I wanted to like this meme, but upon investigation its point falls apart. Neither of these modern artists were “artists with degrees,” in fact it’s the complete opposite. They weren’t elitists from academic institutions, they came from ordinary backgrounds and were basically untrained in art.
▪️The banana duct taped to the wall was done by Maurizio Cattelan, an Italian artist. He was ”the son of a truck driver and cleaning woman, he grew up rough and working class. He spent his youth getting poor grades in school and then flailing around with s****y, menial jobs as a young man…”
▪️He had no formal training in art, he started his career designing and building furniture. He is known for being a joker, humor and satire is at the core of much of his work.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/maurizio-cattelan-is-one-of-arts-greatest-mysteries/
▪️The tryptich (three white canvas squares) was painted by Robert Ryman, an American artist. He did attend college, enrolling at the Tennessee Polytechnic Institute in 1948, then transferring to George Peabody College the next year. But he studied music & doesn’t appear to have gotten a degree (he was in college for just 2 years)
▪️In 1950, Ryman enlisted in the US Army reserve corps and was assigned to an army reserve band during the Korean War. After his military service he moved to NYC with hopes of becoming a professional saxophonist.
▪️He took on various odd jobs to support himself, including being a security guard at the MOMA. Here he met various contemporary artists, bought supplies and started experimenting in his apartment, eventually launching his art career.
https://web.archive.org/web/20081026084819/http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_140.html
▪️Clearly, “artists with degrees” doesn’t explain these modern art works. Instead, these were people with no formal art training that managed to reach high status in the modern art world. A different narrative is needed to explain it!
As with the leftist freak out over “banned books” this is not banning books, it’s still easy to get Harry Potter and bookstores should be able to limit whatever books they want for whatever reason. But not only does it show a double standard, the rationale is far less justifiable than removing certain content from school libraries. At least there the justification was the content of certain books are inappropriate for children, clearly not every book should be available in a school library. Here, there’s no argument about the content they just don’t like the author’s politics!
Because news came out about his letter to the FBI, revealing he was a nutcase. The letter was rambling and incoherent, claiming he was trained by the US military off the books, and that Walz had instructed him to kill Amy Klobuchar so he could run for Senate. None of it made any sense (Walz is not running for Senate) and none of the assassinations made any sense, even in a diabolical way.
Nearly all of his hit list was Democrats (including Walz) and abortion clinics, but he was supposedly working for Walz?! Plus, one of the guys he killed wasn’t even on his list, and others were no longer in office or deceased. None of it makes sense from any coherent angle.
Basically, it appears the guy was mentally ill and neither the left or right can use the incident to push their agendas anymore, so the story was dropped.
This is so dumb. First, this means LA began as Spanish land founded to support Spanish missions (i.e. colonialism). Which contradicts their entire premise. But the reality is that Los Angeles is a quintessential American city.
▪️When the US acquired California in the 1840s, LA was a small town of less than 2,000 people. It was basically nothing. It became large only after the gold rush and the railroads completed in the 1870-80s, which brought thousands of new settlers and a booming commercial center.
▪️But LA had a major issue limiting its growth, no water. It wasn’t until Mulholland found a water source and built an aqueduct down from Northern California that LA had the infrastructure to grow into a major city.
▪️Then, a combination of oil, real estate and the film industry caused it to boom in the early 1900s. Post WWII, industries like aerospace continued its spectacular growth. Calling this “Mexican land” is a brain dead take. Neither the Mexicans, Spanish nor ...
