Artistic Terrorism: Art Through History That Changed the World

I have been reading much lately about "economic terrorism" which seems to be loosely defined as an economic strategy designed to bring about change of the status quo. Under this loose definition what isn't terrorism?

Was Leonardo Da Vinci a terrorist, and was the Mona Lisa his weapon of mass destruction? Certainly this single painting changed the world.

Was Michelangelo a terrorist, and was the painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling his weapon of mass destruction? Certainly this work of art changed the world.

More recently, wasn't Andy Warhol, and certainly Robert Mapplethorpe terrorists, and weren't their works of art really just weapons of mass destruction shattering the status quo and forever changing the world?

God knows that Andres Serreno was a terrorist, and his art "Piss Christ" truly a weapon of mass destruction.

Music? Wasn't Mozart just a flatulent terrorist radically changing the world with his music? Beethoven? Terrorist! Bach? Terrorist! And Rock n Roll? Oh come on! Here is a fine example of tragic terrorism that nearly destroyed the world!

William Shakespeare? Terrorist? Mary Shelley? Horrorist or terrorist? James Joyce? Puhleaseeeeeeee! God, what a terrorist this evil clown was.

If we are ever going to rid the world of terrorism, perhaps it would be a good idea to begin with the artists, because these men and women are truly dangerous.

Okay, where the heck is the proof of them being terrorists? I mean rock & roll being terrorism related? They're paintings! I just don't see how paint, brush and a canvas make mass destruction. Give some proof of your thread.
If your saying they're all terrorists your sadly mistaken. But if your saying they're not i totally agree.

Originally posted by xShadow13
Okay, where the heck is the proof of them being terrorists? I mean rock & roll being terrorism related? They're paintings! I just don't see how paint, brush and a canvas make mass destruction. Give some proof of your thread.
If your saying they're all terrorists your sadly mistaken. But if your saying they're not i totally agree.

edit on 22-3-2011 by xShadow13 because: More info

Sigh. This thread is posted in the Deconstructing Disinformation for a reason. What reason do you think that could be?

reply to post by xShadow13


Sarcasm my friend

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


some visuals would be nice

you dont really expect every person on here to search for these pics themselves, when you could save everyone the time? I need a little more from you

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

some visuals would be nice

you dont really expect every person on here to search for these pics themselves, when you could save everyone the time? I need a little more from you

Would you like me to spoon feed you some mashed carrots as well? Here comes the airplane. Mmmmmmm. Open wide. Mmmmmmmm. Come on little baby, open wide and eat your carrots.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

Music? Wasn't Mozart just a flatulent terrorist radically changing the world with his music? Beethoven? Terrorist! Bach? Terrorist! And Rock n Roll? Oh come on! Here is a fine example of tragic terrorism that nearly destroyed the world!

Great analogy, think it is time to get rid of my collection of Beethoven, Bach and the rest of my terrorist collection of classical music before I am caught.

I let anyone know how much this music has changed my life by sharing it with others over the years and have created a cult following, if that is being a terrorist so be it, I am willing to pay the price.

Great thread my friend,
S&F

reply to post by Aquarius1

I let anyone know how much this music has changed my life by sharing it with others over the years and have created a cult following, if that is being a terrorist so be it, I am willing to pay the price.

The word "terrorist" or "terrorism" has been so grossly overused, and misused it in itself has become, under the current paradigm, a sort of grammatical terrorism. It is clearly an Orwellian usage of a term designed solely for the purpose of aggregation of power.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

Overused is right, have you ever heard anyone refer to their children as holy terrors, never could figure out exactly what that meant, but hey what to I know after all I am influenced by classical music which makes me biased.

Originally posted by Aquarius1
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

Overused is right, have you ever heard anyone refer to their children as holy terrors, never could figure out exactly what that meant, but hey what to I know after all I am influenced by classical music which makes me biased.

Perhaps it is appropriate prescience to call children "terrors" as they, or at the very least some of them, will grow up to affect the world in ways that will radically change the status quo. Let's get to these potential terrorist before they do so! Dear God, we are surrounded by terrorist!! Somebody please expand government to the point of absurdity so I can be safe from the terrorists.

