Do not let your lying eyes deceive you—this is no painting!
Leonard at Sadly, No has documented the perfect storm of wingnuttery that emerges at The Corner when it’s a slow news day. He has many, many examples, so check it out if you want a good laugh. But this particular one from John J. Miller might be my favorite, since he manages to invoke so many conservative bugaboos in such a short post.
Perpetrator of Communism Memorial [John J. Miller]
Less than a month after the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of Women in the Arts is opening a new exhibit on Frida Kahlo. She was, of course, an unrepentant Stalinist whose paintings carried titles such as “Marxism Will Heal the Sick.” By the way, the NMWA isn’t in Pyongyang or Havana. Here’s the bizarre part: The museum thinks it will attract visitors because the exhibit includes “a new collection of images … of Kahlo’s private bathroom at the Casa Azul and its contents.” This isn’t an art exhibit—it’s a shrine, to a woman in the thrall of a murderous ideology.
You can just imagine the first draft of the post:
Feminists and commies and Mexicans and artists!
But of course Kahlo’s Marxism precludes her status as an “artist” who made “art” that could be shown in “art shows”. It works under the same logic as used by Brent Bozell to explain that a speech act loses its protected status as “free speech” if the act conveys a message that Bozell doesn’t want to hear.
John J. Miller’s meanness of spirit has been in evidence before, when he wrote a couple of legendary articles attempting to list 50 conservative rock songs, an act that required a thick lack of self-awareness. To this day, I’m unsure if he knows what an ass he made out of himself with those pieces. But at least he was capable of admitting that people who don’t adhere to his political ideology might still be capable of being “musicians” who play in “rock bands”. He even tacitly admitted that his political ideology’s dweeb factor might indeed make it rather unlikely that there were many rock musicians who adhered to it. I don’t know if he just has different standards for art or if he’s slipped downhill, but the bold assertion that commies can’t be real artists deserving of appreciation for their work is a strong step in the direction of a more perfect Kulturkampf.
Being a good wingnut requires a fascinating lack of self-awareness, all right. Their avowed hatred for communism rings a bit false when they emulate so well the Soviet attitudes that art, speech, and science that conflicts with the preferred ideology must be suppressed. Not that Miller is advocating censorship exactly, but trying to redefine Kahlo’s work as not-art because of her political beliefs is about making the case that it shouldn’t be funded or displayed. Bozell’s pulling the same hair-splitting maneuver in his article. The Constitution protects free speech, so argue that speech that you disagree with is not speech at all, and thus not protected.
71 Responses to “Wingnuttery will heal the sick”
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Is Miller taking a break from hating queer people, wimmenfolk, and brown people, or is he, like someone affected by Alzheimer’s, losing his most recent memories and has reverted to the notion that the commies are currently the bad guys? Or is it simply a case of ‘there’s no hate like the good old hate’?
Ah, always nice to revisit “The Classics” on a rainy day…
Most wingnuts really do miss the old days of communism. The Cold War was replaced in short order by the War on Terra, but I guess the latter just doesn’t seem as epic or romantic. Plus, with commies as the enemy, you can deflect attention from the problems that crop up when you cultivate a fundamentalist religious sect in your midst to shore up your power—all you have to do is scream about how communism=atheism=death to millions.
Amanda, ‘member how the Soviets would conduct those grand goose-stepping parades with their many missiles and tanks? I think Mexicans, wimmenfolk, and queer people should simulate that. Of course, we don’t have ICBMs, but we could construct some facsimile, ala the Little Rascals, out of 50-gallon drums and whitewash and chicken wire. And we could goosestep down Main Street America and you could review us and we’re all turn to you and give you that distinctive forearm Soviet salute. I think the neocons would like that.
I love Frida Kahlo’s art. A lot of it IS political, but that doesn’t detract from its beauty or general interest. She suffered so extraordinarily in her life and held such passionate, resonating beliefs . . . to have a prick like Miller judge and dismiss her so casually from his cushy seat based upon his infantile and ignorant worldview is a cruel fate to suffer.
Well, David B., if it’s any consolation, more people probably care about Kahlo’s art than give a flying rat’s ass about Miller’s opinion of it.
Is Miller taking a break from hating queer people, wimmenfolk, and brown people…?
Since Kahlo was all of the above, I’d say it’s business as usual for him.
Um, I thought Kahlo was communist in the socialist sense, ie the non-totalitarian NON-stalinist sense? I could be wrong here, but it would certainly fit in with wingnut’s lack of awareness of nuance.
