Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism

who's afraid of red yellow and blue was a painting by abstract painter barnett newman it's eight feet tall and eighteen feet wide it doesn't really exist anymore there are actually four paintings named who's afraid of red yellow and blue this is number three each one is distinctive but they share some key similarities namely the title is a reference to edward auby's play who's afraid of virginia woolf in alby's play four characters turn their lives inside out over the course of three hours and 68 000 words newman's paintings are well they're three colors really they're one color with some accents but despite the simplicity who's afraid of red yellow and blue three hung in the steep league museum in amsterdam for several years and then one day it was [Music] murdered [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] one day in 1986 a dude walked into the steed league right up to the painting and just went to goddamn town he gashed out about 50 feet of the fabric with a box cutter 50 feet that's like if he had carved out the entire perimeter of the painting and for such an attack he was well he was put in jail for a while but also he was roundly congratulated by more than a few people because red yellow and blue had been the subject of a huge amount of criticism since it first arrived before it was slashed it was the reason for dozens of angry letters and phone calls to the museum people said it made them physically sick so someone finally having the balls to do something about it to some it made him a local hero this so-called vandal should be made the director of modern museums he did what hundreds of thousands of us would have liked to do red yellow and blue three the painting is dead [Music] but i mean who cares it's just red blue and yellow i can make those colors in microsoft paint this is clearly just another example of the pretentious art world deluding itself into thinking that childish blobs of paint on a canvas are art right this is a game called 2 22 am it's free on itchio made by alice or at a lonculus on twitter and in a lot of ways it's incredibly simple almost bare bones but there is something there the game is very loosely a take on late night television you flip through different scenes intercut with grainy footage of showers or empty intersections or dandelions or it makes me feel like 2 22 am reminds me of red yellow and blue because like what is it it sometimes feels like a horror game but not in a conscious way it's horror in the way a nightmare can be horror where nothing bad happens and everything seems normal but you know something's off it's funny too it's a lot of things but i'd be hard-pressed to tell you a theme 2 22am isn't married to a specific story or even a specific sequence of events different playthroughs will give you different scenes with different timings often there's no way to interact with a scene sometimes clicking performs an action sometimes it doesn't sometimes it gives full freedom of movement and occasionally you'll need to accomplish a task but that task might be opening a refrigerator or digging a grave and it's a game that stuck with me it kind of lurks in the corners of my brain and those sorts of memories that could be from early childhood or a book or a waking dream you had during a fever 2 22 am made me uncomfortable it made me think about all the other games i play how predictable they are how i understand the rules it made me wonder what lies beyond the polished edges of aaa game development 222 am doesn't really fit within our existing game's infrastructure ichio is kind of a haven for these experimental titles but because of that ichio is also kind of a punchline for a lot of people dismissive of non-traditional gaming experiences newer platforms like the epic store have promised that the titles they sell will be more strictly moderated they'll only sell high quality experiences this might exclude the worst of the worst but who decides what lives inside or outside the realm of high quality experiences where do games like 2 22 am fit in we have 10 or 12 pictures of art but we don't have any penises stretched out on the table thus speaks former north carolina senator jesse helms a remarkable line that i believe should stand amongst the most famous in our nation's history ask not what your country can do for you four score and seven years ago we have 10 or 12 pictures of art but we don't have any penises stretched out on the table mr helms is not currently a north carolina senator currently he's toxifying whatever water source he's buried closest to but in his time as a politician helms was enamored with preserving the distinction between true art and deviance and that beautiful quote he was referring specifically towards robert maplethorpe maplethorpe was a photographer who took intimate pictures of human subjects embracing men various acts of homosexuality and sadomasochism nudes of all shapes and sizes and in fact a penis stretched out on a table maplethorpe was a constant source of distress for senator helms old jesse talked about maplethorpe and his photographs constantly and i mean who wouldn't have you saw the photography as deviant and actively damaging to society but he was also pretty politically canny about his opposition and so he didn't try and get the art censored directly just by proxy helm's stated target was the national endowment for the arts a government program that provided money to artists and museums around the country he argued that while maplethorpe's art may be abominable what's even worse was that the american people were paying for it if it even needs to be said the amount americans contribute towards that endowment is almost incalculably small but helms was a man of principle he may have supported foreign death squads but he was going to save americans from spending that fraction of ascent on something queer god damn it it's norman rockwell and paintings of landscapes are bust helms was pretty talented at whipping people into a frenzy about this when he talked about maplethorpe's deviancy people showed up in protest at maplethorpe's exhibits in fact his attacks were so extreme and effective that a museum in washington withdrew their future maplethorpe showing almost immediately the museum then received an angry call from jesse helms's office he demanded to know why they had withdrawn helms wanted more than to curtail funding he wanted those photos to be shown off if you truly thought the art was causing damage to society wouldn't you try to hide it from everyone but he didn't want it hidden he wanted public displays of anger and hugely visible protests wanting it to be shown off was a statement of intent helms didn't care about art what he did want was to raise big crowds of everyday americans each of them representing the country's anger at non-traditional lifestyles i have to conclude that they really wanted that exhibition in washington said the museum's director christina orcajal so it would fuel their fire i remember the first time i saw them i walked into a dimly lit room in the tate modern looked up and saw this colossus and next to it was another one the room was full of them actually i was drowning between them it felt like [Music] mark rothko's work doesn't fit very well with the typical adjectives we use to describe art is this beautiful sure but it's not beautiful is this complex it is actually but it's not how we think of complex what is it it's red and brown and chunky stripes on an absolutely enormous canvas and yet boy does it make me feel i'm not unique for getting this sense from rothko his works hang in the most prestigious art museums on earth there's this gravity that i and others feel when looking at them there's a presence but rothko's work despite its acclaim is still subversive still challenging the ideas of what art is and what standards it should