Maybe Im missing the point, but i wouldn't call those you describe as terrorists as none are inducing terror to gain a political end. I would say they were trail blazers who helped challenge the conventions at the time, but not to instill terror.

the word terrorism is thrown around so much these days anyway, I was watching a documentary on a certain plant that we cant discuss here, but, it used the term "herbal Terrorism" to describe the effects of the plant on the brain.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
I have been reading much lately about "economic terrorism" which seems to be loosely defined as an economic strategy designed to bring about change of the status quo. Under this loose definition what isn't terrorism?

As someone who authored one of these threads today, let me begin by suggesting your characterization of such economic terrorism as merely an "economic strategy" is total bunk.

What was being advocated by the likes of those cited within my thread was complete disregard for contractual commitments and the rule of law.

If you equate that to art, then that is the most expansive definition of art I have ever seen.

The Goal of Ungovernability: Economic Terrorism by Those at Home

As an artist for most of my life, I'd say that a good 50% of the works that I've done are statements AGAINST the established order. In fact, my most recent portrays a cat ripping apart a sign carrying the tattered faded remains of several examples of 'War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Whatever crosses their mind. (no... it's not posted in my link below). It's a statement that we are being desensitized to the notion of WAR... real war.

Much of what I've produced over the past 10 years is most assuredly an attack on religious institutions.

How's that from an artist's POV?

[snip]

reply to post by loam

As someone who authored one of these threads today, let me begin by suggesting your characterization of such economic terrorism as merely an "economic strategy" is total bunk.

I saw your thread, and a few days ago there was a thread about they guy who was hawking currency being convicted as an "economic terrorist" by a jury in a federal court.

Let me be clear here, I have no regard or love for unions what-so-ever and would agree their strategy is concerning, perhaps even alarming, but "terrorism"? If you are advocating the ever expanding use of the term terrorism to include this sort of behavior then I am calling you out as total bunk!

Terrorism is a serious crime and an abhorrent political strategy. Economic warfare is not the same by any stretch of the imagination, and again, let me be perfectly clear here, I am a free market advocate, which is why I have no love for unions, so the status quo you seem to be so enamored with is not a market system I have much regard for.

All close systems tend towards entropy. It matters not what the SEIU are up to, the closed market system we are currently operating under is demonstrably tending towards entropy.

Before you know it the term "free market advocate" will appear on ADL and SPLC "reports" as being one more example of "domestic terrorists" and presumably you will be creating threads praising these clowns for their "honest" work.

Sigh.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


You did mention famous pieces but what about pop art that takes everyday objects and makes them into art like Warhol’s Brillo Boxes? What about Duchamp’s Fountain? I would have used Joel-Peter Witkin as an example before Da Vinci. Joel-Peter Witkin has some creepy stuff. How would you say that Picasso’s Guarnica www.artquotes.net... is terrorism when it’s showing the horrors and innocents suffering due to war?
There are a few points you need to bring up and touch on, in order to prove that art is terrorism.
1.) What is art?
2.) Censorship of art
3.) Interpretation, deconstruction, evaluation and critiquing of art.

