You may have seen the story a few weeks back about the eco-fanatics over in France who entered the Louvre, approached the Mona Lisa and sprayed soup all over its protective glass barrier as part of what they called a “food counterattack”. The West’s “agricultural system is sick”, they proclaimed, something which meant that “Our farmers are dying at work”.
Cynics might say the true reason so many European farmers are actually dying at work at the moment is because they keep on committing suicide in their barns on account of wrong-headed and ruinous EU-led attempts to force the “sick” agricultural patient in question into ruder green eco-health via mountains of unsustainable bureaucracy and other such quasi-Marxist faff, but the protesters did not agree. “What is more important?” they asked. “Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food?”
“Art!” say I, standing in front of the Mona Lisa myself and happily chomping on chocolate (milk chocolate, just to be clear, produced direct from the lovely white fluids of methane-belching cows).
New Age Thinking
Distasteful though these adolescent antics are, it might actually be better if such temper-tantrum toddlers doused all great paintings in soup rather than painted them all systematically green with their increasingly extreme ideologies instead, as has recently occurred with a new exhibition of the works of the esteemed German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). In some ways, the physical vandalism would actually be less damaging than its ideological variant. At least the soup-sprayers are outright criminal outsiders; the history-rewriting men with green paintbrushes are the galleries’ actual curators.
Friedrich is best known for his uncanny landscape paintings, in which the German and Baltic landscapes he depicted become imbued with a real sense of pantheism, whereby the human onlookers portrayed become measly incidental Rückenfiguren (backwards-facing figures) by comparison with the mighty peaks, twisted trees and sheer-faced cliffs of ice. Although compositionally in the foreground, the puny humanoids are really the mere background to the far vaster canvas of water, rocks, clouds, fields and skies. Thus, if you squint a bit, they almost represent the sort of post-human world many a contemporary eco-cultist of the Patricia MacCormack or Voluntary Human Extinction Movement-type might like to see come true for real, a planet from which mankind’s detrimental influence has been removed forever, and where Nature has reclaimed her rightful rule: the pre-industrial and the post-industrial come together happily as one.
The most celebrated canvas of Friedrich is undoubtedly his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (c.1818), owned by the Hamburg Kunsthalle (i.e., Hamburg Art Gallery), which is currently celebrating the 250th anniversary of the painter’s birth with a new show, ‘Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age’. As the exhibition’s title suggests, the whole thing is intended as one big exercise in shoehorning the work of a man who has been dead for nigh on two centuries into the chief political obsession of those within the New Age New World Order who now rule over us: climate change.
Fog Off!
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is, appropriately enough for our sad era of art activism, already covered over in something of a pea-souper: if you don’t know it, it’s the one where a lone climber, dressed in period Young Werther-style blue frock-coat and clutching a walking-stick, stands atop some jagged mountain crown, with his back positioned enigmatically to the viewer, staring out over the peaks of other rocky outcrops, which pierce the all-consuming fog like tiny islands in a lake. The overwhelming impression is of minuscule mankind left helpless and adrift in an all-consuming sea of white, grey and blue. And yet, if you head to the Hamburg Kunsthalle’s official exhibition website, Friedrich’s Wanderer now stands overlooking not some strange aerial Heaven, but some fearsome earthly Hell. The blues and whites have all become reds and oranges, like so:
What’s happened? Well, haven’t you heard? Our planet is on fire! At least, so say the serried ranks of pea-soup-throwers and their allied pea-brains in the contemporary art world. The Kunsthalle’s show lasts, strangely, until April 1st: surely it should have started then? Perhaps not, as these people are actually in deadly earnest. The oft-promised ‘climate apocalypse’ is dubiously forecast to cause all kinds of looming problems for helpless mankind, but impossibly incinerating the past is surely not one of them.
