The Put-Upon And Marginalised Finally Get A Word In
Time, I think, to better ourselves. Come, let us peek at the culture pages of the Guardian:
That’s Perth, Scotland. Lest there be confusion.
Bear with me. I’m setting the scene. Stoking your anticipation.
White horse. Big horn.
Again, big horn.
Ah, tat.
Brace yourselves for a full-on face-blast of culture:
Such wonders you’ll behold. Memories to treasure forever.
Because the above is “a modern symbol of the LGBTQI+ community.” And so, while claiming to give exposure to the supposedly marginalised and unseen, the virtuous by default, the curators are expecting visitors to be enthralled by objects of mass-produced banality that are, by their own admission, utterly ubiquitous.
But wait. There’s more.
One of the above. Presumably the most photogenic.
I’m just going to leave this here, I think. Consider it an illustration of what can be done. A cultural benchmark for our times.
Regarding the aforementioned seldomness, I briefly scanned recent listings and found that the museums and galleries busily “queering” their content include the British Museum (“Desire, Love, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories”), the Victoria and Albert Museum (“A Queer History of Art”), Tate Britain, Tate Kids, Queer Britain (“A riot of voices, objects, and images from the worlds of activism, art, culture, and social history”), Brighton Museum, the London Art Fair, the Glasgow Women’s Library, the Museum of Transology, the Museum of London, National Museums Liverpool, National Museums Scotland, and the National Portrait Gallery.
So seldom. So terribly seldom.
Other vigorously “queered” content can be found at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art; the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; and the Wellcome Collection, London, which among other things offers a “queer life-drawing workshop… focussing on queer bodies.” I have, due to space concerns – and the fear that readers may lose the will to live – omitted many more.
Despite which, Ashleigh Hibbins, the head of audiences at the Perth Museum, where unicorns await, tells us,
Ah yes, those unheard voices. The dear downtrodden.
Via Julia.
This blog is kept afloat by the buttons below.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Are you not enriched? Aesthetically elevated?
Reading from here:
to here:
my first thoughts were, “Well, this is going to be awkward.”
Because, in principle at least, I have no issue with seeing the products of mass produced design set alongside works from the distant past.
(The image below, in fact, was rescued from its use as a dust cover for a pile of old junk in the lumber room of chateau where it had lain for decades until it was restored – which just goes to show that even some of the most beautiful works of art may at one time have been treated like ephemeral trash).
But then of course, I read on:
Oh, God.
Perhaps someone should take Ashleigh Hibbins quietly to one side and explain that:
My point is more that, while claiming to give exposure to the supposedly marginalised and unseen, they’re expecting visitors to be enthralled by piles of mass-produced tat that is, by their own admission, utterly ubiquitous. And banal.
I often wonder what life was like before Freud. My parents came of age long before his influence permeated the culture (again, that word). They weren’t stupid people yet somehow the connection between say the Empire State Building and a huge dick was never mentioned. I dare say that most people of that time went to their graves thinking its design was just a function of real estate costs/necessity. Sure, some of the cruder elements of society made the connection but they would have been taken as seriously as we do the people who find racism in the OK sign. And unicorns were for the most part unicorns. Not necessarily saying that there is no connection but taking the pros and cons to their net conclusion, have we really gained anything with this knowledge?
I’m just astounded by the This is a £27m project part!
Such as a civilised leftist?
“queer life-drawing workshop… focussing on queer bodies
I was wondering how, aside from the scars from poorly performed surgery, one would tell if the body was “queer”, but if the models are clothed, I am now curious how a “queer” body differs from any average dyed, tatted, and perforated leftist loon.
I suspect you may have given this more thought than the people involved.
Sounds like some low-effort curating there.
It’s the museum’s “centrepiece,” you know. The temptation we won’t be able to resist.
How very dare you, sir. It’s the bleeding edge of artistic and curatorial accomplishment.
Don’t these people *ever* get tired of telling us about their genitals and where they choose to put them?
I’m resisting it just fine.
Don’t these people *ever* get tired of telling us about their genitals and where they choose to put them?
No, it is all they have given the absence of personality, talent, ability, or achievement.
Off-the-peg identity, however loudly invoked, seems a piss-poor substitute for an actual, you know, personality. I mean, if you feel in any way defined or affirmed by a pile of My Little Pony toys, as if they somehow capture who you are…
They’re really scraping the bottom of the ‘Pride’ barrel.
I’m guessing we’re supposed to be endlessly fascinated.
Not a high bar.
Looking back at the beat poets:
Now do Hemingway and The Lost Generation. Similar veins going back to the Stephen Crane and the Civil War, etc. The main difference in these generations is that as society becomes wealthier and wealthier it has greater capacity to support such people. For better or for worse. The net-out on that itself over the generations seems to be moving towards worse. Don’t see anything to correct it. Anything civilized anyway. I could be wrong. I hope I am. But it’s just a hope.
“…who you are.”
I don’t care who you are. I care what you can do.
Which sound suspiciously like Aleister Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
It seems a mistake to attribute the source of societal rot to the mental delinquents of the mid-20th Century.
as WTP said: The main difference in these generations is that as society becomes wealthier and wealthier it has greater capacity to support such people.