There have been debates on different definitions of art, from the artifact definition of it had to be made by a human with the intention of being art to the sentifact definition of it could be made by an animal but the animal needed to understand art and know they are creating art for it to be considered art or the second definition of sentifact art as readymades (like fountain or brillo boxes) which are objects that weren’t originally intended to be perceived as art but then were altered to be a candidate for aesthetic notice. The consistent theme was the artist had to understand what they’re doing as creating art.
If we ignore the possibility of nature having the ability to understand and a universal consciousness and solely went with Plato’s definition of art as an artifact or being made by a human then you would leave out animal art which is included in the sentient theory. Believers in the sentient theory argue the abilities and intelligence of animals, we as humans tend to think we’re superior in mental capacity and generally tend to think of animals as less intelligent. We tend to leave out the idea that different animals may surpass us in intelligence but show it in a different way than we’re used to. If you say that only humans and animals can create art then what about AI? In the future as technology develops we may include pieces produced by a robot or artificial intelligence. We’re starting to head down that path now with works done by robots such as or ISU www.leonelmoura.com... that can choose what characters and words it’s going to put in a poem or image. Although one might argue that the programmer would be considered the artist would you then consider Da Vinci’s parents the real artists since they raised him and “programmed” his personality? Would you consider an artist to only be a model of their teachers programming?
There is the argument that you have to be able to appreciate something due to its aesthetic properties for it to be art but what about those who can’t see? I watched a show on the History Channel Stan Lee’s Superhuman www.history.com... about people with extraordinary abilities and one of those people was Esref Armagan who has blind since birth yet he draws and paints in perspective, his works can be seen on his website www.armagan.com... Would this mean that we have to include images created by the mind or imagination in defining art?
What if you pull from Collingwood’s claim where true artists don’t know what they are expressing until the piece is finished? You also have to then delve into the different types of “art”, representational, abstract, non-objective…. Plato had a theory that art is actually copies of copies and that there was a transcendental world of perfect forms. With so many points that can be debated, and everyone having their own opinion on each point no wonder there isn’t a set in stone definition of art that everyone can agree on yet. Even if we do come up with a definition there will always be someone challenging the idea and trying to modify it to fall into their view of what art is.


After defining art then you have to take into account the people who want to censor it. I personally don’t believe that there should be censorship in art. Sometimes people express themselves through art when words just art enough. Words are protected via the constitution in the USA with the freedom of speech, why should that same freedom not be extended to art? Sometimes we need to be shocked into thinking about a subject and sometimes we need to learn from example not experience. Censoring takes away parts of society that are necessary in order to better us as a whole.
There are pieces, especially shock art that some people would like censored. The trouble with that is, shock pieces usually lead to lengthy discussions. Take just about any piece from Joel-Peter Witkin, his subjects often have a trend of death, deformity, cadavers, hermaphrodites or subjects outside the norm. Does the fact he made Venus a hermaphrodite mean that his version of Birth of Venus is more valid than Botticelli? I say no, there is a page full of the same overall painting with drastically different composures I found when trying to bring up an example of Birth of Venus at www.flickr.com... . I think that it is a fantastic example of what ifs, what if the original was never created and only the alternate version was made? It would go back to the debate of what is art? Would the paintings and images lose the aesthetic values they contain?
It’s often said that we learn from history and we learn from example. Catharsis through art can also be a way of learning as well. Beginning Aesthetics states that Catharsis is “a purging of undesirable emotions” and in the art world it can be done through experiencing those emotions via a piece of art rather than actually performing them. If we censored art we would remove the possibility of catharsis from emerging from that piece of art. A viewer might need the bloody violent release coming from watching House of 1000 Corpses instead of actually committing the murders just like people watch movies about going into space knowing that they probably will never be able to go due to health, financial reasons, age, etc.
While I don’t believe that art should be censored I think that there should be some restrictions on access to certain pieces. If something is beyond the normal society view of pornographic, violent, or taboo then I do think there should be some sort of a warning so the viewer or guardian of the viewer can decide if they really want to experience that piece or not just like ratings on movies supposedly keep children out of films that are not age appropriate unless they have a guardian with them or an adult to buy their ticket for them. You also need to take into account appropriate settings into the restrictions. Displaying xxx rated porn in a school auditorium, even if not intentionally showing it to adolescents is just an inappropriate action. There is too high of a risk of them sneaking in to watch it and learn about certain aspects of life before they are able to rationally decide if it is appropriate for them or not. Through a reasonable balance of location and access I feel that the need for censorship in art can be eliminated. Doing so allows freedom of expression and ideas to the artist and the viewer and allows us to take the necessary steps for the continual evolution of society.


Once you have the definition of art out of the way and censorship out of the way you then have to look toward the interpretation of art. You have a few ways to interpret it such as art expresses emotion or art representing objects/people/places/subjects.