No longer can a museum or art exhibition just be allowed to be about an artist or historical figure. Instead, no opportunity to forcibly re-educate the populace or dumb down outrageously can ever possibly be wasted, so it now always has to be about ‘X person and subject Y’: ‘Admiral Nelson and Homosexuality‘, for instance, or (I’m not making this up) ‘Vincent van Gogh and Pokémon’. Here, the Kunsthalle has decided to go with not only ‘Caspar David Friedrich’, but ‘Caspar David Friedrich and the Climate Emergency’. How about just putting on a show called ‘Caspar David Friedrich and His Bloody Brilliant Paintings’ for once?
Just Stop Ruining Oil Paintings
The interesting thing is, back in early 2023, a band of climate change protesters, led by activist artist Lula Merlo (pictured here wearing a ‘Just Stop Oil’ t-shirt) had invaded the Hamburg Kunsthalle armed with a version of this very same doctored image, re-entitled Wanderer Above a Sea of Fire, and attempted to glue it over the top of Friedrich’s real original artwork. The protesters were stopped by what was termed “a quick-thinking member of staff”, who I am guessing might have been a humble, non-indoctrinated security guard. Had it been one of the building’s chief curators, presumably he would have just handed the green fanatics over a spare tube of Pritt Stick and told them to go for it. After all, a large photograph of Merlo’s parody is now an actual part of the Kunsthalle’s real Friedrich exhibition. We once spoke of lunatics taking over the asylum. Now we have philistines taking over the art gallery.
To be fair, whilst the exhibition is explicitly pegged towards climate change, the show as a whole does feature around 70 genuine paintings and 100 sketches actually produced by Caspar David Friedrich during his lifetime, and apparently restricts the green propaganda stuff to a separate but linked exhibition area at the end – so, if you’re sensible, you can just go and see the real art, then run straight out past the final few rooms, vomiting broth on the agitprop as you go.
But, if you do flee the building in soup-spewing horror, what treats will you be missing out on? How about Julian Charriere’s 2013 The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories III, a long-distance photograph of an iceberg, doctored so that a tiny, Friedrich-style figure stands atop it brandishing a small flamethrower? Or David Claerbout’s 2019-20 Wildfire (meditation on fire), which is described as “a vast lightbox” showing film of a slowly-burning forest fire caused by you, eating meat, driving a car and farting? Or Swaantje Güntzel’s Arctic Jogurt, Dezember 2nd 2021, a photograph in which Swaantje stands, like Friedrich’s wanderer, with her back to the viewer, photographed in the act of throwing a plastic yoghurt pot into a Norwegian fjord? (This one really is worth looking at, it’s beyond all parody: “On December 2nd 2021 at 12.04 a.m. I ate a yoghurt and threw the plastic pot into the Ofotfjord (Norway)”, the artist informs us, in an extract from her apparently extremely empty diary.)
Alternatively, if you prefer feminism to environmentalism, you could enjoy Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus’s 2004 The Wanderer 2, in which a female figure (or possibly a transsexual, it’s hard to tell) recreates the pose of Friedrich’s original male fog-wanderer, in order to conclusively prove, once and for all, that women are also capable of using their eyes to look at things within an outdoor environment, just like men are. For the many compulsive race-Marxists amongst the Kunsthalle’s visitors, meanwhile, the gallery has also begun inserting images of random black men into copies of Friedrich’s canvases now, too. Either that, or climate change in Europe’s artistic past has now got so bad, it’s even started sunburning all the Rückenfiguren.
False Framings
The Kunsthalle’s exhibition caused quite some controversy in Germany, with one prominent columnist, Alan Posener, accurately calling it mere “indoctrination” steeped in “infantile didacticism” in Die Welt. And yet, it seemed to come with official Government approval. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeyer attended the show’s opening, dubiously identifying an “existential uncertainty” as being present within the dead artist’s paintings. Just as, during Friedrich’s own day, Europe’s future was at risk from the militarism of Napoleon, Steinmeyer implied, so today the continent was equally under threat from a new form of global warming so severe it could even somehow retrospectively burn the fictional mountainsides of pre-Victorian landscape paintings.
