed and boogied, I don’t live in the stone age and get no aesthetic hit from the basic and tribal in the arts. Maybe I live too close to nature to romanticize its incivility; its very harshness forces the adoption of ritual behaviors and ritualistic accessories. And I'm no interior decorator.
As I see it, eventually every artform finds its poets. The poets find the keys that open the doors. Greatness flowers, business booms. And then the charlatans rush in and grab as much grub as they can stuff down their pants before they are escorted out of the now-collapsing building. And this precipitates a crash in the market and an inevitable return back to the primitive. And the process repeats.
All to say, I obviously do not agree that dipping into base appetites for auxiliary power does art any favors. Rather, I think that’s the road to the trashcan and the toilet. Which is where we are now. Aesthetics and poetics; integrity and sensitivity; accept no substitutes.
Anyway, when I wrote the lipstick-pig (as well as get-off) line, I was actually referring to the status trappings that a certain kind of person will use to put an ornate frame around basic “disreputable” drives and self-destructive appetites. The sniffy wine aficianado speaking of espers and oak notes (the lipstick) as he gets sip by sip utterly blotto (the pig) being my favorite example. Here my target was the anon who hyped “intelligent people” on here “discussing art” (lipstick) which then was knocked as actually being about “sex jokes” (pig) when stripped of the pretension. Hard to argue to the contrary.
I mean, aren’t these drawing mostly sex jokes? Wouldn’t they work in Playboy? Which refers me back to the problem of “power” from interestedness mentioned earlier. (btw, I meant “slapdash” in comparison to other work of Cuneo's I’ve seen here. I don’t think these are his finest pieces.)
“I always thought that one of the key reasons to focus on illustration and comic art is to collect interesting ideas and intellectual ferment from the outskirts of civilization, rather than the edulcorated fare that had been approved for museums.”
I hardly think Norman Rockwell, Bernie Fuchs or Bob Peak – each of whom have been featured here - were outsiders. Equally the wide variety of subjects one sees on museum walls hardly falls easily into the edulcorated category. Morbid crap by Francis Bacon and Damian Hirst comes to mind.
Either way, I’m not reactively against so-called approved art. Nor am I reactively pro so-called “outsiders.” What do I care about the perceived status (cultural, socioeconomic or political) or acceptability of some artist or some work of art? I don’t see any artwork as either tainted or blessed by its maker, fans, benefactors or detractors. Quality is intrinsic. And I want to experience and think for myself.
Kev Ferrara wrote: "I hardly think Norman Rockwell, Bernie Fuchs or Bob Peak – each of whom have been featured here - were outsiders."
I agree with you about Rockwell, but your other two examples-- Fuchs and Peak-- might help clarify what I ( and Ted Gioia ) mean by being powered by the disreputable or shameful side. Fuchs grew up in a segregated coal mining town in the home of his racist grandfather who warned him that he would be kicked out of the house if he ever spent time with n****rs. In high school Fuchs snuck out of the house at night to play jazz trumpet (forbidden jungle music) in an all black nightclub. His mother begged him to stop, fearing that they would both be put on the street. He had to give up the trumpet professionally after an accident but he continued to play in his studio while thinking of how to handle his art assignments. In the first several years of his art career Fuchs met a lot of resistance from establishment art directors who expected tight realism and didn't know what to make of his slashing, tilted, (jazzy, bluesy) art style. He rebelled against them just as he rebelled against his grandfather.
The case for Peak isn't as compelling, but the 1960s were certainly a period of great ferment where the Eisenhower years of conformity were overthrown by a counterculture of drugs and hippies and rock n' roll during which illustrators were encouraged to "go wild," the more outrageous the better. Later when Peak got conventional and formulaic with his movie posters, all the power drained out of his work.
Don't misunderstand, this is much broader than a drawing of a penis. Music historians say that when Beethoven was the vanguard of the romantic movement, replacing the classical era in music with a more expressive, emotional style, he did it with pieces like the 7th symphony, 2nd movement which was all about basic rhythm. It was unprecedented and became a sensation in the perfumed venues more accustomed to Mozart's ornate harpsichord music.
chris bennett-- This may reveal major character flaws of my own, but even if we were to judge art by the character of the artist (in which case I'd start with bastards like James Montgomery Flagg) I fail to see any character problems with the drawings I've shown by Cuneo.
The book cover is an observation by Cuneo about the communications gulf between self-obsessed husband and wife sitting side by side (the male aroused by porn on his phone, the woman, unsatisfied, taking care of herself). This can't be the first time you've heard of this archetype, although it may be the first time you've seen it portrayed quite this frankly. I see nothing scurrilous here.
The drawing of the artist trying to work while clinging to the muse strikes me as another accurate observation of human nature (although perhaps a little outdated now because artists no longer care much about inspiration). Does it trouble you or FV that the muse is nude? I love that she is shaped like a timeless fertility goddess or a Willendorf venus-- a true ancient Greek muse, rather than the Serpieri-type figures that serve as a muse to masturbating high school boys. I like that Cuneo's muse is so big that it makes it comically unwieldy for the panicking artist to hang onto her and work at the same time. If she were normal sized, the joke wouldn't be as layered.
The third drawing, of the wretched shambles of an artist haunted by serpents, reptiles and that decaying bird hovering over his shoulder, is dark in the same way that a Eugene O'Neill play or a Kafka story would be dark. The caption that his demons are not helping him meet his deadlines strikes me as both funny and a stoic response to what Samuel Johnson and many others have called the black dog of depression. Character problems? I confess I just don't get it.
