Graphic by Robert Tracy
Happy Independence
July 3rd, 2009On Modern Art. Look at Your Own Peril!
June 25th, 2009The following writings by two authors, one very good (Braley) and the other great (Ayn Rand) shows what “Modern Art” is about. Anyone who has seen so called “Modern Art”, who have allowed their eyes and minds to give it a moment’s notice, will have been seeing not “Modern Art”, but anti-art. This junk is a killer.
Guernica
Pablo Picasso
A tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica is displayed on the wall of
the United Nations building in New York City.
Pablo Picasso
A tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica is displayed on the wall of
the United Nations building in New York City.
Draw your own conclusions.
“Modern Art”
One of the stories told of Harry Dart is worth preserving, I think.
Harry went to a private exhibition of cubist and futurist art, backed by a wealthy woman friend of his who prided herself on modernity, and who played patroness to various young “radical” and “independent” painters.
Harry wandered glumly through the rooms, looking at the paintings with blinking eyes, and growing glummer at each glance. The patroness rushed up to him.
“Oh, Harry,” she gushed, “aren’t they wonderful? Aren’t they splendid? Don’t you love them”?
“No, “said Harry.
“You don’t like them?”
“No,” Harry growled, “I don’t and I’m damn glad of it, for if I liked the goddam things I’d shoot myself.”
Berton Braley, Virtues in Verse, p. 150 (SC)
“She could not believe that she was supposed to feel respect for the dreary senselessness of the art shows which his friends attended, of the novels they read, of the political magazines they discussed—the art shows, where she saw the kind of drawings she had seen chalked on any pavement of her childhood’s slums—the novels, that purported to prove the futility of science, industry, civilization and love, using language that her father would not have used in his drunkenest moments—the magazines, that propounded cowardly generalities, less clear and more stale than the sermons for which she had condemned the preacher of the slum mission as a mealy-mouthed old fraud. She could not believe that these things were the culture she had so reverently looked up to and so eagerly waited to discover. She felt as if she had climbed a mountain toward a jagged shape that had looked like a castle and had found it to be the crumbling ruin of a gutted warehouse.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p. 875 (HB)
Note: Rand’s character did commit suicide.
“Mind if I Smoke”, cont.
June 24th, 2009
Photo by Robert Tracy © 2008
My last post on smoking seems too gentle and tame for the subject (politeness) and object (Obama’s further reach for government power and control over individual choice). I have posted this before, but it bears repeating. No one has said it better than Mark Twain. Is he impolite? Or, rather still relevant after all these years?
And this is how I’m truly affected by the rudeness and disrespect the smoker must accept from the non-smoking rulers of this part of our lives:
I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.
I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking….
And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking.
―Mark Twain
Mind If I Smoke?
June 22nd, 2009Dear Mr. O.B.,
I guess you’re too young to remember that smokers would have the grace and politeness, before they ever considered lighting up a cigarette, to ask his guest “mind if I smoke?”
Now, politeness has just been thrown out with your signing of the latest bogus anti-smoking bill.
This makes it very hard to be polite to you and your anti-smoking minions.
Nevertheless, for one last time, I shall be polite in spite of your rude government ban against politeness.
Mr. O.B., do you mind if I smoke?
Deliberate Confusion Made Clear
June 7th, 2009“Let me be clear.”
— Obama
“Level the playing field.”
— Obama
Detroit Skyline
Detroit Skyline After Obama's Leveling
“Spread the wealth.”
— Obama
— Obama
"Spread the weath."
I have several little red books published in English, printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in the late 1970’s and 1980. Their titles are “Lenin: A Great Beginning, How to [sic] Organise Competition?”. “Lenin: Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” And my favorite. “Marx, Engels, Lenin: The Way To Socialism Bypassing Capitalism.” In the latter you get this:
“This collection includes excerpts from works by Marx, Engels and Lenin of possible ways of transition to socialism bypassing capitalism. The documents included in the appendix show how the theory of Marxism-Leninism is carried out in practice.