Deconstruction is explained in Beginning Aesthetics as an open form of interpretation and criticism. It has strengths and weaknesses and is, in my opinion best used in moderation and not as a final and singular from of review and critiquing. If you use it only as your method of reviewing a piece you may see things that weren’t intended, grasping for straws at something that wasn’t meant to be there. If you don’t ever use it in your method of reviewing then you may miss the creativity that some artists are expecting from their audience.
The pro of deconstruction I would have to say is expanding your creativity. Without creativity there isn’t innovation, without innovation there is not progress and without progress there is dullness and under appreciation. Can you imagine if you took an abstract or surrealist painting at face value? The soft clocks in Dali’s The Persistence of Memory as just clocks made from rubber or a semi liquid material. To say that it is just an image of a barren landscape was not what Dali intended, he wanted you to interpret the symbolism and pieces of the painting. If you took the book Animal Farm at face value, you would see it as a kid’s story like Winnie the Pooh. You would miss the satire or allegory of Russian revolution, you would miss the lesson that while revolution may be necessary if you ignore problems inside that revolution it can lead to corruption, greed and an alternate but equally bad system in place. Sometimes artists intend for you to search for a deeper meaning to help you appreciate an object or a situation more. Instead of letting your eyes pass something by because it’s become mundane and familiar you take a deeper look into all the aspects of it.
Deconstruction says that texts and artworks do not have one set meaning, while that may be true in some cases it’s not true in all of them. If you were to say that no text or artwork had a set meaning then you would see stories like fairytales as more than having just a moral as their basis for their stories. You would see political rebellion in Cinderella saying the poor should rise up and take over the estates and lands of the rich. You would see a deep dark hunger of the slums of society ready to steal kids away in little red riding hood. It’s part of what has fueled the debates over Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting with the conspiracy theories of the Da Vinci code and the almost hysteria about a bloodline of Jesus as the holy grail. You need to sometimes reign in your theories and interpretations otherwise they get out of hand. In the Aesthetics class I took one of the discussion questions was “Suppose someone said that the famous novel Moby Dick is actually about nuclear submarines. Is this incorrect? Why?” It’s a good example of trying to pull meanings that aren’t there. I think its part of why I like the point counter point counter discussions on this site. If someone said Moby Dick was about nuclear submarines it would be incorrect for a few reasons. Ahab is hunting the whale for revenge, the book is about chasing this creature and giving it human thought processes. I don't know of any subs that are thought to have human thought processes. The main glaring detail of why it wouldn't be a Nuclear sub is that this book was published in the 1800's, the first nuclear sub wasn't even made until after 1950. There simply wasn't the technology for the author to have been able to envision a nuclear sub when he was writing Moby Dick.
You have to be able to prove your theories when someone challenges you on them and if an artist says that the meaning of a painting or writing was one thing then by all means that is what it was meant to be. Sometimes we give too much into our fancies and fantasies and it devalues a work from the beauty it truly has. As Sigmund Freud once said “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
You might want to read Susan Sontag’s opinion in Against Interpretation in that deconstruction can lead people to go too far and search for a meaning that was never intended. If you agree completely with Sontag though you lose the creative exploration that sometimes is desired by the artist, sometimes they do intend for their works to have multiple meanings and interpretations. If you combine the pros and cons of deconstruction you gain a deeper understanding and value of what you are seeing.
Many people enjoy feeling emotions from experiencing art and having emotional experiences based on art. Even though a piece of art may reflect a person’s mood or make them happy, it is not enough to make that artwork good art. I would modify the Emotivism theory since you must be able to go into detail in your evaluation instead of just saying “because I said so”. Emotions are an ever changing process, what may make you happy one day may make you upset the next. Due to their constantly changing and subjective nature emotional reactions and Emotivism are, by themselves not a valid form of art evaluation.
Beardsley’s theory of art evaluation was a theory that I agreed mostly with but had to modify to fit into a theory that would work for me. One of Beardsley’s main points in his theory was the general criterion which has the qualifier that the piece of art must contain some degree of intensity, complexity or unity to be able to be considered good art. This is a useful factor, it maintains that the evaluator must try and focus on the formal qualities of the piece, regardless of whether or not they like the piece. This need for an aesthetic value allows comparisons between good and bad works. The downside of solely using his theory is that he’s not allowing context into the evaluation process. I believe it takes out some of the extra power in works such as pieces made by psychiatric patients.