The next drawing-- the oven mitt threesome-- I find a hilarious observation about the mysterious and sometimes surrealistic nature of human kinks. The man being introuduced to the arrangement is beautifully drawn, leaning backward against the chair and dresser, clearly startled and a little uncertain about what he's gotten himself into, still hard and sizing up the situation. You can tell that his bespectacled face, so sensitively portrayed by Cuneo, is saying "What the hell is this? What have I gotten myself into? How can a couple's sexual relationship possibly have evolved into a bizarre ritual with dragon oven mitts held over their heads? The caption on the drawing shows me that Cuneo is as brilliant a writer as he is an artist. But there is nothing the least bit salacious about the drawing. You can make a picture of a "boner" (as Anonymous #73 so eloquently described it) without being pornographic or even sexual.
The final example, Cuneo's "yes" drawing, I do find erotic-- in fact, far more erotic and true than the thousands of paintings by Vargas and other illustrators who worked for Playboy over the years. If Cuneo's cover drawing showed a lack of communication, the beautifully lettered, muffled "yes" word balloon depicts the opposite: communication between true people.
With all of these drawings, I'm mystified about what commenters find so gross and upsetting. Perhaps it's because they're unaccustomed to images like this, and perhaps that's because no other illustrator does what Cuneo bravely does. A few commenters have pointed to Kley as similar, and I agree that both artists draw alligators and reptiles with a wonderful line, but their tone is very different. Kley is more into allegorical pictures of frolicking wood nymphs while Cuneo is more into the darker, Eugene O'Neill side of reality.
We must, I think, distinguish between an outsider in the personal sense and an outsider in the cultural sense.
Every artist goes through a personal wilderness period. Which is why every artist must, I think, have a deep connection to the feral. Some never leave their personal, professional and financial wilderness. And I've rarely met an artist where the wilderness has entirely left them. Which is to say, scarce is the "court painter" type that not only cozies up to power but finds comfort there. John Howard Sanden was the last one I know of.
So when we talk of a popular "mainstream" artist, we're talking about an outsider that has found wide acceptance for a period of time; usually a limited period of time. A personal outsider that becomes not necessarily an insider, but no longer a cultural outsider - in becoming a hit commodity.
So when I say that Rockwell, Fuchs, and Peak were "hardly outsiders" I mean that they had significant moments out in the cultural sunlight. A point which pointedly leaves out the personal side of the equation, which includes usually a hermetic studio life and a fair quota of quotidian traumas.
Every revolution, every vanguard that takes control becomes the new regime. And every new regime, if it lasts long enough, becomes the Ancien Régime, the new stale tyranny requiring overthrow. There are factors and factions at work and play in power that are as axiomatic as they are arrogating. The re-descent into the monkey house at the end is one such inescapability.
We can recall and appreciate (or lament) the innovation or a rebellion of a moment, but history doesn't actually exist. There is only one wave hitting the beach at a time. We only have what is extant and ongoing. The timeless nature of art entails we most appreciate its intrinsic qualities, because they alone are ongoing. Mountains may crumble but a song is still a song.
"How can a couple's sexual relationship possibly have evolved into a bizarre ritual with dragon oven mitts held over their heads? "
- How indeed ? It's not something that leaps into the mind without some prompting....or - experience. Which rather begs the question.... but I'll go with the theory of biographical fallacy to spare his blushes. It is amusing.
The dicks, though. No denyin' it, there's a compulsion here usually only seen evidenced in biro on copybooks and schooldesks. I once read a theory that classical statues had such small members because, having so recently emerged into civilisation from arcadian barbarism, the greeks were in a tenuous state of consciousness, a shift in their centre of gravity to the mind, a precarious foothold that could be lost again at any minute, and this was possibly subsconsciously represented in the statuary (they didn't cut anything off, but the phallic was pushed into the borderlands of things like filthy little effigies, priapic satyrs on pots, themed mystery-revels and so on). I wouldn't want to pull at the theory too hard, and I'm not sure if the later artistic styles dovetail with the lives of the philosophers, but there might be a more general truth in it.
There are many reasons tentpoles are frowned upon in polite company.
If a flasher opens up his raincoat and psycho-sexually shocks an unwilling participant in his kink but makes a clever joke as he's doing it, he's still a sleaze. If you take a photograph of that flasher affronting an unwilling participant and you show that photo to other people while sharing the joke, that makes both of you sleaze.
The problem with sleazy people is that they like the negative attention. Any attention is good attention because they've been rejected in their wretchedness their entire lives. They want to be called scum, they want to shock. They have no moral bottom. They're fine if the world burns because they'll happily masturbate into the fire. These people belong in tenement basements away from morally and psychologically healthy people. People who like smut mags and sex joke books usually keep them in the closet when company visits. The world doesn't need to know about their creepy little shrine.
~ FV
Anonymous [ no. ??? ] That's an interesting story about the size of male genitals on ancient Greek statues, and could well be true. Of course, putting the size issue aside, the Greeks never hesitated to show genitals (including numerous vase paintings with erect genitals and full penetration in threesomes and other arrangements). Some Greek statues, like ithyphallic statues and statues of satyrs, placed a priority focus on dicks, some of them quite huge. So did the Romans.
I don't think size has been a major theme in Cuneo's drawings, and I don't think I've ever seen explicit drawings of penetration, so he may be tame by comparison.
"I don't think size has been a major theme in Cuneo's drawings" / "this is much broader than a drawing of a penis"
The question is, of course, whether or not it's as broad as it's long.
FV what do you think about sleazy people who cheat on their pregnant wife with a porn star and lie under oath about paying her off and brag on tape about molesting women and is accused of rape by many women and cheats his business partners and has to pay $25 million for fraud on Trump University and is convicted of 34 felonies and his charity is shut down for tax fraud and spending thousands of dollars for a portrait of himself and is a pathological liar who denies things he was recorded saying on film in front of large audiences and makes sexual comments about his own daughter and uses his wealth to bully and cheat honest small businesses and makes racist comments and speads birther lies to divide his country and urges violence against his political rivals and sides with a Russian dictator against his own country? Is that better or worse than a flasher? Don't you think that anyone who voted for such a sleaze is a true scumbag himself who should shut the fuck up about the behavior of other sleazy people?