Curiously, the Kunsthalle’s online press kit reveals that the entire exhibition “has been fully funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media”, which is presumably why the whole thing comes laden with standard governing-class Leftist propaganda. The press kit directly quotes Claudia Roth, Germany’s Culture Minister, as lauding how Friedrich’s works “show how directly humans are interwoven with their environment. With a view to the current challenges posed by climate change, the works of Caspar David Friedrich come across as a painterly plea to protect Nature in all its beauty and vulnerability”.
No, they only “come across” like that if you deliberately mis-frame them to imply that they do so, as an integral part of the whole exhibition – even including its title – so as to transform what is supposed to be an exercise in public education into a pathetic exercise in public re-education instead. Where will this process of blatantly anachronistic misrepresentation end? Perhaps rising global temperatures were why Salvador Dalí’s famous watches were really melting all those years ago when he painted them?
We used to speak of ‘art for art’s sake’. Now, we have art for politics’ sake. Ironically enough, isn’t this whole costly state-subsidised eco-fest just one giant exercise in polluting the past?
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (Pen & Sword/Frontline), which is out now.
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But how can you act like a conservative if you have STOPPED being one? All over Europe there is a fightback by politicians with back bone in Italy, and in Poland and Hungary who refuse to accept EU migrant quotas, and Trump showed you don’t need to pander to globalists by withdrawing from the eco socialist Paris Agreement. But to do any of this you need BACKBONE and PRINCIPAL….But the current lot of phony conservatives have NONE.
Absolutely.. and Italy’s Meloni in the pic above is just another globalist posing as a conservative.. all mouth and no skirt.. or trousers..
Well she’s absolutely rubbish regarding immigration. Just one look at this person’s page and all of the video footage demonstrates that. Here they are seemingly getting rid of their passports on the boat to Italy;
https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1678500489867022342
Yes.. she’s back-pedalled on immigration fairly smartish.. her overlords have obviously whispered in her ear..
I disagree. She’s between a rock and hard place. She has to walk a tightrope. If she strays too far towards conservative policies she’ll be ‘removed’. In my estimation she’s doing as best she can so far (with the exception of her apparent unquestioning support of Ukraine). At least Italy is holding out against signing the European Stability Mechanism.
You should – perhaps – one day try to understand that the USA is not the world and hence, that Whatever Biden supports must be opposed! doesn’t cut any mustard outside of America. Large parts of Europe suffered from brutal Russian occupation for decades because Stalin – the nicest guy who ever lived on this planet – was such a convenient ally for the human rights fixated western democrats and nobody except lickspittles wants the Russians back.
Well, increasingly I’m finding that Whatever Biden supports must be opposed! is a useful rule-of-thumb for conservatives (with a small c) such as myself.
Meanwhile, somebody who definitely isn’t conservative…..
But seriously, tell me this isn’t Huw Edward’s arse I’m witnessing? Do you think this has been photoshopped by Andrew Tate??
https://twitter.com/Cobratate/status/1679442903104380929
Mmmn.. that Twatter page doesn’t exist any more mogs.. I wonder why ???
Yeah it does. Just click on ”view”. Or maybe it’s only available for account holders…not sure.
The failure goes back decades. Baroness Thatcher, God bless her, failed to fight the culture war and allowed Labour to spend years undermining society while she sorted out the economy. As a result, her Civil Service fast stream allowed far left wing indoctrinated students to race to the top of the Civil Service.
The Tory Party, after the failures of William Hague and Michael Howard decided to become New Labour, then paired up with Nick Clegg’s Blairite LibDems. No one like Baroness Thatcher, Lord Tebbit, Lord Howe, Lord Parkinson, Lord Joseph and others would get close to becoming a Tory MP now. When dear old Roger Scruton was dishonestly framed by The New Statesman, they chucked their greatest modern philosopher to the wolves with a shrug and not even bothering to investigate.
The longstanding Tory failure to tackle the culture war is to the detriment of all of us, but there’s almost no one in the Tory Party remaining who understands culture and philosophy and how they impact politics and economics.
https://www.upday.com/uk/public-sector-pay-offer-what-it-means-for-strikes-budgets-and-inflation?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral
Teachers, doctors, nurses, coppers all to receive 6-7% pay increases.