“The collection is compiled by Vadim Trubnikov, Candidate of Science (Philosophy), who also provided a foreword and comments.”
Let us look at a few short comments from Comrade Trubnikov’s foreword.
“As foreseen by Marx and Engels, Russia arrived at socialism after passing through the capitalist stage of development….Marx and Engels proceeded from the general laws of the historical development and formulated general conditions under which an economically developed country could bypass the capitalist stage.
“As Marx and Engels saw it, the taking of the non-capitalist path does not, of course, signify immediate undertaking of socialist construction, although separate elements of socialism are created in socio-economic and political life in the process of gradual restriction and liquidation of relations based on exploitation.
“Engels wrote in one of his last works in 1894: ‘Only when the capitalist economy has been overcome at home…in the countr[y] of its prime, only when the…countr[y] ha[s] seen…”how it’s done”, how the productive forces of modern industry are made to work as social property for society as a whole — only then will …[the]countr[y] be able to start on this abbreviated process of development. But then [it's] success will be assured. (emphasis mine)
“Only after this preparatory stage has been complete, the founders of Marxism pointed out, can the people of developed countries proceed to the full-scale building of communism.”
Sound familiar?
Thank you Comrade Trubnikov for making clear
what Comrade Obama 
has
been saying all along.
Change the Name to Protect the Guilty
May 31st, 2009What is altruism?
What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.
— Ayn Rand. “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World”, Philosophy: Who Needs It, 74; pb 61.
“Providence,” declared [Obama's followers], (* See below to whom these quotes in brackets belong.) “has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing men from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge; from the dirty and degrading self-mortifications of a chimera called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear….
“If intelligence, morality and freedom are “restraints,” then [Obama is] a ‘liberator.’ After he had removed them, men, released from bondage, were left with a single problem and a single terror: the kind of life, and the deaths, that follow inexorably upon the removal of these ‘restraints.’”
Leonard Peikoff, ALTRUISM, PRAGMATISM AND BRUTALITY
The Ayn Rand Letter, December 18, 1972
POSTSCRIPT
“The growth of the same philosophic doctrines in contemporary American culture is discussed in later chapters of Dr. Peikoff’s…book, The Ominous Parallels. The events of our immediate present confirm his thesis and, specifically, the fact that our culture is dominated by the fusion of the same elements altruism-pragmatism-brute force.
“Observe the shrill, militant proclamations of altruistic slogans filling our cultural atmosphere, and the proliferation of government projects which are automatically whitewashed by altruistic “ideals, and which are acclaimed by the intellectuals as if altruism were an absolute requiring no proof and permitting no challenge.
“Observe the simultaneous advocacy of pragmatism by the same public voices, and the references to “flexibility” as a virtue. Observe the claims that acts of brute physical force are justified if perpetrated in the name of an altruistic cause….”
“Observe also that, contrary to Marxist explanations, this is not an economic, but an intellectual movement—that the “idealists” did not emerge from the slums, but from college campuses….
“The fact that biologically defined pressure groups, making outrageous demands, were treated with “compassion,” but ordinary workingmen, fighting to protect their livelihood and rights, were denounced as “selfish”—is not baffling if one understands the relationship of altruism to social subjectivism….
“The fact that [Obama] reverse[s] his stand every other day, and that he ran the dirtiest campaign on record, spitting malice, hatred, defamations at his adversaries, yet is now touted as an “idealist” who was “too pure” to win in the dirty game of politics—is not astonishing if one understands the philosophic ooze that produces certain kinds of mentalities wherever and whenever it accumulates on the banks of a culture’s mainstream.
“The same philosophy will lead to the same results in any country—if left unchallenged. The philosophic doctrines that led to Nazism in Germany are generating the same intellectual, cultural and political consequences in America.”
— Ayn Rand
Read these books. Find them yourself. I did. You’ll see that master Obama is after a totalitarian dictatorship with him as America’s Vladimir Lenin.