Not going to take the bait you ranting psycho.
~ FV
Hahahahaha! No bait! Just wanted everyone to see what fucking hypocrites you Trump cultists are. You accuse others of "sleazy behavior" but your heads are so far up Trump's rectum you can't face the sleaziness of Dear Leader. Everyone else here knows these are facts. You say people who share the joke are as sleazy as the artist? That makes you the biggest scumbag around. Seig heil, Nazi.
You are not well.
~ FV
I don't like Trump, but agree with FV. You need help mate.
I think FV was referring to flashers in general, not you specifically.
David,
I think you are missing my point. If I had not recognised the theme in each of these cartoons I would not have been able to judge them. But if one believes, as I do, that the purpose of Art (and I believe in purpose because it manifests identity, principality, distinctness) is to point to that that is highest even above Goodness, Truth and Beauty, then if it is to do this by pointing downwards, to the base pleasures (as in the lower level of the hierarchy of being), it must fundamentally involve an implicit sense of redemption.
An example of Art pointing downwards to implicitly point upwards would be, say, the movie 'Midnight Cowboy' or the novel 'Crime and Punishment'. Movies like 'Pink Flamingos' or novels like 'New Grub Street' just point downwards. It is the mindset of the Postmodernist; a nihilistic, physicalist and reductionist world view. And all it leaves them to play with is sensation for its own sake. Which is the sense of despair I feel to be at the core of these images.
Yes I need help. All the top elected Republicans said the same things I say about Trump.“race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” "con man." "pathological liar." "fascist." "a cancer." Lindsey Graham said "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed ... and we will deserve it." When the mobster took over they kissed the ring to keep their jobs. What's your excuse?
con man rubio
pathologica liar
I make cuckoo clocks because I'm Swiss and for the money. What are you talking about ?
Although things seem to have deteriorated a bit around here, the discussion was going great, like always! Loved the story about Bernie Fuchs! And no matter what anyone thinks of John Cuneo's content, his linework is just beautiful. Some of my favorite New Yorker covers for sure!
To the 'anon' above - David has some really brilliant pieces by him here on the site, if you haven't seen them. There was one with a lot of frogs I particularly liked.
anon#2
Chris Bennett wrote: "the purpose of Art... is to point to that that is highest even above Goodness, Truth and Beauty, then if it is to do this by pointing downwards, to the base pleasures (as in the lower level of the hierarchy of being), it must fundamentally involve an implicit sense of redemption."
I'm not sure there is any single purpose of art, and if there is I doubt that the purpose is to point us to the highest things or give us a sense of redemption. So much of great art, stretching from the tragedies of the ancient Greeks to the literature of existentialism (starting with Dostoevsky) tells us that our doom is sealed, that the world is a terrible place, that we live in a godless universe devoid of meaning, that no act of valor or conscience can avoid our fate. If there is any "redemptive" virtue in such art, it is just the virtue of knowing that we've looked the void in the eye, as honestly and as truthfully as our mind and senses have enabled us to see the truth, and not shrunk from the consequences.
In the Oedipus trilogy, Sophocles told us, "What a terrible thing truth can be when there is no help in truth." That doesn't mean that the Greek tragedies weren't great art. The same goes for Shakespeare's tragedies, which many believe were a foundation for existentialism.
And there are of course a plethora of related issues because art is not a single discipline. Many of those issues we have discussed here. For example, is it possible for an evil person to produce good art? Is it possible to have good art about an evil subject? We've discussed Rodin's maxim, "There should be no argument in regard to morality in art; there is no morality in nature." ( https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2008/03/art-in-service-of-evil.html ).
And let's not forget that plenty of design-based art, such as abstract art, may be completely devoid of a moral message, redemptive or otherwise, but can still be beautiful (beauty being "its own excuse for being.")
Bringing all this back to Cuneo's book, I think his observations about human nature are too funny to be "nihilistic." How would you propose that an artist address topics such as depression, despair, or the weirdness of human sexual behavior (other than the artist averting their eyes altogether and pretending such topics don't exist)?
I don’t think Cuneo has quite reached despair yet (though he might). But there’s definitely a sense of disillusionment and apathy. A "what’s the point of it all ?” mood, which adds an air of tawdriness to the endless stream of kink and whimsy.
https://johncuneo.com/nsfw#/page1/
That's pretty nihilistic, and isn't overcome by any humour. It's like a storyboard for Bad Lieutenant. It's these type of ones that I queried about 'wallowing' in the scenes they describe.
anon#2
(+ That's a pretty weird reading of Dostoyesvsky)
( = 'Dostoyevsky'. Correcting my spelling, not David's.)
If we are to use the anything goes undefinition of art...
One of the possibilities of art is to reflect or mirror the worst, saddest, most animalistic or deranged, isolating, or demented things; in us, our lives, or our experience. And so to effectively increase or multiply their presence in the world. Forget appreciation, let us all depreciate together; let us all sneer, wallow, weep, and spiral out alone together. The ritual of negativism and nihilism. Hopefully with some laughs thrown in.
However, as the audience becomes increasingly depressed in its continued exposure to malice, tawdriness and toxicity – the dog’s nose shoved in it - the leavening agent of humor has less and less effectiveness as a balance. As with exposure to very dark but hilarious comedians, after a while it ain't so funny anymore.
Another possibility of art is to use the imagination to poeticize and orchestrate higher thought; to show what is timeless, meaningful and beautiful, even in our tumult, fear, and struggle. To elevate the spirit and consciousness. And to spread appreciation, not just of what is true, loving, positive, or energizing, but of how to go about aesthetically finding the positive or converting the negative into the positive should one catch the poetic-artistic spirit.