Reality used to confront everyone at every moment. If you were mean to your cow it would kick you and break your leg. If you ignored the weather your crops got ruined and you starved. You could have fantasy beliefs (fairies and whatnot), but they had to belong to your spare time and were not your “identity”. So many people today can get away with pretending all sorts of crap. Especially they can pretend to be oppressed.
[ Fetches cloth of questionable origin, wipes bar. ]
Umm… imagination?
Lordy, even little kids create stories, drawings, even friends that are entirely imaginary.
I’d tell such sterile prigs to get the stick out of their backside, but I’m afraid they enjoy it there.
Harsh treatment of criminals and parasites seems eminently civilized.
Having raised 4 daughters, there was the period where MLP approached wild horse herd levels in our house. They were a little girl’s dream — pretty colors, brushable hair, cute faces — hours of imaginative play was had with these soft-plastic ponies.
I gotta admit that, today, it is hard to maintain my warm, nostalgic feelings for this toy icon of the 1980s when it has been adopted as an object of adult paraphilia.
Take it back to the closet, dudes. WAY to the back of the closet.
Yes, but we’re talking about the cultural/civilized aspects of society. Those who don’t do (much of) the criminality themselves but normalize the acceptance of it. Wars have a significant impact on this but that’s a longer discussion…
Well exactly. I mean the whole thing is quite silly. They only “exist” because they were imagined. It’s not like we’re talking about Europeans hearing retold stories about western hemisphere animals or mariners’ tales from a glimpse of far off pods of dolphins.
My point is that we should return to older norms where criminals and suchlike were treated as they deserved. How to get there is a separate question.
Heh. That.
Never an argument from me on that. I thought we were discussing Jack Kerouac, Burroughs, Nietzsche and stuff.
I think “adult” belongs in scare quotes.
Gott im Himmel, it’s in the name.
Humans have a terrible tendency to be fascinated by talented Cluster Bs, even when their narcissism and even sociopathy are right there for everyone to see.
We’re pretty much hopeless.
Given that unicorns are one of the most widely depicted mythological creatures in both heraldry and pop culture, what is there to “explore?” Every kitschy Knick-knack shop has a couple dozen unicorn figurines and a rack of unicorn t-shirts and posters. I’ve never seen the “actual” Santa Claus, but I’m pretty clear on ways he’s “conceptualized.”
It’s a horse.
With a narwhal tusk coming out its forehead.
How hard can it be?
Sounds like some low-effort curating there.
And the thing that disturbs you is only the sound of the low spark of high-heeled boys.
It’s a horse.
With a narwhal tusk coming out its forehead.
Or did someone on acid mis-species a rhinoceros?
I think we’ve been distracted and we’re all missing the point here. It’s the £27m. I gotta admit, that sum for something this bloody stupidly obvious is a form of art in itself. It’s genius. Well, not genius in the sense that the perpetrators are so smart but in the delta of how far they are above the stupid rest of society willing to pay for it. And this is just one of many, many such instances not in just the UK, but the US, Canada, France, Italy, and the other usual morons.
You’d think after being roasted so thoroughly in the 90s they’d be ashamed to pull stuff like this, but no.
Cluster B is eternal. And Cluster B never learns.
It’s the £27m
It’s the £27m
It’s the £27m
It’s OUR £27m
Many years ago my sweetie and I liked to read to each other in bed. My favourite book to read aloud will always be the Wind in the Willows to my daughter but Kerouac’s book about his search for his antecedents in France comes a close second. From that book alone I say the man could write.
Relevant to my first comment, a friend recited the entirety of “Howl” during my first acid trip so I might be a little damaged.
Ugly with blue and green hair?
Heh. Well, I suppose a pile of unattractive, uniform, ubiquitous plastic tat is kind of symbolic. Though perhaps not in ways one might find flattering or endearing.
And again, if you’re a supposed adult and you feel some affinity with a mass-produced plastic unicorn toy intended for small girls, as if said object captured the very essence of who you are, then some assumptions may need revisiting.
Depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.
re Howl:
It, of course, goes on. Re-tensify a few verbs, a minor tweek of a very few nouns and reads quite well as prophecy. Not necessarily the author’s intent but then I’ve never dropped acid so…?
1 “We are not replacing or removing the cross from our traditional hot cross buns and they will always be available at our stores nationwide.”
2 “We are proud sponsors of diversity in our stores and will be increasing the availability of hot tick buns.”
3 “We are discontinuing the hot cross bun in our stores due to its sinister and oppressive history.”
4 “Get Yer Hot Tick Buns Here!”
[ Mutters something about skin suits ]
It’s worth noting how often and how quickly the “LGBTQI+” exhibits have become more predictable and wearying than the allegedly “pale, male and stale stories” to which they were supposedly a thrilling alternative.
We might, for instance, ask which is more likely to endure – a curiosity about the warships of Henry VIII and other Tudor artefacts, or incongruous notes attached to said artefacts, telling us about how “for many Queer people today, how we wear our hair is a central pillar of our identity.”
Cluster B surrounds itself with Cluster B, for 24/7 positive reinforcement…including subsidies.