We mustn’t worry though because none of this will fuel inflation and definitely will not fuel further societal divisions and the pay rises will not even increase the national debt. Truly a magic money tree.
The answer to all ills is self discipline and stoicism.
If you sleep well (ie wake up early), eat well ( ie cook from scratch), exercise regularly, limit screen time and give generously to your community eg volunteer at a Scout group you will be far less likely to suffer from ‘mental health’ problems nor need the welfare state to support your lifestyle.
Empower the individual needs to be the message.
Scott Morrison is surely the most treacherous Australian prime minister of all time. His part in the Covid debacle is yet to be fully investigated and exposed.
For example, Morrison called the ‘pandemic’ before the WHO…and subsequently the Australian international border was closed and Australians subjected to draconian restrictions.
Was Australia a test bed to see how far people could be pushed? Was ‘National Cabinet’ the engine room for tyranny over the people?
It was in National Cabinet that the plan was hatched to initiate the destruction of voluntary informed consent for Covid vaccination, with Scott Morrison overruling Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly and the AHPPC’s advice against compulsory vaccination of aged care workers in June 2021.
Kelly and the AHPPC eventually capitulated to Morrison and National Cabinet, and mandatory vaccination of aged care workers was imposed, precipitating a cascade of vaccination mandates around the country, impacting upon millions of people.
The seriousness of this matter, ie the theft of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, has not yet sunk in for most Australians…
For more background, see my notification/complaint to AHPRA, the regulator of health practitioners, about CMO Paul Kelly violating voluntary informed consent via vaccination mandates:
A majority of Conservative MPs in the UK aren’t Conservatives, let alone conservatives.
Cameron imposed candidates who were effectively left-wing LibDems in safe seat constituencies in order to “deal with” members he called “fuitcakes, loonies and closet racists” or the Turnip Taleban.
Of course the Not-a-Conservative-Party won’t fight the culture wars. You can’t have a fight when both sides are on the same side!
The only option open to us is to vote to destroy the Not-a-Conservative-Party.
I don’t pretend to know anything about Australian politics..but I am a fan of Ex Labour Prime Minister, Paul Keating, who isn’t mentioned here..neither is the Australian Governments views on Ukraine/Russia..and China….which follows the same well worn ‘lock-step’ path of the USA..
This is Keating’s excellent essay that he wrote in relation to the, in my opinion, scurrilous and fear-mongering headlines in Australian newspapers about the ‘red-threat’ from China…
http://www.paulkeating.net.au/shop/item/aukus-statement-by-pj-keating-the-national-press-club-wednesday-15-march-2023
This is a more recent article, giving his opinion about NATO, and in particular, Jens Stoltenberg….”Of all the people on the international stage the supreme fool among them is Jens Stoltenberg, the current Secretary-General of NATO.
Stoltenberg by instinct and by policy, is simply an accident on its way to happen.”
https://johnmenadue.com/natos-provocative-lurch-eastward-and-the-supreme-fool-jens-stoltenberg/
Besides the fact that I agree with him….the fact that every single institution and the MSM is calling him wrong, bad, outdated etc..tells me he is right…
The ‘conservative in name only’ politicians are ‘sitting it out’ because they’re…
Check out the Tory party’s LGBT shock troops, anti Brexiteers, wokists, globalists – probably 60% of the party.
A conservative vote perpetuates the wickedness.
This quote, although it’s written from a US perspective, seems appropriate.
“As we shall learn, massive and illegal immigration has proved a disaster for the idea of American citizenship by lowering wages, straining government services, undermining the sanctity of the law, energizing tribalism, fuelling identity politics, fostering racialism, and importing massive poverty – even as it is deliberately conflated with mostly welcome legal immigration and praised loudest by an elite that knows, and wishes to know, almost nothing about it.”
‘The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America’ by Victor Davis Hanson
Time for Conservatives to Fight the Culture Wars…
Does anyone here seriously believe the ‘Conservatives’ will make any real attempt to fight the culture wars? They don’t even appear to understand the problem, let alone want to fix it.