"That's a pretty weird reading of Dostoevsky"
I may have been unduly influenced by Walter Kaufmann's book, "Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre" but I don't think its such a stretch. If the central tenet of existentialism (to the extent that existentialism can be said to have a central tenet) is that in a godless, meaningless universe it is incumbent on every individual to find their own purpose, if a purpose is to be found, then I think Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and some of his other bleak depictions of the human lot in life were an important foundation for existentialism.
Ultimately some of the great Russian novelists had to shrink from what they found; Tolstoy, of course, recoiled into being a Christian zealot not out of anything rational or logical but more because he couldn't stand the alternative implications of what he saw. And Dostoevsky, in Crime and Punishment, finally wrote, "Man, man, one cannot live quite without pity," not because he thought that God or some moral order of the universe dictated it, but simply because he couldn't stand living without it.
We'd have to discard some of the most umportant utterances from his characters placed at spiritual fulcrums, and from the man himself, to believe he believed in a 'godless universe devoid of meaning', or that he didn't believe in redemption, even for the most blasted and profane lives. Existentialists may have reached similar nadirs but seeing the same things, took a different route.
#2
anon #2 (Thank you for the identifier!)-- I've actually seen that original drawing (the reproduction doesn't do it justice). I hope you won't think the worse of me but I think it is absolutely beautiful and so funny I laughed out loud.
I think the facial expressions are the work of a gifted artist-- the anxiety of the character looking in the mirror, horrified by what he sees; the glee on the face of the man urinating on a vagrant sleeping in an alley; the man on the rooftop caterwauling at the moon; the faces of the women when the man stuffs his hand down a woman's dress at a party-- these are not easy faces to draw, and I think Cuneo does a masterful job.
The scenes all take place at the expense of the artist, who appreciates the humor in them and is more honest than most in even joking about such things. I would think that the self-hate exhibited in scenes such as the cuttings would inspire a little sympathy. The fact that this day is in an endless loop-- even after getting beaten up in a bar and all those other over-the-top things, the day will repeat itself tomorrow-- strikes me as sad and funny, a statement about addiction and human foibles. I love this little drawing and would gladly hang it on my wall.
Is there a limit to what we can endure in terms of representation ? What darknesses we can tolerate visually reenacted ? Even with the black humour, very little is distilled here.
#2
>>>>https://johncuneo.com/nsfw#/page1/
That sequence is par for the course. Cuneo bathes in depravity consciously, he smears himself with taboos. It cannot be denied that the depravity is within him. That's the way art works. In revealing his obsessive inner self so plainly, he surely must like humiliating himself. That is very much the flasher mentality I was talking about. I think we are allowed to find him disgusting, given that he surely finds himself disgusting. To participate in other people's self-indulgent humiliations and kinks is a minority fetish in itself.
~ FV
I'm not sure there is any single purpose of art, and if there is I doubt that the purpose is to point us to the highest things or give us a sense of redemption.
I'm curious then, as to what you consider one or two of the purposes of art to be?
So much of great art, stretching from the tragedies of the ancient Greeks to the literature of existentialism (starting with Dostoevsky) tells us that our doom is sealed, that the world is a terrible place, that we live in a godless universe devoid of meaning, that no act of valor or conscience can avoid our fate.
Could you give some examples of specific works that embody this wholesale belief from before 200 years ago?
In the Oedipus trilogy, Sophocles told us, "What a terrible thing truth can be when there is no help in truth."
If what we mean by ‘help’ is the utilitarian kind then yes, I agree. To the believer in the materialist reductionist nihilist world view that would of course be the only type of help.
And let's not forget that plenty of design-based art, such as abstract art, may be completely devoid of a moral message, redemptive or otherwise, but can still be beautiful (beauty being "its own excuse for being.")
David, can you not see that the very existence of beauty undermines the nihilist world view?
How would you propose that an artist address topics such as depression, despair, or the weirdness of human sexual behavior ?
If Art isn’t to be a fancy name for disguising an act of politics, sociology, activism or propaganda it does not, by way of its function, 'address topics'. In Poussin's painting 'Landscape with a Snake' the depiction of a tragic sudden death is not some artist 'dealing with issues of mortality' any more than Rembrandt's late self-portraits are. This is just the Post-Modern validating rhetoric applied to works that were not conceived under its suffocating ideology which therefore does not feel or understand them. The themes in the Poussin or the late Rembrandt portraits are at the service of the revelatory, just as much as the theme of apples on a plate were to Chardin or Cezanne.
chris bennett wrote: "I'm curious then, as to what you consider one or two of the purposes of art to be?"
To preserve a likeness of a loved one
To record a historical event
To intimidate military enemies
To flatter or self-aggrandize
To perform multiple totem and animistic functions (for example, for good luck with crops, or on a hunt, or to communicate with the gods or curry favor for other reasons).
To convey propaganda
To attract and encourage buyers of toothpaste or laundry detergent
To intimidate or inspire parishioners
To vent personal outrage over injustice or otherwise complain about the world.
To decorate an environment
To attract women
To earn a living
To show off skills
To prove wealth or status
Art in any of these categories can be beautiful. It can be excellent. It can be original and creative. It can be skillful. It can be powerful. Some of these purposes are more ambitious than others, but on the other hand you can have bad art about grand subjects and excellent art about minor subjects.
chris bennett wrote: "Could you give some examples of specific works that embody this wholesale belief ( that our doom is sealed, that the world is a terrible place, that we live in a godless universe devoid of meaning, that no act of valor or conscience can avoid our fate) before 200 years ago?"