But yes, while I think not all that is passed off as art is art, to deny that Kahlo’s work is art because of her politics beliefs has more in common with Stalin himself that Kahlo ever would have. Not to mention that anyone with two brain cells to rub together can’t help but see that Kahlo is most DEFINITELY an artist of the highest calibre.
My bad, Thlayli. You’re right. She’s 3, 3, 3 Others in one!
Hey, if we do that show of pseudo-military might, we could hang banners of Kahlo, ala Lenin.
In addition to general wingnutism, Miller’s also being super-disingenuous. He cites himself, first, without noting it, which is always suspect. And that other article seems to take a creepy delight in Kahlo’s tough life. Also, he neglects to mention that Kahlo died in 1954, well before Khruschev famous denunciation of Stalin in 1956. But then, since when do facts ever get in the way of a good wingnut argument?
Bill S:
Sadly, this is probably not true.
What constantly boggles my mind is the unabashed dishonesty of the wingnuts — they regularly engage in half-truths and over-simplification. Kahlo was a Marxist, but hardly a Stalinist — in fact she worked to protect Trotsky from Stalin after the formers exile. Much of Kahlo’s political work is framed by the Mexican revolution. Most of her other works are heavily influenced by the enormous physical disabilities she endured.
In this case he gets to have it all: Kahlo was notoriously bisexual in her affairs; Her mother was Mexican (her father of German decent); and she’s, of course, a woman. A veritble wingnut trifecta
Let’s all support the National Women’s History Museum (still no permanent building for them!) while we’re at it: www.nwhm.org/sitelegislation.html
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And those who are too untalented to do, teach or sweep floors can always, based on the evidence, find a gig denouncing the “Marxism” of the other three groups.
I knew John J. Miller years ago. I liked him personally, but I’ve changed my own politics so much that I wonder if we’d get along these days.
Thanks for posting the Kahlo pic. She was a wonderful artist.
Why the hell is it that a Nazi comparison is considered an admission that you lost the argument, but a communist/socialist/Stalinist/Marxist comparison–which arguably is even cheaper because of the greater number of deaths vis a vis Nazism–is considered standard issue for the right?
The mother of one of my former colleagues used to hang with Kahlo and the gang (this same colleague was a Freedom Rider and organized with Cesar Chavez). Her family’s life is so much more interesting than mine.
Amanda,
The caption for the Kahlo print almost makes me with you’d written:
ce n’est pas une peinture
peinture sounds so much cooler than pip
It should come as any surprise for a wingnut to mistake Kahlo, a woman who helped protect Trotsky following his exile, for a Stalinist.
After all, these are the same people surprised to find out their new existential threat actually had sects that heavily hated each other. Why should it be any shock that they didn’t know their old existential threat was similarly divided?
Anyway, I’d like to say that good going for the NWHM. Kahlo was a great artist, and highly respectable as a countercultural figure. The lady deserves a shrine to her work.
Autorretrato de Frida Kahlo en la Manera de John J. Miller:
Kahlo would’ve been a Trotskyite not a Stalinist. I’ve always liked her art.
Well, which is it? They ain’t all the same think ya know.
OK, now that’s fucked up.
i think it was over at Think Progress that I saw th epithet “Islamo-Stalinist” flung.
“Islamo-Stalinist�
Awesome. They’ve already stopped trying. Eventually it’ll just be “the boogeyman.”
[…] Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte fisks–we need a word for when it’s just too ridiculous to require fisking–the argument that Frida Kahlo’s evil communism means that we should assign a historical and artistic value of nada to her life and its artifacts: Perpetrator of Communism Memorial [John J. Miller] […]
“Amanda Marcotte.”
I think they’re going to be converging on The Editors’ “Islamo-Atheism” soon enough.
“Evilutionistlibrulfeminazifreedomhaters”?
Over at Objectivism Online, apparently written in all seriousness: “North Korea and Iran are points on the Axis of Evil which hopes to overthrow Western Civilization and replace it with an Islamo-Stalinist dictatorship.”
I believe that the Think Progress comment in question is here: “Islamo-Stalinism: synthesis of the most retarded aspects of the Islam-loving Left and Stalinism.” “Islamo-Stalinist means a Leftist like yourself who’s an apologist for Muslims and makes every excuse for them. Also known as a Dhimmi.”
forgot the homos
Stalin? Trotsky? Those Commies all look the same, don’t they?
Got a comment in moderation making a similar point.
It’s kind of funny that conservatroids don’t realize that there a lot of who take Marx’s analysis of capitalism as an inherently anti-democratic and exploitative system seriously yet don’t think that gulags or cults of personality are totally awesome ideas.