be held to and because of that there are people who hate it too in 2012 a man painted his own name and a slogan in the corner of one of rothko's massive works black and maroon he tagged it and according to that man he had fairly grand motivations he said contemporary artists simply produce things which aren't creative in their essence or spirit art has become a business which appears to serve only the needs of the art market a contemporary artist frequently used as an example of the medium's creative bankruptcy is photographer andre serrano my favorite of his works and probably his most famous is of a plastic crucifix submerged in his own urine it's titled piss christ his christ was another one of jesse helm's primary targets of serrano helms said he's none artist he is a jerk and he's taunting the american people just as others are in terms of christianity for what it's worth serrano says he's a lifelong catholic that he follows christ not that it mattered to the catholic fundamentalists who attacked the photo with a hammer a man who could also be titled piss christ is paul joseph watson a contributor to infowars paul has political stances on many things he speaks in front of a large map to show his worldliness and breadth of thought one thing he's made abundantly clear is he has no time for modern art it doesn't enrich our culture it degrades and cheapens society by exalting the vulgar the kratts and the scatological paul argues that modern art is a war on objectivism what he keeps coming back to is there is good art we should know it when we see it it's this guy who makes very detailed sculptures it's not his christ it's not barnett newman and by claiming that these non-traditional works are good art what paul says we're really doing is upsetting the natural meritocracy that art should naturally fall into and this isn't just out of ignorance everyone that praises this art is doing so because of their sjw cuck ideology or he says because they've been fooled into doubting themselves by those same sjw cucks it's all a scam by convincing the public that these pieces are good the artistic elite are elevating the wrong parts of art and they're riding their deception all the way to the bank [Music] paul's claims that we can objectively judge art often go right along with his assertions that people creating the bad art are talentless it comes down to this we have to maintain objective standards of quality and talent in order to discern the value of anything talking about skill in reference to modern art isn't unique to paul and it's an understandable reservation to have when looking at a monocolored canvas it's probably occurred to all of us that i could paint that the easy response is that almost all art takes significantly more skill than it may appear to for instance rothko king of colored rectangles is still kind of a mystery to much of the art world he worked behind closed doors carefully altering the chemistry of his paints with egg glue resin and formaldehyde his variations between gloss and matte are incredibly subtle and incredibly hard to replicate newman similarly textured his big ol canvases in ways that created a depth of color not easily reproduced in fact we know how hard it is because after who's afraid of red yellow and blue 3 was carved up the restoration effort spectacularly failed it seems like it'd be easy to repaint the red part of the piece but when the man they hired did exactly that observers could instantly tell that something was off the shimmering quality of the hue wasn't there there was no sense of depth anymore the restoration tried and failed to recreate the delicate techniques of the original was it red yellow and blue sure but it wasn't newman this whole debate doesn't require skill or not is kind of missing the point while i'm thrilled that paul thinks that labor is what gives something its value and should be compensated as such reducing art to a linear connection between skill and value fundamentally just turns art into a commodity paul talks about how powerful the sculptures of ron weck are and i agree i've seen this big face and it kicks ass wax sculptures make me consider humans through a different lens than i usually do making me consider my place in the species and building a strange sense of solidarity with these aggressively real looking figures but if someone told me that moek was able to make these sculptures in minutes that actually they didn't take much effort at all i would still have those experiences it is absolutely impressive when an artist spends huge amounts of time perfecting an intricate style but that's not why i experience them how i do feeling art getting the or it doesn't hinge on me knowing how hard it was to create it's something that happens almost involuntarily and now we get into the second part of this argument art has to contribute to society conceptual art is [ __ ] it doesn't enrich our culture it degrades and cheapens society and whether paul knows it or not he's not the first person to think of this qualification in fact it's very closely in alignment with a particular political ideology [Applause] okay a quick disclaimer before we get into this art is the most damn subjective thing there is if you don't like any of the art i've talked about in this video a hundred percent fine and also thank you for sticking with it this long if you don't like anything that's been made after the year 1800 totally fine i am not about to tell you that not liking modern art makes you fascist however fascism does make strong efforts to bring art under a rigidly bordered culturally appropriate definition there is this pursuit in fascism to make everything of an aesthetic and that aesthetic is simultaneously mythologized or made into the history of a culture once that culture is appropriately mythologized the art that feeds back into it is seen as contributing to the created society [Music] when for instance every artist that the dominant ideology values for the last thousand years has been a white guy and creates things that glorify white and colonialist ideals there's something that starts to feel natural about that it creates a fundamental hierarchy and any art that pushes back or simply pursues a different aesthetic isn't contributing anything to that mythology anymore and in fact when the artists pushing the different aesthetic are members of groups that have been historically oppressed by the dominant culture the art they're making may feel like an attack on that mythology or at least that's how it could be framed if one had certain political motivations one place we might see those political motivations is uh nazis on one hand you might look at nazis and see a surprising amount of respect for artists yosef goebbels called artists oh boy a divinely gifted purveyor of meaning high praise indeed but as barbara fisher notes as well as this being characteristic of the banal and overwrought late romanticism of the nazis pervading meaning was only acceptable when the meaning being pervaded fed back into the national mythology there is little subtlety when looking at the most valued art of the third reich more interesting is the fact that as well as the galleries full of naked boys with swords the nazis also showed off the stuff they hated in a gallery called degenerate art we now stand in an exhibition that contains only a fraction of what was bought with the hard-earned savings of the german people all around us you see the monstrous offspring of insanity impudence ineptitude and [ __ ] degeneracy what this exhibition offers inspires horror and disgust in us all this gallery full of art removed from other german museums held such deviants as henry matisse andrei durane and oscar kokoska gaze if you will upon deviance if you truly thought art was causing damage to society wouldn't you try to hide it from everyone but they didn't want it to be hidden he wanted public