Wow, now this is REALLY going beyond the capacity of a humble blog comment section, but let me see if I can begin to lay out an answer. I agree that the role of faith in deities, as depicted in art and literature, has transformed over the past 200 years (and for obvious reasons: after discovering that the earth is not the center of the universe but a tiny little speck off in some corner; that humans evolved over millennia from ape-like hominids rather than being created instantly in a garden of Eden for a special purpose; that humans are, to a disturbing extent, governed by irrational and subconscious forces rather than being a flower of pure reason; and that humans have the power to extinguish all life on earth without waiting for a messiah or second coming.... well, one would expect that the artistic vision of the gods would change.)
But the problems and the realizations about justice and meaning and purpose in the world were always there with us. Yes, the ancient Greek tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides and Aeschylus clearly said that "our doom is sealed, and no act of valor or conscience can avoid our fate." by definition the tragic hero could perform nobly and never make a difference.
Back in 500 BCE the cause of the tragedy was more likely to be arbitrary bickering between the gods, rather than the absence of a god. So it's a different explanation for the same phenomenon: that the world is often senselessly terrible, with no hope. There are abundant artistic examples of art voicing this view, but if you want the relentless gory details read Defoe's Journal of The Plague Year, which depicts disintegration of civil order and the rule of law, and the accompanying loss of faith in religion, the behavior of people like godless savages, betraying their own children. It was in response to the utter irrationality of whom the plague struck, and when.
Or read the chronicles of the crusades, and what transpired in the interregnum in the clash between two civilizations. Captured women were gang raped to death in front of the opposing lines and then shot full of arrows for good measure. There was nothing anyone could do about it because, while both forces had God on their side, there was no sovereign on earth or heaven who could exercise authority or deliver justice, and no sense of guilt or shame about conducting such atrocities.
Even as I take a first few tentative steps down the path of this discussion, I realize the topic, undivided, is so momentous that we can hardly begin to make a dent. Better to focus on specific works, such as Goya's "black paintings" after he had witnessed more than he could bear, or Bruegel's Triumph of Death or Bosch's Haywain or Earthly Delights?
I made the first comment and just stopped by to see if there were any others. Conversations here sometimes go crazy. I think Cuneo is the most awesome illustrator working today.
Chris: "The themes in the Poussin or the late Rembrandt portraits are at the service of the revelatory, just as much as the theme of apples on a plate were to Chardin or Cezanne.”
What’s the common ‘revelation’ between the above mentioned works ?
David,
Thank you for answering my question so exhaustively. Unfortunately, none of your 'purposes' qualify as intrinsic to art. The purpose of something defines its identity. Which means an identity cannot be defined by multiple purposes. Which is not the same as saying an identity cannot be re-purposed. For example, a spanner is defined by its purpose in tightening and untightening nuts, but it can be re-purposed as a weapon, a doorstop or scrap metal etc. But none of these repurposes qualify as the defining purpose of a spanner.
As to your answer to my second question, although I appreciate the trouble you took to list some of the earthly horrors that form the basis of the physicalist argument against the idea of a metaphysical hierarchy, I am very familiar with it having held this position myself for many years until its flaws forced me into a more subtle mode of thinking.
As to your examples of the physicalist world view in art before The Enlightenment I was hoping you were going to come up with something other than Bruegel's Triumph of Death in particular, or Bosch in general. These works are little more than collages of depicted misfortunes, which, I believe, only goes further to prove my point; that when the world is not seen at all scales as fractal reflections of a hierarchy of purpose, that's to say meaning, art will have no meaning other than 'there is no meaning'. And so, art will be seen exclusively as tool to leverage all the extrinsic purposes you listed.
"The themes in the Poussin or the late Rembrandt portraits are at the service of the revelatory, just as much as the theme of apples on a plate were to Chardin or Cezanne.”
What’s the common ‘revelation’ between the above mentioned works ?
Well Laurence, although I strongly subscribe to the great Iain McGilchrist's phrase "a work of art cannot be paraphrased" I'll try to answer your question in the interest of clarifying my statement you quoted above.
Poussin's idyllic landscape space is not complete without the onset of time. Life is precious because it is encircled by death. The beauty of Poussin's Eden is incomplete without the entropic snake.
Something like that.
Chardin's fruits sit on a shelf in a light that settles on them like dust. The affinities between all that we behold in his picture is the condition of a shared love. A love that was there before their seed, and after their decay. Love is incomplete without the perishable object.
Something like that.
Chris: "Life is precious because it is encircled by death” …. "Love is incomplete without the perishable object.”
Chris, these are statements / concepts about life itself, which presumably you feel to be perhaps the most profound statements possible that an artist can make. However, where is it stated that these concepts are intrinsic to the ‘purpose of art’, and the list provided by David don’t "qualify as intrinsic to art” ?
To find the purpose of something you first need to define it. To define a thing means to distinguish it uniquely. If you were to define a rabbit by referencing its mammalian characteristics, you would not be defining it away from a monkey or a cat. The reason to define a rabbit uniquely is because its ears, teeth, hopping ability, tail, and size give it unique powers. Which correspond to unique purposes.
A photo can preserve a likeness, record an event, flatter, vent personal outrage, or complain about the world. A bomb can intimidate military enemies. A gold throne and fine clothing can self-aggrandize, show high status, attract women, or decorate. Trinkets, baubles, masks, and stone arrangements can perform totemic functions or decorate. Graphics can convey propaganda or attract buyers to a product or decorate a room. Architecture can intimidate or inspire parishioners or decorate. Any of the above can be used to earn a living or show off.
Art has unique affordances (rhythm, tension, timbre, texture, or color, duration, interval, controllable suggestivity, the synthesis of reference and suggestive form, the aesthetic-poetic-narrative presentation of truth, and so on) which build out a unique language. If we’re not talking about that, we’re spinning off into the land of competing unjustified claims.