“Amanda Marcotte.�
As an Islamo-Stalinist? She’d look silly in a burka or a bushy moustache.
What exactly do Islamo-Stalinists do - bow towards the Kremlin five times a day?
Though I don’t find it lessens the stupidity of the described attack on Kahlo, she was apparently a devoted Stalinist at the end of her life. This past Friday was the 100th anniversary of Kahlo’s birth, and in gathering info to post about that I found an article that included this:
” ….Kahlo’s Communism–now treated as somehow sort of quaint–led her to embrace some unforgivable political positions. In 1936, Rivera, a dedicated Trotskyite, used his clout to petition the Mexican government to give Trotsky and his wife asylum after they were forced out of Norway. Rivera and Kahlo put up the Trotskys in Kahlo’s family home, where Kahlo seduced the older man. (She painted a self-portrait dedicated to him that now hangs in Washington’s NMWA.)
After Trotsky was assassinated, however, Kahlo turned on her old lover with a vengeance, claiming in an interview that Trotsky was a coward and had stolen from her while he stayed in her house (which wasn’t true). “He irritated me from the time that he arrived with his pretentiousness, his pedantry because he thought he was a big deal,” she said.
Rarely is this unflattering detail included in the condensed Kahlo story. Nor is the fact that Kahlo turned on Trotsky because she had become a devout Stalinist. Kahlo continued to worship Stalin even after it had become common knowledge that he was responsible for the deaths of millions of people, not to mention Trotsky himself. One of Kahlo’s last paintings was called “Stalin and I,” and her diary is full of her adolescent scribblings (”Viva Stalin!”) about Stalin and her desire to meet him. Less scandalous but worth noting is that Kahlo despised the very gringos who now champion her work, and her art reflects her obvious disdain for the United States. One wonders what the postal service was thinking when it put Kahlo on a stamp. “Visas are denied to [foreign] artists with Frida Kahlo’s politics,” notes Chadwick.” ”
Source: “The Trouble with Frida Kahlo” by Stephanie Mencimer
My post on Frida — mostly a gathering of links covering the disability studies perspective on Frida, her art, and the 2002 movie about her.
Time to quit and go home for the day. PioTR wins today.
I love Kahlo’s art, but the woman left a pretty conventional portrait of Stalin on her easel when she died - which was displayed the last time I went on the tour of her house in Mexico City - and her friendship with Trotsky did not preclude her falling back into line with the stalinists after his death. And, really, in that hothouse atmosphere, it was hard to know who was really friends with Trotsky and who was spying on him. Tina Modotti, the famous photographer who moved in Kahlo’s circle, was having an affair with the NKVD guy who arranged the Trotsky hit. And he might have arranged her hit, because her death, in a taxi cab in 1945, was pretty suspicious.
But if Kahlo was a Stalinist in 1954, it wasn’t because she was a disgusting totalitarian. It wasn’t because she supported the purges. She wanted to help organize the overthrow of feudal regimes that were parasitic on the U.S. throughout Latin America, and good for her. To substitute what we know now about Stalin’s Russia with what was known then is the lowest kind of redbaiting. Stephanie Mencimer’s article about Kahlo in the Washington Monthly is full of the usual cold war crap, but she is right that Kahlo adhered to the Communist Party’s path, which was Stalinist:
“Kahlo continued to worship Stalin even after it had become common knowledge that he was responsible for the deaths of millions of people, not to mention Trotsky himself. One of Kahlo’s last paintings was called “Stalin and I,” and her diary is full of her adolescent scribblings (”Viva Stalin!”) about Stalin and her desire to meet him. Less scandalous but worth noting is that Kahlo despised the very gringos who now champion her work, and her art reflects her obvious disdain for the United States. One wonders what the postal service was thinking when it put Kahlo on a stamp.”
Of course, the first sentence is insane as well as grammatically incoherent. Trotsky was responsible for millions of people’s deaths only in the way that Churchill was - he was the Bolshevik commander in the Civil War - and Stalin, in 1954, was certainly not associated with the Gulag, a word as yet unknown in the west. But Kahlo definitely died a Stalinist.
Oops. I meant to say that Modotti died in the cab in 1942.
Well, Dan, I was merely operating on the principle that I knew who Frida Kahlo was, and didn’t have the foggiest idea who John Miller was. I guess I just assumed that was the case for most people. I could be wrong about that.
Does all this make Salma Hayek a Stalinist too, since she was so devoted to making a movie about Kahlo?
