Almost everyone has at least heard of the mahvelous art show put on by Lucian Wintrich, Milo Yiannopoulus and other conservatives, opening in New York City last Saturday. I hesitated covering this, since it has already sucked up an inordinate amount of press – but the stakes are high and the issues are important.
Publicity for the exhibit “Daddy Will Save Us,” the first pro-Trump art show, made it clear that some young gay men support Donald Trump’s presidential run and are willing to risk producing an art show. They also consider themselves to be conservatives. Inevitably, this caused serious cognitive dissonance in the straitjacketed little minds of progressives. Messing with the dialectics of outraged progs must have been fun for Wintrich and the others.
Lucian had some provoking thoughts about the state of the arts and leftists in a Breitbart interview before the event. “Clinton’s so untrustworthy and such a panderer that she will find the lowest common denominator, regressive emotion which stifles culture, stifles art,” he said. “It holds us back and it puts us in a place that Germany knew very very well until cultural notions sort of took hold there.”
The major shock piece for the event was Milo’s installation, “Angel Mom,” involving a ceramic bathtub full of pig blood and his interaction, pictured below. It was a tribute to the “suffering of those who have lost loved ones at the hands of illegal aliens and Islamic terrorists.” Pig blood may also be a reference to Trump’s approving the idea of bullets dipped in the stuff for terrorists. Or criticizing Islamic anti-gay violence. Highly photogenic Milo splashed about, symbolizing the “suffering wrought by globalists’ … lax policing, pandering and mollycoddling of Islam.” Images of victims of illegal aliens and terrorists surrounded him.
at pro-Trump exhibit. Photo/ MeganKelley.org
Conservative Americans may have issues with some content of “Daddy will Save Us” for entirely different reasons. Walls were plastered with Wintrich’s earlier photo exhibit “Twinks for Trump.” Some shots are reminiscent of male versions of a teen Brooke Shields in “The Blue Lagoon.” Since “Twinks” are young gay males, sometimes hairless, delicate or rather effeminate in appearance, the implication is this is all about sex.
Most gay art concerns sex, so nothing is new there. In 2007, gay novelist Bruce Benderson crudely acknowledged at a discussion of gay art that “Gay art’s about men f—ing men.” Considering that, “Daddy Will Save Us” was relatively tasteful. Boys were either partially-clothed or coyly posed to hide genitals. Other issues were covered, such as Jon Pro’s painting that appeared to be shouting everything at once through a mob of conflicting personalities crowding the canvas.
Producer Wintrich made extraordinary claims: “This is not only the first conservative art show in the country’s history, as far as I can tell … but it is the first time that the New York art scene is trying to make it not happen.”
He’s way off on the first count. There are many conservative artists and some openly conservative exhibits. I write about them regularly, but they’re not getting much press. Others have been stonewalled, but without the publicity they received. Wintrich just experienced the rigid bigotry and lockstep political affiliation binding most of the art world. The contest is especially fierce around coveted gallery spaces in New York.
Milo and other artists conveyed several messages other than their support for Trump. Targets were political correctness, danger to the First and Second Amendments, and the “social justice warrior” movement. VICE co-founder and comedian Gavin McInness added a group of self-portraits mocking “white guilt.”
Pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martin Shkreli, a collector who claims to work in music and the visual arts, and called “the most hated man in America,” contributed a framed pill and several statements: “The field of art I’ve been obsessed with over the last decade is actually molecules. Believe it or not, I think drugs are art … a chemist’s creativity.” Shkreli encourages conservatives to stick together, especially in New York, “where we are the minority.”
Like so many politicized and sensationalized art exhibits, the art is secondary to issues. The outrage of the art community for perceived defectors from leftism is the front page story here. “Daddy Will Save Us” is a huge success on this count. Julia Rouget’s review of the show claimed as much: “But there really wasn’t anything typically ‘conservative’ about this event – rather, it was the most radically avant-garde art show possible in The Current Year. If this was conservatism, it was revolutionary conservatism.”