Laurence,
It isn't stated anywhere. Every aim that we have is toward a pinnacle of a local hierarchy, however small, that is nested in a larger hierarchy which in turn is nested in yet a still larger hierarchy. And all these nested hierarchies stack up toward 'the ineffable highest'. It's just how the world lays itself out.
In this sense everything good we do is aimed to the highest good, every truth aimed to the highest truth and every beautiful thing aimed to the highest beauty. All of which point to that that is beyond them.
So, I tie my shoelaces properly because I don't want to trip up, I don't want to trip because I want to protect my body, I do this to keep it healthy, I keep healthy because I want to perform well, I want to perform well because it enriches my family, if they are enriched then so is the society it is part of, which enriches its part in humanity, and the enrichment of humanity is thereby enriching the world, which means enriching existence itself, and so on right to the top.
Art is the aesthetic expression of this overarching metaphysical pattern we see playing out at all scales of reality.
Chris: "Art is the aesthetic expression of this overarching metaphysical pattern we see playing out at all scales of reality.”
Chris, I’m not questioning that your "expression of an overarching metaphysical pattern” isn’t a valid value system under which an artist might create art. Just that it’s the only one deemed fit for the 'purpose of art’.
Laurence,
My answer is that 'the aesthetic expression of the overarching metaphysical pattern expressed fractally at all levels of being' has been the defining characteristic of art right up until the enlightenment. The physicalist world view has merely adopted the term to faux sanctify its nihilist material reductionist cultural polemics. Hence David's long list of art's purposes...
Chris, you’re making a statement about what you think the purpose of art is, morally. Not what you think the defining characteristics of art are, formally.
I disagree that I'm making a moral argument, so please read more carefully my answer to you above. But OK Laurence, perhaps you have a formal definition of your own. If so I'd be interested to hear it.
Chris, I don’t have a snappy, one-size-fits-all definition of what art is, so can only offer something very broad like ‘an aesthetic work of human imagination’.
However, the point of contention is that it isn’t dependant upon whether I think the art is great or not, or what the ‘message’ is. If I object morally to someone’s art that doesn’t mean it isn’t therefore ‘art’. Nor does technically bad or amateur art get excluded as ‘art’ just because it’s of poor quality.
You know, I wasn't as impressed by the drawings as Mr. Apatoff. To me, they look like the sort of "rough" Chas Addams might do when he was really depressed--but of course would never submit to a magazine. But the drawings, however rude and crude, are several grades up from much of the conversation. I'd suggest disregarding everything to which the author will not give his name, and viewing "handles" as suspect. If you're not prepared to say "this is me, and this is what I stand for" there are plentiful alleys and bathroom stalls available to you.
The drawings. I will make an exception for the artist clutching his muse while he finishes the drawing. That, in its own way, was inspired. Not sure I'd say it about the graphic arts, but I've read far too many novels written by authors who failed to stop when the muse departed.
Nazis reacted the same way to what they called "decadent art." If it's not classical aryan beauty it's not uplifting art. Like MAGAs, the Nazis ugliness was all on the inside.
Braindead trope #101
You've never heard MAGAs connected to the decadent art movement of the 1930s but you call it trope #101 as if you hear it all the time. Another lie from the MAGA cult of lies. You are enemies of civilization and a blight on the world. The world is already suffering from the hatred you spew and that includes your children.
If you are going to incessantly torture us with your one dumb idea about history, art, and politics, and keep hammering it and hammering it until doomsday. At least sign your posts so we know which to skip.
~ FV
To the anon above, not FV.
Right, on the chance you might not be merely a 14 yr-old who can't effectively troll, but are giving your best -
• What on earth is "the decadent art movement of the1930s" ?
• What has it got to do with Trump supporters?
• Are you aware that a world exists outside the US, several residents of which are among those who have been reading and/or contributed to the above conversation ?
• And that some of them are neutral about Trump, many even dislike him, yet still find no common ground but rather consider you - on the basis of your contributions - a deranged cretin ?
• that many (not all) of the works the nazis didn't like were shit, and would have been considered so by many of the greatests artists and critics contemporaneous to them, to say nothing of the artists and civilisations of preceding ages ?
• that 'decadence', despite the appropriation of the term by the nazis to give it a wider remit, means 'rot, decay, dissolution', and the decadent art movement of the 19th century (which you appear to have mistaken for the modern forms of art of the 20s and thirties that the nazis disparaged) had many characteristics that were rightly shunned, such as the toying with and presenting themes such as necrophilia, incest, etc. as desirable? And that the same goes for its modern heirs ?
• and that last but not least - and perhaps most pertinent in your own case (you seem to have had a touched nerve, here...) - people who like to excuse their own propensity for modern forms of decadence frequently evoke the 'duh, but the nazis...'-spectre. That's what the 'trope' is - a sideways attempt to normalise their perversions (sadly a not uncommon problem with subsections of young people today; moulded by their Alan Moore paedo-comics, hentai collection, search-habits...), their dirty-protests (their filthy living spaces), etc.
I suspect something similar is behind your Donald Trump animus.
Would you idiots stop insulting Trump? You aren't convincing anyone. Even the republicans know he's a disgusting pig. Somebody quoted all the republican leaders calling him an asshole. It just doesn't make any difference to them.
Troll fail.