Roger:
I assume this:
“Kahlo continued to worship Stalin even after it had become common knowledge that he was responsible for the deaths of millions of people, not to mention Trotsky himself.”
is saying that Stalin was responsible for the death of Trotsky (which he was).
There are quite a few artists I like whose opinions I abhor (I don’t know enough about Kahlo to say one way or another)–amazingly I can separate the artist from the art.
Wagner, anyone?
Seriously, take your pick. If I recall correctly, Degas became an anti-Semite and all-around tool later in life. Scriabin seemed to have been certifiably insane. And the less said about the Futurists the better. And so on.
Bill S:
Americans who read NRO probably outnumber Americans who can identify Frida Kahlo at all, much less identify her as a Marxist, at least 2 to 1. Hell, I’ve met Americans who have never heard of R2-D2. This is not a culturally literate nation.
John L:
Jeff mentioned Wagner, who was definitely a raving antisemite and all-around asshole. He wrote some of the greatest operas of all-time, though.
Scriabin, on the other hand, certainly was a bit of a nutter and a total megalomaniac, but he probably wasn’t any more bigoted than any other upper-class Continental who came of age in the 1890s.
I was mainly referring to Scriabin’s megalomania, particularly the supposedly-end-of-world-inducing Mysterium. Dream big!
Granted I don’t know enough about the political intricacies of Kahlo’s later life (either they weren’t mentioned in Hayden Herrera’s extremely thorough and critically acclaimed biography, or I skimmed that part), but:
“After Trotsky was assassinated, however, Kahlo turned on her old lover with a vengeance, claiming in an interview that Trotsky was a coward and had stolen from her while he stayed in her house (which wasn’t true). “He irritated me from the time that he arrived with his pretentiousness, his pedantry because he thought he was a big deal,â€? she said.
Rarely is this unflattering detail included in the condensed Kahlo story.”
A) Why would it be? This is one very minor detail in the life of an incredibly accomplished woman. It’s hardly the first thing people need to know about her.
B) Nothing about this particular anecdote implies that because she changed her opinion of Trotsky as a human being, therefore she must have come to identify politically with Stalin. I need more than one hand to count my own former lovers who later came to irritate me or who I had pointlessly dramatic dealings with towards the end of the relationship. Needless to say, none of those anecdotes involved me dramatically shifting political viewpoints to something the person in question would have hated.
C) After Trotsky was assassinated, it would have been politically dangerous to go on associating oneself with him (especially knowing he’d been trailed by NKVD operatives in your home city, possibly under your roof, while you’d been carrying on an affair). There are a great many reasons for Kahlo to have publicly denounced Trotsky. In fact, one could even argue that the degree to which she publicly embraced Stalin may have been part of the same gesture. Kahlo would have known what would happen had she made an enemy there.
D) Kahlo had quite the downward spiral towards the end of her life. It’s possible that her political affiliations changed not because she was an evil Stalinist who thrilled to the thought of genocide, political purges, and gulag, but because of her failing health. When you’re in constant pain, battling bronchopneumonia, and having your leg amputated due to gangrene, you’re not exactly at the top of your game in terms of the hard-hitting political analysis.
E) Who cares whether, for a year or two, Kahlo stated some political opinions that, in hindsight, are not exactly PC? What everyone else said about the fact that you can still like someone’s artistic output even if you don’t agree with their politics. Would you tar Gunter Grass with the same brush?
I wrote a short paper comparing the Mysterium to Charles Ives’s Universe Symphony when I was an undergrad.
It’s still online, actually.
This is nothing new of course. Wingers freaked when David Alfaro Siqueiros was scheduled top paint a mural in Los Angeles, but then again, this was back during the Cold War. Awesome that we’ve moved so far from commie-bashing. *eye-roll*
Wagner, anyone?
Very true. I’m not sure how I’d get along without his music. His own personal assholery sucks, but I can take the music and give him the finger.
But wow. I can’t believe someone thought anti-Semitism is on par with Marxism.
Oh wait, no one did. It’s late….need sleep.
MAJeff, did you render PiaToR as “PioTR” deliberately, to give it an appropriate (for this thread) Russian flavor?
Trotsky crushed and killed the anarchists, the sailors and militant workers at Kronstadt during the Russian revolution for demanding things like freedom of speech and elections for the soviets, which ultimately helped blaze the path for Stalin. Stalin in turn murdered most of Trotsky’s family (among the millions of others). Later on Mexican muralist (and Stalinist) David Siquieros was involved in Trostky’s assassination and fled to Chile and hid out in Pablo Neruda’s (another despicable Stalinist’s) house.
