March 20, 2012

A Candidate for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington

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A teacher asks Jon McNaughton, "Why are you just painting propaganda?

McNaughton answers: Artists have always used their skills to communicate to the world what they believe. To think that we live in a country without significant peril is to not see the forest for the trees. What is happening in America is bigger than any party. As a teacher you are in a precarious position. You must open the eyes of your students, but conservatism is often frowned on in the public schools. "Propaganda" is a word used to describe media used by Fascist and Communistic regimes to influence the people. I am a single individual who is using his First Amendment rights to speak out against a president and an administration which is harming our country. I see real propaganda every day from the mainstream media as we are told what to think about government and society. --McNaughton Fine Art: Is McNaughton Painting Propaganda?

Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 20, 2012 10:07 PM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Good one, Gerard. His point is valid. Too often the leftards get to paint the propaganda posters, and they are usually crappy Soviet Realism displays with the Americanized Anti-American theme thrown in.

Or else it's bad hippie art.

Representative art as good political propaganda isn't just for the editorial cartoonists anymore.

Posted by: Jewel at March 21, 2012 2:35 AM

Aw, boy...how are they going to make a "racist" deal out of this one?

Posted by: Mumblix Grumph at March 21, 2012 4:16 AM

How strange. I awoke this morning with a phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance on my mind. I considered, "with Liberty and Justice for all," and wondered where the harm was in that.

Where could someone take such a shining ideal of true fellowship, humanity, and good will and, as the artist depicts, burn it to ash?

Woe! to the nation that calls Good, evil.

Posted by: Joan of Argghh at March 21, 2012 4:26 AM

What further proof does anyone need to see that the only thing, the only power, the Darkness has is to distort, corrupt, and destroy what has been created?

Even the art of those who call good, evil, is borrowed and distorted to suit the destruction that it in their hearts. Shepherd Fairey is a poor artist, so he steals from others, distorts, reduces, embellishes and calls it his own. And is celebrated on The Simpsons; even that bastion of originality and creativity has fallen, at last, to the banality of the Lie.

Did we evolve from the beasts to become yet again beastly? We fight and die by the millions to create an Ideal that has never before been attempted in the world of men: Liberty and Justice for all, and feckless pundits come along and would have us worship fire and say, "might makes right." Did I wake up in the fading years of Camelot?

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at March 21, 2012 4:37 AM

It does have more merit than "Hope." It is more original, and has something to say counter to the liberal culture. That is more liberal!

It is not fine art, in the sense that it is pamphleteering. But, what's wrong with that? Nothing.

The NYT should've asked Salz whether he agrees that Obama is burning the constitution. That would be reporting. Instead, they soapboxed him to bloviate about what liberals wish to hear.

Posted by: Casey Klahn at March 21, 2012 8:49 AM

The Pledge was written by a socialist in 1896 with the sole purpose of creating a vehicle preparing people for universalism; the propaganda would be fixed later. The Pledge hasn't meant a goddamn thing since sometime before my memory. It is airport security 180 days a year, and administered by people with similar attitudes toward individualism.

Posted by: james wilson at March 21, 2012 11:19 AM

The "Oath of the Horatii" of our time.

Posted by: ErisGuy at March 22, 2012 7:09 PM
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