For nearly all of human history, our species created art either to worship a higher power or to inspire each other. We created beauty to connect ourselves with heaven, to teach and uplift, and to celebrate ourselves. Then something went terribly wrong in the 20th century. The American Central Intelligence Agency intentionally uglified the world with dull, nihilistic, and anti-human “modern” art. “Modern” art did not become popular because the public chose it. It became popular because spymasters manipulated that outcome. Then the “learned” among us told others that it was good and people who neither agreed nor understood just accepted it as truth, anyway. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) it’s also a lot easier to use modern art as a front for money laundering.
Don’t believe me? See HERE, and HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
Once you understand the scam, seeing it for what it is becomes unavoidable.
So what do we do about this? How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that inspires comments like, “my five year old could make this” back to being one that leads us to ask deep questions or to feel our feelings? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. Because if you’re going to launder money, you should at the very least be forced to make something so beautiful that it stands the test of time in order to do so.
This world deserves a better class of criminal. Maybe if we got that, we’d find ourselves with fewer criminals.
Let’s study art history together.
Dogs Playing Poker
This is art. This is beautiful. Those are good boys. It’s organically and enduring popular. It has something to say. It required talent and a specific vision for its creation. You could proudly hang this up somewhere in your home.
(via wiki)
Dogs Playing Poker, by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, refers collectively to an 1894 painting, a 1903 series of sixteen oil paintings commissioned by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars, and a 1910 painting. All eighteen paintings in the overall series feature anthropomorphized dogs, but the eleven in which dogs are seated around a card table have become well known in the United States as examples of kitsch art in home decoration.
Depictions and reenactments of the series have appeared in many films, television shows, theater productions, and other popular culture art forms. Critic Annette Ferrara has described Dogs Playing Poker as “indelibly burned into … the American collective-schlock subconscious … through incessant reproduction on all manner of pop ephemera“.
The first painting, Coolidge’s 1894 Poker Game, sold for $658,000 at a 2015 auction.
Description
The majority of the paintings ascribed to the Dogs Playing Poker moniker consist of anthropomorphized versions of dogs sitting around a poker table playing poker. The dogs presented are usually larger breeds like collies, Great Danes, St. Bernards, and general mastiffs. Humans do not appear in any of the paintings, and female dogs rarely appear. According to James McManus of The New York Times, the dogs are depicted as “upper-middle-class lawyers and businessmen”, as they drink and smoke at the table. The dogs sit on leather chairs in dimly lit rooms, adorned by a ceiling lamp. Some of the paintings tell a story. For example, in the painting A Bold Bluff, a St. Bernard is holding a pair of deuces, and the other dogs are questioning whether to call his bluff. In the painting Waterloo, the same dogs did not call the St. Bernard’s bluff, and he uses both paws to grab his winnings. Another painting in the series, titled A Friend in Need, depicts a bulldog slipping an ace under the table to the dog sitting next to him. Common themes throughout the Dogs Playing Poker series are deception, mistrust, and confrontation.
Not every painting within the series depicts dogs playing poker. Some paintings depict dogs performing other human activities, such as playing baseball and football. In the painting Riding a Goat, a blindfolded dog sits atop a goat for the amusement of a royal couple.