displays of anger and hugely visible protests this kind of art the nazis said would only be made by insane and degenerate artists specifically they said they must be mentally ill to create these kind of abstractions alongside each piece in this exhibit was the extravagant price they were bought for inviting mockery and anger the gallery made familiar claims no one in their right mind would enjoy this art instead the fact that these pieces were held in high regard was indicative of the insidious plots of the left the art held critiques of the sexual norms and family values that were so important to nazi notions of respectability modern art they said was also made for the eradication of the last vestiges of racial consciousness new and transgressive styles by black and jewish artists were indicative of their degenerate intellectualism eugenics of course through the systematic devaluation of art a fun fact about barnett newman is he's jewish a less fun fact is that for every attack on his work because people didn't like red many more have been specifically done by white supremacists who's afraid of red yellow and blue four was attacked by a man who said it was a perversion of the german flag another newman a sculpture called broken obelisk was spray painted with swastikas in 1979 and last year that same sculpture had white paint poured into its reflecting pool scattered around the vandalism were brochures with the 4chan pioneered supremacist campaign it's ok to be white whether they know it or not the fact that white supremacists hate newman's art fits right in with a message he always said he wanted to convey in 1990 he said of his art one of its implications is its assertion of freedom if it were read properly it would mean the end of all state capitalism and totalitarianism challenging our preconceived notions of art means challenging our preconceived notions of institutions of society this kind of art doesn't fit into the cultural narrative and because of that it becomes a target and ultimately the crime that these artists commit is the right's biggest fear they are upsetting the hierarchy they are taking themes experiences and emotions that don't fit into our nation's narrative and they are expressing them in a way that is impossible to ignore and thus the rejection of non-traditional forms of art so often boils down to a rejection of oppressed people within those mediums nazis didn't call kokoshka a degenerate because of his artistic stylings they did it because of his public anti-fascist activism white supremacists didn't vandalize newman's work because of the apparent simplicity of his art they did it in an attempt to show who in society actually held power and saying that a half decade of rape bomb and death threats were because gamers were angry about journalism and a series of videos wonder gamers are so terrified of them subverting the video games industry [Music] depression quest isn't a new kind of game text-based adventures have been around forever they're one of the oldest genres in gaming but depression quest is an interesting title because it uses those implicitly understood rules of the genre to subvert our expectations as you play through the life of a fairly innocuous main character struggling with depression options present themselves at the bottom of the screen your significant other has invited you to a party what do you do but time and again the most desirable option the choice that would help win the game is x'ed out it's clear that the best option would be simply to go to the party and enjoy yourself but you can't do that every decision is managing compromises doing things that you know aren't ideal but it's all that's available to you at the time and at the bottom of the screen where you'd have your character stats they're just three lines you are depressed you are not currently seeking a therapist you are not currently taking medication for depression it's a brilliant little experiment a game that plays with the established power fantasies of most role-playing to put you in a situation where you're undercut by mental health at almost every turn it's a challenging game though not in the traditional sense there aren't game overs per se but in many of the situations every option feels like a losing one we're hardwired to want to succeed in games like this and depression quest makes it feel like that's just impossible sometimes it makes me feel like as nice as it would be for depression quest's legacy to be an innovative title that played with the tools of the medium it won't think the worst thing about the game is that there was no option to just go ahead commit suicide and end it not sure if that [ __ ] ever really had depression as much as she had bat [ __ ] maybe 24 it's been overshadowed by targeted harassment campaigns at its creator ever since it released they say there is no way that this game got coverage and praise on its own merit it's a textbook example of the war on objectivism anyone who says otherwise says they had a direct connection with this game says that it helped them view their or others depression in a new light is participating in an effort to force untalented people and destructive ideas into gaming patrick buchanan living fossil wait no that says paleoconservative proclaimed that much of modern art was barbarism the precise word buchanan was speaking alongside jesse helms and was also attacking the national endowment for the arts but he cut right to what he felt was the meat of the issue art like this this barbarism this drek was a direct result of the amorality and cowardice of art critics this is the heart of it right here this is the most naked form of attempting to control art and when buchanan yelled it's about ethics in video game journalism wait [ __ ] sorry no that's not right when helms took the stand to say gone home only got good review scores because they didn't want to be called homophobic wait that's not it either when people prescribe art to a specific set of qualities and attack everything that lays beyond those lines we have to understand what they're doing those qualities they just so happen to perfectly align with the dominant cultural ideology don't they're not showing respect for the craft they're not trying to uphold meaning they're enforcing a hierarchy they're attempting to define a cultural narrative and above all else they're not talking about [Music] art hey everyone thanks for making it to the end of this video i know it was kind of meandering a little a little off maybe this was my artistic decision to make it harder to watch than most of my videos regardless if this is a topic that you like me just can't get enough of there are a couple places you can start that i kind of base this video off of the original inspiration for this was a podcast by 99 invisible called the many deaths of a painting that talks a lot about barnett newman and his art being vandalized and also his art being restored which is really interesting in its own right and the nazi stuff came from a paper by barbara fisher called the barbarism of representation you might have to have like a jstor subscription or something but just just tweet at me and i'll send you that like these academic gatekeeping waltz or such [ __ ] anyway the many talented voices you heard in this video belong to other youtubers zack frazier returning star if the wolfenstein video was in here as well as games d and chariot writer they all have their own channels which i've linked they're all great they were great [ __ ] art critics i really appreciated it um and that's it thank you so much for staying till the end as a reward i will give you the real voice of mark rothko which is one of the most badass things i've ever heard in my life and that's it good night but i do know that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence [Music] where we can root and grow we must all hope we find them

