Ha ha, two Republicans in Missouri caught trading telephone numbers with one another while doing so using a painting by Thomas Hart Benton as a surface. Sacré Bleu! Liberals, and Democrats alike are up in arms of course. (And they should be) This wonderful photo by Dave Marner, editor of the Gasconade County was taken at the Missouri State Capitol and published the other day.
What surprises me in some much of the social media commentary is just how scathing people are towards these two bureaucrats. (And they should be, I repeat) However, it also strikes me as a bit confusing (perhaps a bit disingenuous) because it would seem to me that these same people (Liberals, Art lovers, Lefties, etc) also celebrate the freedom of expression which takes the form of Graffiti so celebrated by the very upper crusted institutions around the world. And, painting Graffiti it seems to me, isn't so very different a behaviour as the non-chalance performed by these two bureaucrats.
Unhappily, we seem to live in a world governed by philistines. If it isn't Terrorists chopping up Palmyra or defacing Parisian streets, it is great Cultural institutions promoting Graffiti Art at the request of interested parties in the commercial Art world. The world, it seems, is ruled by a selfish disinterest in that thing called Beauty. Poor Beauty! Pillaged by Post-Modernism, and flogged by Contemporary Art schools, it seems to survive only in the hearts of few lost dreamy souls like myself.
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