In artwork of psychiatric patients, the colors they choose and strokes they make may portray quite a bit in the painting. Even so, the history behind the artwork I feel should be taken into account especially in the deconstruction of the artwork. Psychiatry in pictures (look it up online, I lost the link sorry) includes the work of Sujith Rathnayake who survived the Sri Lanka Tsunami in 2005 and was admitted into a psychiatric hospital due to the psychological effects the event had on him. The paintings he made while in the hospital instill emotion in the viewer; they make the viewer empathetic of the fear of running from the waves crashing down and claiming the lives of so many. Without taking any history into account, Rathnayke’s paintings simply reflect trying to escape something. It would open the option of interpretation, I could interpret bjp.rcpsych.org... as being crushed under the pressures of society for those of color or I could interpret it as a religious painting where mankind is made in Genisis 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Which would entirely change the meaning that the artist was trying to convey, changing it from destruction and exhausting terror to energetic joy and creation.
I also feel that that the monetary value of a piece of art should not have influence on the evaluation. Pottery from ancient times, often fragile and easily broken often had little monetary value in the past now due to supply and demand has inflated to being worth much more over time. A Plexiglas cube could be filled with $100 bills and should still be evaluated with the same open mindset as if it were filled with scraps of paper that children wrote their hopes for the future on. The bills would provide a uniform coloring of greens and whites which could be looked at for unity and harmony, the markings and clean cut edges could be used to review the lines, shape and form of the cube. The children’s scraps of paper could be on all white paper, or a select few colors, the ones written in cursive could be on two sides, printed ones could be on two other sides and print writing could be on the remaining two sides modifying the shape and form of the cube. The value of the paper whether it is bills, scrap paper, or gold leaf should not affect the evaluation for monetary value alone.
When first trying to evaluate and critique art I think that we start with the eye being untutored and in some cases the eye remains untutored. Even though we start with our eyes being untutored and a world of mystery, we should still be able to perceive a natural match between many represented forms and physical reality. From those that have not been taught to see what images represent to those who have amazing artistic talent but cannot see, human beings have advanced capabilities that allow us to survive.
I believe if you took any of the feral children from past or present that have been caught and may or may not be in process of being introduced to society and showed them pictures or realistic paintings of objects they had been surrounded by in nature such as trees, fish, etc. that they would be able to recognize the images. Not because they were taught that these images were meant to represent what they display but because we as humans are able to recognize form, color, and appearance as a survival skill. They may be able to recognize abstract forms with teaching if they were distorted but a basic shape with proper coloring and shading in the form of a visual gestalt should allow the viewer to recognize the image.
I tried to find proof through accounts of feral children however could not locate any, the closest I could find was the account of Peter the Wild Boy from Hameln who would often repeat music after hearing it. The other account is of Sujit Kumar often called chicken boy and in an image on the Happy Home Trust website, it shows Sujit painting with his hands, the image being created looks non-objective and even images made by animals discussed at the beginning of the quarter in class in our what is art discussions look more like an abstract representation of something familiar than Sujit’s painting but that’s not to say he doesn’t recognize photos or paintings of chickens it only means that he’s not yet able to recreate images to our general standard of reorganization. The trouble I found in that research is that more often than not, feral children have a very hard time adapting to society and learning language. It’s like their brain has adapted to a survival mode that it can’t escape and often times they end up being kept in locations outside of society such as asylums. If not kept out of society it seems often they run away to go back to the wild and are not documented again or they end up dying relatively young.
Someone doesn’t have to be a feral child to be an exception to Gombrich’s idea that we are taught to see things in certain ways. One example of someone raised in general society who is a counter to Gombrich is again Esref Armagan. Mr. Armagan did not receive formal artistic training and was born blind yet he is still able to paint in perspective. He proved an exception to Gombrich’s idea since he cannot see examples of perspective yet can still produce it after feeling the object he is going to represent.
Teaching and learning is not to be completely discarded though, it does help with recognition of a symbols that are less realistic. In some early written languages very basic symbols were used in their development. Hieroglyphics and Kanji are two examples of written languages basing their characters so that they looked similar to what they represent. Tree in Kanji looks like a tree, calf and snake in hieroglyphics look like a calf and a snake. Other words and letters in these languages look less like a representation such as cat in Kanji to me looks more like the entry door of a house with a vine growing up the side than a cat which is why learning would have needed to be included to recognize the symbols that look abstract or non-objective to be able to comprehend the entire language instead of just a few pieces of it.