Channel: Jacob Geller

Views: 1,333,326

Keywords: Modern Art, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Who's Afraid of Red Yellow and Blue, 2:22am, piss christ, andres serrano, jesse helms, paul joseph watson, fascism, nazis, art, gamergate, robert mapplethorpe, Depression Quest

Id: v5DqmTtCPiQ

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/space347]

Love this channel.

[u/[deleted]]

Amazing, i'm glad I took the time to check out this new channel. Highly recommended guys!

[u/c_lark]

Brilliant, thank you

[u/Maegaranthelas]

Ooh, thanks, a new channel to subscribe to! It's kinda funny (or probably sad) that I went through that modern-art-hating phase too, but when I was a teenager. I got over it, and now I accept that not all art will appeal to me. What's holding back these fashy types from doing the same?

[u/nckl]

Wow, surprisingly good and so few views. Wish they had a patreon!

[u/[deleted]]

If art succeeds in evoking a strong emotion in the person observing it then the art has succeeded in being art.

[u/SenorLos]

If nothing else one has to appreciate the irony of somebody destroying a "simple" painting named 'Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue' because he "didn't like it".

[u/DetectiveBeluga]

Paul is a very punchable face.

[u/poitinpdx]

Love this. One thing I took issue with was the description of the kind of state that promotes a feedback loop of soulless art as "fascist" when I think "authoritarian" is a better description. For example, at points the USSR certain types of aesthetics were mandated from art. What do you guys think of my critique? It's a small one of a great video.