Having visited Frida’s house a couple of months ago, she had a bunch of stupid ass portraits of Stalin and Mao. I like her art but she was Stalinist. And Stalin had her once lover ice-picked to death.
Here at my blog a nominated Neruda’s eulogy of Stalin as the worst poem of the 20th century:
http://knucklesandwich.wordpress.com/2007/02/03/neruda-anti-meme-nomination-for-worst-poem-of-the-20th-century/
roger: I read that paragraph as saying Stalin was responsible for Trotsky’s death, not that Trotsky and Stalin were partners of some murderous sort.
MAJeff, did you render PiaToR as “PioTR� deliberately, to give it an appropriate (for this thread) Russian flavor?
Nah, I fucked up.
Was he saying the same thing when they made the movie, or is he full of shit and late to the party?
I know it’s a Godwin violation, but all I could think of when I was reading the longwinded version of “it can’t be art because she was a dirty commie” was “entartete Kunst”.
I feel like I’m back at my first week of college as I read this thread. That first week, my fellow students referenced so many movies that I hadn’t seen and books that I hadn’t read and they all loved Kahlo, whom I didn’t know. If I were to synchronize, I’d have to read those unread books and watch those unseen movies and do more than acquire a clue about Kahlo, but rapidly adore her. I failed, for my peers had all gone to private schools and lived worldly lives, whereas I’d just been a schoolmarm in Appalachia (in a knotty pine schoolhouse), on a reservation, etc. Their lead in books, movies, and ideas was too great. But I had a chance with Kahlo. Alas, I failed that chance. Whereas I appreciated her story and found her art visceral, I never came to adore her, as was my duty in that circle, who, like lots of you, had been in her home and knew the intricacies of her life and could differentiate Stalinists and Trotskyists. I didn’t just teach hicks in the hills. I am a hick.
what paul said.
We’re encroaching on Roy Edroso’s territory here. Miller is a perfectly crass, crassly perfect example of the spirit of the zhdanovshchina that animates most rightwing commentary on the arts. Once we start subordinating aesthetic to political criteria, we’re well down the road to excluding most good art.
And by the way, the NMWA exhibition is very good, if anyone happens to be passing through Washington.
Soda, out the nose!
In 1990-1991, as a junior in high school, I did my major required term paper on Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. Want to make a bunch of Ohio kids drop their jaws so far you fear they’ll fall off? Mention the words “lesbian” and “bisexual” with nary a OMG I JUST SAID BISEXUAL look on your face when you give the presentation in the auditorium to the whole class, with slides.
A year later, at a graduation party, someone asked me if I was gay. (I’m not). “But… but… you did that paper on…”
Damn. Some people just can’t separate academia from personal life.
Kahlo didn’t kill any Russian or Ukrainian kulaks and, unlike both Stalin’s army and Lynndie England, tortured no prisoners.
But it seems a fair point to distinguish between an art exhibit and a shrine. Both have paintings, sculptures, perhaps stained glass or other media. But images of Kahlo’s john and the contents thereof sound like holy relics once removed. The intensity of Kahlo’s following reminds one of every college student with a pile of unwashed laundry and a Che Guevara poster on the wall. Or a faded, half-torn copy of Atlas Shrugged next to an illegal hot plate hidden from the R.A.
I think it’s at least as fair to criticize Kahlo’s “socialist realism” and her politics as it is to take shots at Ayn Rand’s “capitalist realism” and her politics. This blog has no problem with the latter but an allergic reaction to the former.
If you think Kahlo’s work is socialist realism, you don’t know socialist realism and you really don’t know Kahlo’s work.
She was a Stalinist. She was a great painter, whose work was anything but didactic.
So your point is?
Is that bit about the Victims of Communism Memorial a joke?
Is there some limit to the number of stupid things these idiots can find to waste money on?
JJM probably considers her work to be art of an amoral kind. “Degenerate,” he might say.
Salom, get real. A lot of people were killed by the Soviets, particularly early on. I wonder, though, when the Victims of Capitalism memorial will be unveiled.
Man, I miss the good old days of the Cold War… At least back then detention without trial, torture, show trials, and massive surveillance of the general population were regarded (publically, at least) as bad things. The whole stasi-ification of “democracy” is really getting me down.
We should all be important, sensible grownups with Bruce’s rational, dispassionate aesthetic, I guess.
Except for those of us who happen to be Mexican and proud of it, of course. But who counts people like that?
I have to say, though, Kahlo hasn’t produced as many asinine horseshits as Ayn Rand. Surely that counts for something, I mean as long as we’re making implications that have no basis in logic or reality.
Amanda, for this you deserve fruit snacks.