A lot of points brought up? Yes. I would have organized them better but I have a migraine and staring at the screen is making it worse. Sorry.

Do I think people will even read 1/4 of what I put? No

Do I think art is terrorism? NO. I think art is a wonderful means of expression and release of emotions, thoughts, views and ideas.

reply to post by masqua

How's that from an artist's POV?

It is nice to see you masqua, and nice to have another artist's point of view in this thread. I agree with you whole heartedly that the so called "war on poverty" and "war on drugs" are more examples of Orwellian double speak and what the war is on is the people, particularly individualism.

I find it interesting that a few who have posted in this thread seem to think that that this thread is an attack on art. If one wants to call political aggregation of power an art form, then I suppose it is an attack on art, or at least this "art form".

My art, for the most part, is words. Martin Heidegger once said; "Language speaks us, we do not speak language." While this certainly can be true, and is demonstrably so quite often, it is not, by far, a given, and we as individuals are quite capable of speaking language and not allowing that language to dictate our own thoughts. It is known as critical thinking. Not an easy skill, but a necessary one in this craft of life.

reply to post by kittendaydreamer

Do I think art is terrorism? NO. I think art is a wonderful means of expression and release of emotions, thoughts, views and ideas.

Dear God! Do you want to know how many times I have been taken to task in this site for my verbosity in creating threads? In fact a few threads ago I learned a new quaint acronymistic term: TLDR, which apparently stands for Too Long Didn't Read. Someone actually entered my verbose thread to make the point they didn't read my verbosity, while others gleefully joined in agreeing I used "too many words" to make my point. Yet, look at what has happened here in this thread where I relied upon brevity and sarcasm to make a point about the use of the word "terrorism". Sigh.

I would clarify that this thread is not about art, it is about the proclivity to expand the use of the word terrorism to criminalize any and all sorts of behavior, but who would bother to read it? Carry on, then.

reply to post by woodwardjnr

the word terrorism is thrown around so much these days anyway, I was watching a documentary on a certain plant that we cant discuss here, but, it used the term "herbal Terrorism" to describe the effects of the plant on the brain.

No my friend, you have not missed the point, and have demonstrated it with this fine contribution to the dubious use of the word "terrorism". I thank you for that - "herbal terrorism" ha ha ha ha ha, how far will this go?

reply to post by Jean Paul Bordeaux


Language and the written word are certainly art which has influenced the masses more then any other form of expression, I am including your writings in this statement Jean Paul Zodeaux, you are truly gifted in my opinion.

The written word can terrorize some opposed to violent terrorism, maybe fear would fit better, I look at it as a learning tool, you can enable people to see a different point of view and at times embrace it.

reply to post by Aquarius1

The written word can terrorize some opposed to violent terrorism, maybe fear would fit better, I look at it as a learning tool, you can enable people to see a different point of view and at times embrace it.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but ignorance and apathy will dull both pen and sword. I think you make a good point by distinguishing fear from terrorism. All things come down to multiples of two, and in terms of emotional tones, it really comes down to fear, or love. It is easy to fear, and not so easy to love. It is also easy to contract and not so easy to expand. Fear is contraction, and love is expansion.

Dear God, someone expand government to the point of ridiculous measures so I can stop fearing all the terrorists and start loving again.