* The brackets contain the words of Adolf Hitler.
Psychological Warfare
May 22nd, 2009U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday praised an Army soldier in eastern Afghanistan who drew media attention this month after rushing to defend his post from attack while wearing pink boxer shorts and flip-flops.
When the image wound up on the front page of the New York Times, Boyd told his parents he might lose his job if President Barack Obama saw him out of uniform.
Soldier in boxers and flip-flops
“I can assure you that Specialist Boyd’s job is very safe indeed,” Gates said.
“Earth Day” Terror Nevermore
April 22nd, 2009About all I can say about “earth day” is something that uses a vulgarity, a curse word. This is not in my interest.
However, I can’t just let this go without something to say about this evil in our houses.
I was at the Veterans Administration in 1990 in the Spring time and saw cigarette butts and the cellophane and other parts of cigarette packages lying on the ground. As an artist I’m an observer. What I saw was Sparrows and Robins swooping down to collect these items. Knowing that these famous St. Francis’ creatures were gathering them up in order to make nests for their yet to be born chick lings, it gave me pause to ponder such that
”
…filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before…
“Darkness there, and nothing more…“Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before…
“Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’…
“Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,…
“Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is…“Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’…
“Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;…“But the raven, sitting lonely, …spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.’
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.’“Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,’ said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of “Never-nevermore.”‘…“Then,… I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.’“`Wretch,’ I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite…“`Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!…
“`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!’ I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest…
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’“And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
…just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
- nevermore!”
The Raven (excerpts)
Edgar Allen Poe
1845
For the Birds
Robert Tracy
Pastel
14 x 11″
1998
All these nicotine-related objects these earth-creatures had no hesitancy in taking to bring up their offspring.
Seem’s to me that nature’s creatures have more sense than the PETA types.
And to say it lightly: go to hell all you environment ravens! If you don’t like the earth, go where you belong. Get out of my life. Get out of my world.
Happy Spring young birds!
For: a Great Artist. Against: The Wall.
April 7th, 2009The Wall vs “Three Soldiers”
“….a V-shaped wall, period, a wall of polished black granite inscribed only with the names; no mention of honor, courage or gratitude; not even a flag. Absolutely skillproof, it was. Many veterans were furious. They regarded [Maya Ying Lin's] wall as a gigantic pitiless tombstone that said, ”Your so-called service was an absolutely pointless disaster.” They made so much noise that a compromise was struck. An American flag and statue would be added to the site. Frederick Hart was chosen to do the statue.
Naturally enough, Lin was miffed at the intrusion, and so a make-peace get-together was arranged in Plainview, N.Y., where the foundry had just completed casting the soldiers. Doing her best to play the part, Lin asked Hart — as Hart recounted it — if the young men used as models for the three soldiers had complained of any pain when the plaster casts were removed from their faces and arms. Hart couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. Then it dawned on him. She assumed that he had followed the lead of the ingenious art worldling George Segal, who had contrived a way of sculpturing the human figure without any skill whatsoever: by covering the model’s body in wet plaster and removing it when it began to harden. No artist of her generation (she was 21) could even conceive of a sculptor starting out solely with a picture in his head, a stylus, a brick of moist clay and some armature wire. No artist of her generation dared even speculate about . . . skill.”
The Lives They Lived: Frederick Hart, b. 1943; The Artist the Art World Couldn’t See
by Tom Wolfe
Reprinted from The New York Times Magazine, January 2, 2000
Marine Cpl. Terence Greene
was the model for the 3rd soldier on the right.
Frederick Hart working on the clay model of “Three Soldiers” with Marine Cpl. James Connell, posing.
Heroes Against The Wall
Vietnam Veteran James Webb Jr., a Marine Platoon leader awarded the Navy Cross, resigned from the National Sponsoring Committee of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, to protest the memorial design.
Adm. James Stockdale, a prisoner of war awarded the Medal of Honor, also resigned.
The Marine Corps League withdrew its support for the memorial as insulting and denigrating those who came home from Vietnam and those who did not.