This is the point “conservatives” have been making for decades. We have become the revolutionaries fighting against the monolithic They, or the establishment.
True leftists know this, but they punish anyone who publicly admits to it. Art activists across the country are buzzing like angry hornets whose status-quo has been disturbed. Stakes are high, as this has been a tightly controlled territory in the culture war where access is strictly guarded.
Wintrich’s sanctions came in the form of outraged media denunciations, causing the first gallery he leased to drop him just before the show. He received death threats from gay and straight leftists – the usual. Eli Kurland relates how writer Jack Smith IV found the charity Wintrich pledged to contribute 30 percent of the night’s proceeds to, causing them to reject the donation.
On opening night, leftist mob-think demonstrators attempted to disrupt the exhibit. One came inside, yelling and assaulting the audience. It didn’t work. The press mobbed the scene in spite of all attempts to blacklist it. Further repercussions came when owners of the gallery put up signs that “100 percent of proceeds will go to Hillary Clinton” in the middle of the event they were hosting. Preemptive moves to prevent leftist retaliation, most likely.
Art rag “the Gothamist” reported in breathless tones on the “country’s most narcissistic Donald Trump enthusiasts” at the exhibit. While arguably true, narcissism is almost a job requirement for performance artists. They are lauded proportionately higher as their work becomes gorier, riskier, more dangerous or offensive to large bodies of people. Art magazine “Hyper Allergic” starts off with “The Sordid Irony of a Pro-Trump Art Show,” as if conservatives couldn’t possible appreciate art or put together a show. It wasn’t worth reading.
But these are the lopsided, alt-left rules for art in America in the new millennium (just like the last one, but nastier). Wintrich said he was “amazed” at the “incomparable vitriol of the left.” You can tell he is young. In a Fox News interview, he insisted, “The evangelicals were fine, but people on the left threatened to beat me up.”
The boys are satisfied with their show and got what they wanted: publicly for Trump and proof that every charge leveled at the left was true. Wintrich said the attacks he is seeing is exactly why the show is called “Daddy Will Save Us.”
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Subsequent verbiage and reactionary art offensives to this small exhibit prove the left’s terror of defection from groupthink in the arts. A flurry of counter-exhibits is in the works. “Daddy Will Save Us” and “Twinks for Trump” so rattled liberal New York artists that they resorted to doing spoofs such as “Winks for Trump.” Most likely they are vexed they didn’t think to bathe in pig’s blood first.
Proving the insincerity of liberal outrage over “narcissism, “The Gothamist” encouraged all and sundry to hie over to the properly-opinioned exhibit in Chelsea, “Why I Want To F*** Donald Trump.” Dozens of artists contributed such gems as Alfred Steiner’s caricatures made of “hardcore pornographic images of male and female genitalia.” Brian Andrew Whiteley made a realistic tombstone for Donald Trump, which he insisted was not a threat. The ugliest concept was Rebecca Goyette’s video, a “revenge witch hunt” with Trump the designated victim.
Progressives are particular flummoxed over the very idea that homosexuals might support a conservative candidate, and reacted with as much moral outrage they could muster – which is always good for a laugh. Yiannopoulus is going great guns exposing bigotry and censorship of the left, and few of the shows’ contributors fit the cardboard template of a “conservative.”
Assumption that artists are uniformly liberal (or lean left/fascist) is so entrenched that challenging it is perceived as a declaration of a war on culture and art itself. Progressives and literati were just as rattled by the artists’ sexual preference. They have more rigid ideas as to the proper place and behavior of homosexuals than neo-Nazis – and it’s not in an exhibit for Donald Trump. Check out this 1950 clip with Fred Astaire to give a taste of entitlement issues with the arts, entitled “Oh them Dudes (They was Stealin’ our Stuff).” It’s perfect.
Sources
- Twitter #daddywillsaveus
- Make Weimerica Grate Again: A Review of the “Daddy Will Save Us” Art Show
- The Mt. Rushmore of Alt-Right Provocateurs Had a Pro-Trump Gay Art Show
- Vent Your Election Frustrations At The Anti-Trump Art Show
