| Aeolus451 said: |
How? How am I doing mental gymnastics to not paint him as a racist? I am LITERALLY telling you that these paintings could be racist. HOW is that not acknowledging racism? The only reason you are even arguing anymore is because I'm not saying that these paintings are 100% racist ...
I even provided a quote that is really easy to use to paint him as a racist. Why would I provide that quote if I had an agenda to not make him look like a racist? All my reply did was give most of the knowledge and perspective we know about these paintings. Draw your own conclusion. Mine is that it's debatable, but it's also likely that it's not racist.
If Trump hired an artist to do these paintings but in reverse, in an alternate reality, then I would again look for the context. What's so hard to believe about that? I usually don't look at a painting depicting different people clashing as instantly racist if they have different skin tones.
Trump is actually an excellent example. Aren't you a Trump fan? Then it's hilarious that you are actually stereotyping these paintings as racist without any real knowledge of them ... whilst supporting Trump. Trump says things that on the surface can be seen as racist , ALL THE FUCKING TIME! Yet his supporters are constantly saying something along the lines of : "Look at the context!" or "That's not racist!" or perhaps the best one "He is just using plain speak!" To clarify, I don't even necessarily think Trump is racist. And on occasion, when he's been accused of saying something racist I have felt as though his words were being misconstrued at the moment to be negative. But funny how someone who's a fan of a politician who's wording literally needs to be defended day and night because it's so poor ... attacks a painting as racist. But hey, I guess when it's something you don't like it's "mental gymnastics" and not clarification. It depends on your interpretation, to be quite honest.
By the way, how is Nirvana's Rape Me NOT a prime example of what I'm talking about? That song got instantly accused of promoting Rape and was quite infamous when it was first airing ... now that it's old and Kurt's dead of course everyone sees it as a metaphor. The example of "vagina paintings" is not an example of vagina paintings at all. In The Realms of the Unreal was a series done by an outsider artist who had mental health issues and made a series of really odd paintings. He painted an epic war of good vs. evil and he used young girls as the main characters who were soldiers of good. He painted girls as having male genitalia and to this day it's not known why. Some speculate it's because he thinks of being a Soldier as masculine, others think he was a homosexual, some even think he might have went his whole life without knowing what the female genitalia is(and it's actually pretty plausible as a theory). This might be a random point of reference, and well ... it is. But the point is that such a small detail, to this day, gets interpreted a million different ways. So why can't a whole painting?
Like I said, my last reply was meant to both clarify why I'm neutral on the artist as well as provide context about the art and artist. You can make your own decision. And if that decision is that he's racist than great, go for it. But don't accuse me of shit when your basis is weak AF.
I still can't believe I went through the trouble of looking up context when it's so clear that the only context you had was right wing tweets and blogs. Jesus Christ.