The Artist and his sculpture “Three Soldiers”
About his sculpture “Three Soldiers”, the artist, Frederick Hart, said “One senses the figures as passing by the tree line and, caught in the presence of the wall, turning to gaze upon it almost as a vision.” (Frederick Hart, National Geographic, May 85)
Hart is referring to the “Vietnam Veterans Memorial”, “The Wall” as it is popularly known. This wall is a memorial to sacrifice. The “purpose” of that wall, wrote the New Republic, is “to impress upon the visitor the sheer human waste, the utter meaninglessness of it all…To treat the Vietnam dead like some monstrous traffic accident is more than a disservice to history; it is a disservice to the memory of the 57,000 [killed in Vietnam].”
Frederick Hart’s “Three Soldiers” is often called “the other memorial”. And well it should be. It stands alone, and apart from “The Wall”. As Art those three figures stand heroically above and beyond any hint of sacrifice.
“They wear the uniform and carry the equipment of war; they are young,” Hart told an interviewer. “The contrast between the innocence of their youth and the weapons of war underscores the poignancy of their sacrifice. There is about them the physical contact and sense of unity that bespeaks the bonds of love and sacrifice that is the nature of men at war.”
There is, of course, some truth in this. “Physical contact…unity…bonds of love” are qualities appropriate to “men at war”. The “Three Soldiers” are in visual contact with the same object. The officer in front has stopped with his men, all three with a focused gaze. Focused outward, purposely aware, the “Three Soldiers” have halted. There’s presently no enemy, no danger; although their weapons are casually held, they’re prepared. From the way they stand to the gear they carry and the combat uniforms they wear, the “Three Soldiers” project values held, not bent-down kneeling sacrificers.
” A trio of tired soldiers…of warriors larger than life.”
(Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, 09/23/1982)“Mr. Hart is a sculptor in the ‘neo-traditional’ mode, which means you can tell what the sculpture is about merely by looking at it. The three soldiers look like three soldiers, tired and heroic.”
(Ben Wattenberg, The Washington Times, 08/12/1999)“Hart captured in stone something vivid, urgent, and alive.”
(David C. Adams, The Free Radical Online)
“Three Soldiers”
Frederick Hart
Photoshop graphic
by Robert Tracy
“…there is about them the physical contact and sense of unity that speaks of bonds of love….And yet each one is alone. Their true heroism lies in these bonds of loyalty, in their aloneness, and in their vulnerability.” (Frederick Hart)
“A trio of tired soldiers…of warriors larger than life.”
“The three soldiers look like three soldiers, tired and heroic.”
“Hart captured in stone something vivid, urgent, and alive.”
“Three Soldiers” is a tribute, not to sacrifice and death, but to the living HEROISM of the Vietnam Veteran. Moreover, Hart’s sculpture is a universal tribute to all American soldiers, sailors and Marines who have, for whatever personal reason, pursued the defense of America.
Hope For The Future
March 30th, 2009Our youngest grandchild. Taken with a Dollar Store disposable camera last week, March 26, 2009.
Axel Christopher Kamphaus
Axel (German for “Father of peace”) was born in November, 2007. Now at 1 year, 4 months this is what I like to see. No smile.
“Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
— Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead”, p. 638 (SC)
Hmm. Could be an inherited trait. I can’t smile either. But that’s a different story. Axel can smile.
Anyway, Axel knows his shapes and colors. Showing him an American flag, he enjoyed the game: “Axel”, we asked, “which is the white stripe”? And he would point to the white stripe. Then “which is the red stripe”? And he correctly pointed to the red stripe on the flag. “Do you see a star”? And he would touch one of the stars on the American flag.
Graphic by Robert Tracy in Photoshop
Yes, I think that our grandson shows signs of intelligence. The child will be proud one day when he knows the concept of the virtue of Pride. He was, as all living human beings are, born with free will. Looks like he is eager to see and understand the world.
All our love, dear Axel.