So many of the controlled TDS dimwits have obsessive compulsive disorder, profound anxiety issues, and no life; all hate and no love. 95% of the Democrat party is a complete grift, a massive NGO network, tens of thousands strong, exfiltrating money out of their government and into the pockets of their apparatchiks via corrupt sleazy methods. Million dollar salary to do nothing here, million dollar salary to do nothing here, influence peddling, kickback schemes galore, lawfare, dirty tricks, etc. Dems ripped off 2.5 billion dollars from donors for all their scrabbling hacks during the election, meanwhile they knew they were completely underwater and would lose handily. SBF scammed millions and gave it to democrats, then ended up in jail, and no clawback of those millions to the investors who lost it. Sleaze. Fake polling data, fake economic data, stolen money, stolen valor. Crooks, liars, thieves, goons, bums, scumbags. And miserable activist white women. What a bunch. Now the word has gone out to destroy Elon Musk because he's cutting off their corruption at the source, after he was their hero for so long. Suddenly all these evil Karens are caught keying Teslas, loons are firebombing dealerships, protesting, propaganda galore to try to tank his stock. All astroturfed by leftist overlord billionaires who control the imbecilic masses emotions. The imbecilic masses of Democrat voters watching the teevee to find out who they're allowed to hate with media approval.But please keep talking about Trump's peccadillos and personality. As if there isn't a congressional slush fund to deal with sexual abuse claims that is kept secret. Controlled dimwit.
If you pull back (zoom out: ctrl+ mouse ball) from the discussion, even with the non-sequiturs included, it's a fascinating puzzle of communication. Like looking at the tree leaves on various branches while following the body of the tree to the base trunk. Or to put it like something I've done in past outings, it's like sitting in the middle of Time's Square, listening to all the conversations around, discerning the various focal points in the discussions and feeling out the intent behind the conversations beyond what is said. I felt the need the add to it.
Should be put on a golden record and sent into space. Might discourage tourists.
Imperialism of the words. I feel sorry for all the illustrations that have to endure this.
v.
Yes, think of the poor illustrations eating gruel from the word Imperialisms.
Tough talking anonymous guys - Jesus, what a humiliating drag it must be to wake as one every day. My sympathies. Anyhow, listen, try not to get too personal here. Hate the drawings ( hell, I'm not the biggest fan either), but dial down the character insults . Thanks.
Politics has infected my favorite blog. Trump's in power only because of 3 groups, the racists, the uneducated and the blind haters. One day one of those groups will remember patriotism and back away, and Trump will never have a majority again. Until then please keep your stupid fascist rants out of these art discussions.
Trump's in power because bad as he is, the alternative was much worse. "Sad" but true.
Trump's in power because Democrats have been taught an extremely simplistic leftist-cult heuristic for understanding their opposition. Which allows all the complex questions at play to be swept under the rug as illegitimate, replaced with schoolyard-level dismissals of half the country as "racists, uneducated, and blind haters." In other words, anon, Trump's in power because of those like you who think they have a "good handle" on what is actually going on, they know exactly who to hate and who is dumb, when they actually don't. The longstanding joke among conservatives is that Conservatives know exactly what Democrats believe, while Democrats have no idea what Conservatives believe. This is because what Democrats believe is strictly limited to what they are told they are allowed to believe, which includes staying the heck away from any opposition's media sources, all of which are demonized. So they have no idea what conservatives actually think or believe, or what facts they are looking at. While Democrat media is constantly loudly preaching on legacy stations, papers and educational institutions. So conservatives are constantly apprised of what Democrats believe for their entire lives; they grow up hearing it. This is the very reason that Democrats are so scared and confused right now. They exist in a tightly controlled box of propaganda. And the world outside that box is alien to them. Those that keep them in that box; those are the people who are the actual enemy. Hate them.
Anyone who explains what simplistic Democrats believe as opposed to what perceptive Republicans know from the "facts" has already withdrawn from the debate. As long as you're talking to yourself, try looking in the mirror. What you say Republicans "know" has changed 180 degrees in the era of Trump. That includes every core belief (with the exception of abortion): a strong NATO, a free market without tariffs, "family values," stopping judicial activism, maintaining a strong national defense against Russia, supporting law and order (including the FBI), accountability and conflicts of interest-- almost everything Reagan once stood for. Lifelong Republicans can't eat their words fast enough to embrace the new strong man, so they've abandoned the pretense of having an official party platform. The substitute is "whatever Trump says." Yet, you're not embarrassed to come here and claim, "what Democrats believe is strictly limited to what they are told they are allowed to believe."
I have to ask, as long as we have an expert: These "facts Republicans are looking at," would those be the facts that Obama was born in Africa, or that Trump really won the election in 2020 or that Mexico paid for the wall or that the wall was completed or that Trump had the largest inaugural speech audience or that his economy was the greatest in history, etc. etc. etc.? You might want to check the carefully documented list of his 16,000 lies to see how many of your "facts" are on the list.
Democrats do not care about lying, political hoaxes, sex scandals, abuse of power, or family values. Stop pretending otherwise.
Yes there have been seeming policy reforms in the Republican Party recently. But only to reflect basic and longstanding underlying beliefs regarding conservative theories of governance that the top of the party had ignored. Which is why the party revolt we have witnessed was both predictable and sensible, and was brewing long before Trump showed up. He was only the best vehicle to break through Democrat-Activist-Deep State media control. Romney, McCain, and Bush were uniparty statists pretending to be conservatives.
The big sea change has been the rejection of neocon foreign policy and its centralization of power in the federal government, and all the corruption and unlawfulness that that has entailed, including its spying on its own citizens. The immediate easy folding of the neocons - who were once utterly reviled by the left after Iraq - into the Democrat party with the Biden regime showed that they were astroturfed anyway. They were a uniparty/NATO operation to make sure the military-industrial-complex dollars kept rolling in no matter who was in power. Republicans and conservatives are traditionally anti-statist anyway. And somewhat isolationist except in extreme cases. So it really wasn't that big of a change to have the top of the party finally doing what most of the party wanted.
Looking back, the bottom-up revolt began in earnest with the Tea Party movement, which arose because of Federal government interference in the housing market, to the massive detriment of the economy and the ethics of the entire mortgage industry. The 2008 crash being the crux of that matter.
