Robert Hughes - American Visions - Episode 3 (part 2/5)

[folklorish]

Hughes isn't expressing a singularly hostile view of the Gast painting, but he does have a tendency to not just buy smarmy aesthetic sentiment because it comes in a nice(?) package. And admittedly, that aerial goddess DOES look creepily similar to Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloons...covered in depth by Hughes in his discussion of Claes Oldenburg's art during the "Culture as Nature" segment of "Shock of the New."

[IExposeMormonism]

Good stuff in the words and the art. Esp the words. By the way, someday the average white American will become just like the "American Indian". You'll see. He'll be pursued and murdered in the name of progress and civilization. And for his debts, naturally. "there was a young lady named Myrtle, who had quite an affair with a turtle and whats more phenomenal a swelling abdominal proved to Myrtle the turtle was fertile".....

[oldstock1607]

His characterization of Gast's painting is in poor taste. "American Progress" is a beautiful work.

[Sajun777]

@oldstock1607 He never said the painting was bad. He simply pointed out that, in fact, the 'Indians' are retreating, she's floating above the plains leading the colonists westward like a blimp, and that she's laying telegraph wire as she goes. Beautiful or not (and that is subjective), nothing he said was wrong or in poor taste, considering that that is exactly what is in the painting and is indisputable.

[oldstock1607]

@Sajun777 come on. Clearly his words were calculated to disparage the painting.

[Sajun777]

@oldstock1607 I think he's disparaging the content of the painting more than the form, but yeah, he does seem to be rather negative towards it. But the entire episode is critical in that way.

The painting IS beautiful, but that doesn't change the fact of what it conveys. She is a blond blimp. No getting around that. :)

[apexxxx10]

John James 'Au-du-bon' Audubon. Hollywood should make a film about this dude.

Here America has taken the culture out of agriculture. Art for art's sake - before it became Andy Warhol and those darn mass produced Campbell tomato cans.

[flatoutt1]

this beyond good. its a US treasure.