Your opinion of Renoir's art

[jimmy olsen]

I came across this nutty article and was amazed. Wingnuts aside though, what do you think of Renoir's art.


Funny pics of protesters can be found inside.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/09/god_hates_renoir_he_sucks_at_painting_and_this_is_why_you_should_care/

"God hates Renoir": He sucks at painting, and this is why you should care

The media treats the Renoir Sucks at Painting movement as a joke, but it has serious, important political critiques
Ben Norton

A 19th-century French impressionist artist who perished almost a century ago is the world's leading aesthetic terrorist; you just don't know it.



Fortunately, the Renoir Sucks at Painting (RSAP) movement is here to change that.

In October, demonstrators in major cities around the U.S. gathered outside of leading art museums to protest the inclusion of works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Activists carried signs including messages like "God hates Renoir," "Renoir paints steaming piles," "Renbarf," "Aesthetic terrorism," "Illegalize it #RottingVegetation," and "Treacle harms society! Remove all Renoir NOW!"

Satirical counter-protesters showed up with messages like "You can take our Renoir when you pry them from our cold dead hands" and "Je suis Pierre Auguste," expressing solidarity with the besieged late Frenchman.

Out of nowhere, RSAP exploded. Stories about it filled the headlines of every leading newspaper.

Lacking in much of this media coverage, however, were the very serious — and important — political critiques behind the jokes.

In order to learn more about these political critiques, I spoke with Max Geller, a 30-year-old activist who stressed that he is not the leader of RSAP, but rather "the spokesperson for a grassroots movement for cultural justice."

RSAP is "non-hierarchical," Geller said, noting "people participate from literally all over the world." It's "a movement of the people, not of art scholars," he added.

He also said it's hard to pinpoint where and when exactly the movement began, because, as The Atlantic revealed critics in the 1870s were already lambasting Renoir for painting portraits that looked like "total putrefaction in a corpse."

On the subject of humor, Geller stressed that "Just because it's humorous doesn't mean it's not serious. That's something important to keep in mind."

At the core of RSAP's serious political critiques are Eurocentric aesthetics and beauty standards and the domination of art museums by white men. "If the problems with Eurocentricity were personified in a man, Renoir would be the disgusting" embodiment, Geller insisted. He did not mince words, adding "Renoir is the most pulsating, puss-ridden boil which is the most blatant essence of the problem."

"The fact that this utter charlatan can get by the watchmen defending the high altar of art is the proof positive that the system is broken, and that, for far too long, these decisions have been made by people who have access to fancy art educations and pursue them with an eye toward dictating taste," Geller explained.

On Twitter, RSAP's official account God Hates Renoir wrote "Chicago's Art Institute has 65 works by Renoir. They should — there's still a market — sell some and use the money to buy work by women and POC [people of color]." Similar statements can be found peppered across the movement's wildly popular Instagram account.

"We want to democratize the notion of beauty, and we believe that beauty can come from any artists, not just white males," Geller told me. "That space where Renoir is being hung could easily be given over to masterpieces done by artists who weren't white men."

Multiple times, Geller reiterated a quote by writer and critic Susan Sontag, who insisted "rules of taste enforce structures of power." Geller said this quote "would be the epitaph on the Renoir Sucks at Painting movement's grave once we're successful."

It was a chilly New York autumn afternoon when Geller and I discussed RSAP, and he had just left an interview with the German media about Manhattan's lavish Frick Museum. Geller said he has done around 100 interviews in the past month or so, and called the unexpected explosion of the movement "stupefying."

When I asked what he discussed in his previous interview, Geller jumped into the grim history surrounding the Frick Museum. I could immediately tell that this is an activist who is tremendously knowledgeable about the injustices against which he has pitted himself.

Henry Clay Frick, whose mansion was turned into the Frick Museum, was among the most powerful capitalists of late 19th- and early 20th-century America. Chairman of the prodigious Carnegie Steel Company, Frick was militantly against unions, and used violence to crush workers' attempts to take democratic control over their lives.

The industrialist "dispatched the Pinkertons to murder trade unionists at his coal mine in Pittsburgh, and then he used all his money to buy art," Geller recalled. "Then Frick moved it out of the coal mining town, because he was concerned that the air would damage it, so he just put it in his Midtown mansion."

"It serves as a perfect metaphor for the whole thing," Geller said, "because he can use it to deaden the insides of people, to put them to sleep, so they don't think about why this guy is so much richer than all of us, and how much blood of workers is on his hands."

At the museum, Geller said there was a "breathtakingly bad Renoir painting — so we surreptitiously placed a barf bag right in front of it, on a very expensive piece of furniture that was purchased with the literal blood of coal miners."

This is by no means Geller's first rodeo. The RSAP spokesperson is a veteran activist, and has worked on a variety of political and social issues. For the past decade, he has been deeply involved in the Palestinian solidarity movement, and identified as an organizer with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

Geller travels a lot around the country, speaking at various conferences and events about his Palestinian human rights work. It is on the flights to speak at such events that he says he "reappropriates" motion sickness bags to be used for RSAP. He asks flight attendants for not just one or two, but rather a dozen barf bangs, and they happily give them to him. The movement is "using the tools of the master to disassemble the master's house" he said, quoting activist Audre Lorde.

In an interview on Chicago's WGN-TV, when Geller insisted that the Art Institute of Chicago should get rid of Renoir's work "and instead buy some art that is painted by women or painted by people of color," a host pushed back. "Why not let the free market dictate whose paintings are good or not?" the white male anchor asked. Geller promptly replied, "When we let the free market dictate things we get things like climate change, things like the prison industrial complex, like Zionism, and the destruction of sea otter habitat."

[Eddie Teach]

Renoir is fantastic. This fellow's taste in aesthetics is as bad as his taste in politics.

[Liep]

Impressionism > current political agendas. Renoir is great.

[mongers]

I'd hazard people will still be looking at these works of art, long after these here today gone tomorrow activists are dead, buried and forgotten about.

[Richard Hakluyt]

"..........on a very expensive piece of furniture that was purchased with the literal blood of coal miners." 

[garbon]

What a stupid movement.

[DGuller]

He's okay.  His pictures are pretty.

[Malthus]

"When we let the free market dictate things we get things like climate change, things like the prison industrial complex, like Zionism, and the destruction of sea otter habitat."

Where can I buy my free-market Zion?  Will it come with Otter fur?

[Valmy]

Man. Hilarious people are still mad at Frick after all these years.

So I should hate Renior because he was a white man? If they could say something coherent that would be nice.

As far as rules of taste enforcing power structures or whatever Impressionism has been a dead art form for over 100 years. I think they can rest easy.

[Valmy]

"..........on a very expensive piece of furniture that was purchased with the literal blood of coal miners." 

You didn't know blood of coal miners was treated as legal tender in the furniture trade back then I guess? Little known fact.

[garbon]

I'm not sure I would call the Frick 'lavish'. Decor is a bit gaudy really.

[Jaron]

Renoir is crap.

[DGuller]

Renoir is crap.

It's not what some people make it out to be.

[Valmy]

Renoir is crap.

It's not what some people make it out to be.

What do these people make it out to be?

[DGuller]

Renoir is crap.

It's not what some people make it out to be.

What do these people make it out to be?

Something which it is not and was never meant to be.