There are many other reasons as well why decentralization of power away from corrupt Washington D.C. has become the primary rallying cry of almost anybody not explicitly leftist. But it was a long time in coming in Republican/Conservative circles given where most of the party has been since at least Reagan's tenure.
Thanks for your baseless list of right wing fantasies about "what Democrats care about." In exchange, know that Democrats are quite certain Republicans are less educated (statistically true) which explains why they are more superstitious and anti-science (also true) and more manipulable by televangelists, Q and Russian bots. Through the years, the conservative base always made up the populists whipped by demagogues like Huey Long, George Wallace and Donald Trump.
The Trump base is also more racist. They were the slave states that refused to join the US without slavery, later the Confederate states that seceded to protect slavery, and the segregationist states in the 1960s. And if you're still trying to delude yourself that Trump's appeal isn't racist, go back and read his history with the Central Park 5, or his support from David Duke and the Klan and the neo-Nazis, or the birther lie, or his claims about judges with hispanic sounding names, etc. etc.
Pretty slippery, arguing that all the major reversals by the cult of Trump were just a correction reflecting the longstanding underlying beliefs of the base. For decades, important "family values" meant that Adlai Stevenson was not suitable to be president because he was divorced, or Bill Clinton was not suitable to be president because he had sex with Monica Lewinsky, but the ultimate profane slimeball Trump is just fine. "Honoring the military" meant that Clinton was not a suitable president because he was a draft dodger, and Al Gore didn't bleed enough in Vietnam, and McGovern's record as a decorated WW II pilot didn't count. But Trump, the most flagrant draft dodger in history, demeans the military passes the new Republican test. Good luck persuading anyone that these don't represent total reversals of principle.
"more superstitious and anti-science...."
Democrats believe in plenty of superstitions when ordered to. In aliens if they're told to by Obama, and 'gender-identity' even though it was invented by a child-abusing Doctor who supported paedophila. They seem to believe it's some kind of ethereal attribute which can over-rule biology. It has every characteristic of a supernatural/crudely superstitious belief.
And face-masks, despite the spaces between the micro-strands of fabric being 500 times larger than the expelled moisture particles containing the particles. And despite every study undertaken from times when there was no political impetus leveraging the results showing that they had no impact on spread in indoor settings. They had whole teams out working against the Barrington Declaration doctors, in order to deny that herd-immunity - something recognised for decades - didn't exist. And then, when Canada, Israel and Europe presented findungs that negatuve outcomes were marginally worse in non-vulnerable groups when vaccinated versus the same chorts without vaccination, suddenly herd-immunity is permitted to be real again.
Additionally, while the world outside the States certainly doesn't subscribe to everthing RFK comes out with, much of the stuff that he has gotten flak for from Dem pundits and politicians is totally accepted elsewhere. Your country is utterly f**ked by pharma, profit-driven misprescriptions and food additives, most of the stuff and certainly the quantities are prohibited everywhere else. Your politicians would gladly turn half your population into twitching opiate addicts to please their funders. Follow the science, indeed...
Bill
(< 'containing the virus')/Bill
& 'didn't exist' < existed. 😕/Bill
You are still fighting wars from 30-75 years ago, old man. You need to get back to reality.
Miseducated, arrogant, and miserable liberal women - who went to theater camp, take easy-A Marxist ideological indoctrination courses in college, and overwhelmingly vote Democrat - are the only reason Democrats can ever try to claim to be "more educated" than conservatives. These aren't engineering students. And these "intelligent" women in these fake and deranging college courses are not only totally on board with the sinking Democrat propaganda machine and the college credential mill scam (they don't know its a grift because they haven't been told) but are also massively overrepresented as having diagnosed mental disorders. And, go figure, trans children. Democrats in general are much more likely to have diagnosed mental conditions. Probably because the news is constantly running Trauma Based Mind Control operations on them. To keep them obeying the hive mind. That's why they're such emotional wrecks who will turn violent at the slightest open comm call for it.
It's amazing how much nonsense a flag-waving Democrat goober will believe, and how much of what is true but inconvenient stays entirely out of mind, in order to feel superior in intelligence and status. Imagine being both a narcissist and completely wedded and obedient to a hive mind!
“It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.” — George Orwell, ‘1984’
"You are still fighting wars from 30-75 years ago, old man"
Maybe, but still gets me how so many fell for the maoist equivalent of a lucky rabbit's foot./Bill
I don't know how this blog became so fortunate as to become the recipient of so many emotionally overwrought political rants but I'm certain they have nothing to do with illustration, or with art, or John Cuneo's new book. Ordinarily such comments wouldn't disturb me, but recently I've had two artists decline to share their work on this blog because they don't want their art to become tangled up in rage-filled exchanges. If I see comments scaring away worthwhile apolitical art I may have to abandon my lifelong policy of not filtering comments. If I ever have to resort to that, I promise in advance it won't be a left wing / right wing filter, but rather a sane / insane filter.
He’s right, why are you such a freak dude
For the record.. John Cuneo is.. one of the few people/artists alive who can actually draw at an extremely high level. I know that sounds absurd but most artists can’t really draw and nowhere near John’s level. Regardless of his subject matter he’s a master draftsman. End of story. Side note. This blog ALWAYS post brilliant art and Apatoff is always spot on with his vision and comments.. sadly after the first few comments the artist always gets lost in a barrage of pontification that immediately erupts. It’s feels like the comments are stated to show us all “what you know” with very little care and concern for John in this instance. Long Live Cuneo. His pen is mightier than the “anonymous” sword.
For the record. I am the person on the previous comment known as anonymous. Go John Go! Apatoff for president!
Thank you for your comment, Mr. Fluharty-- I have the highest respect for your work, and now for your good taste.
You are not able to see beyond the subject. Your comment exposes your inability to see greatness. . Reminds me of the quote “Those who were seen dancing were thought crazy by those who could not hear the music. “
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