Comments on: Mono-Highbrow: A Lowbrow Critique

By: adam

adam — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:08:13 +0000

Also, HOD is a great fucking story! And no moralizing little imp is going to make it disappear! Not on my watch!

By: adam

adam — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:05:11 +0000

Ok, so I’m really plumming the depths of eX-on when I get completely fucking steamrolled by the craven idiocy of #44.

My god, could you imagine how HOD would read if this douche were Conrad’s editor? It would sound like james fucking frey!

“They beat the poor savages”

“I cried”

“They were beating the poor savages!”

“Stop!”

They wouldn’t stop, and I’m crying.

Crying, crying, crying.

Soft sobs…

Jokes aside, the condemnation of colonialism is in the man’s writing, goddammit! It’s right there, it’s so damn obvious. You just want him to come out and say it, forthright, so you can go to your buddies (tongue out and eyes rolling up) and say:

“dar, hey guys, looky here! Conrad says “colonialism is wrong” right here on page 37! He’s not such a bad feller after all!”

And even if he were colonialism’s poster boy, does that mean you ignore what he wrote? Condemning books… hmm what does that sound like?

Is it your conscious or the company you keep that triggers the gag reflex with Conrad? Do you step outside and yell:

“Beautiful day today. Oh, and just so everyone knows, Conrad is a racist, imperialist pig!”

I’m trying to stop myself but I just can’t! HOD is nothing if not a brutal, honest description of the depravity of colonialism and it’s destructive effects on all involved. Conrad didn’t NEED to say that, he just had to write what he remembered and let the whole damn enterprise hang itself.

Oh yeah, and he wasn’t a squeamish little shit, either. He wasn’t afraid to use the language of the times – otherwise you wouldn’t get a sense of what the average white man thought about his darker kin.

You people are looking for Pixar in everything.

Somebody – anybody! – push that big red button, now!

By: ugg boots

ugg boots — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:05:54 +0000

reproduction/criticism of 20th century arts subject to the bloodiest events in human history. Cynicism, naval-gazing subjectivity, horror, nausea and even suicide may result; unless of course you’re an historian in which case enjoy!

By: running dog lackey

running dog lackey — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:49:59 +0000

I suggest a warning label for every 20th century artwork and criticism thereof, as follows:
WARNING – reproduction/criticism of 20th century arts subject to the bloodiest events in human history. Cynicism, naval-gazing subjectivity, horror, nausea and even suicide may result; unless of course you’re an historian in which case enjoy!

By: FOARP

FOARP — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:12:01 +0000

I guess it’s also worth giving thought to who the founders of modern art-history study were. The fact that they included Anthony Blunt – Cambridge spy, ‘Apostle’, vicar’s son, mathematician/linguist, Knight of the Realm, friend of Michael Straight (owner/editor of The New Republic), and eventual turn-coat against his fellow spies – says something, I just don’t know what.

By: FOARP

FOARP — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:44:23 +0000

“aestheto-fascist”

Dolan is worth reading just for touches like this. For myself, I went to university in the UK, where all you study in university is what you, in your 18-year-old ignorance, decide to study as you degree topic. There are no majors or minors, only your degree subject, which you were until recently paid by the state to study. My choice of astrophysics, and then law, kept me safely away from arts classes such as those described above, so I know university arts only from the outside. What I know does not impress – the centre of their study seems to be those things most amenable to clever criticism, rather than admiration or condemnation. Even where condemnation is called for it will be ignored in favour of cleverness – see the average essay on Heart of Darkness and you will see cleverness in spades, but no condemnation of Conrad, and still less of the colonial system he describes.

By: OUTRAGE

OUTRAGE — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:47:15 +0000

Whats wrong with Lentils???

By: aleke

aleke — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:00:11 +0000

marxism is great but nihilism is more expansive

[rolls the biggest joint]

By: hyperbolus

hyperbolus — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:00:08 +0000

Including of course Nietzsche and his epigonzoes.

By: jared

jared — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:37:28 +0000

Hi. Great article. Just wanted to say I usually spend my time anonymously stalking you Dr. Dolan, because…I don’t know why actually. I feel like Salieri obsessed with your talent, but at least people knew who Salieri was, whereas I’m in the anon comments ghetto and always will be. Touche.

By: hyperbolus

hyperbolus — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:02:54 +0000

The only real criticism is Marxist criticism. Everything else is just part of the Great Capitalist Circle Jerk.

By: Sunstein

Sunstein — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:02:38 +0000

@hyperbolus
@aleke

*rolls up a joint*

Guys, you should get your own show. It would be hilllaaaaarious.
Lets callt it “dick and willie”… pretty please?

By: aleke

aleke — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:36:22 +0000

@hyperbolus

Ah a simple boy with his clean industrialist air! Everything twirling in irrational hierarchies!

I think the only cure is a vivacious thirst for the systematic brutal slaughter of you and your genetic legacy. Then maybe you can circle above your silly bloated husk of the Rational Actor for all eternity, essentialist irrationalist swine.

By: jared

jared — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:27:37 +0000

I think Frankfurt’s On Bullshit should be essential reading for this particular class. But again, how much freedom would an adjunct professor have in adding new reading material?

By: hyperbolus

hyperbolus — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:14:16 +0000

No one who reads/quotes Schopenhauer vomits out of boredom. (I think I burped when I read your earlier, unbeknowst-to-you ironically long-winded, light-headed post–talk about boring vomit!) Oh, no doubt you vomit–a lot. In reaction to fresh air, sunshine, trees, grass, flowers, women, men, children, noise, crowded spaces, open spaces, life, etc. etc. Call it Sartrean nausea, if you like. The only cure is suicide.

By: aleke

aleke — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:47:10 +0000

@hyperbolus

[vomits out of boredom]

By: hyperbolus

hyperbolus — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:59:57 +0000

What a shitload of resentful, petit bourgeois, existentialist, (quasi-)fascist opinions. Celine? Check. Philip Dick? Check. Looney Tunes? Check. I bet Colin Wilson was an important “philosopher” for you. Maybe even Ayn Rand? And how come no mention of Mishima? I don’t like your targets any more than you do, but I can tell your opinions about art and culture are worth less than Hitler’s, which makes you at best a third-rate Nietzschean (and your fans no better than fourth-rate).

By: matthew

matthew — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:28:05 +0000

Hi John… Funny… I’ve just started work at an Arts Trust in Auckland, run/owned by a rich old homo… this is me waking up again

By: Slurm

Slurm — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:35:10 +0000

What’s wrong with the Gauguin ? Even if it was a mens room painting it’d be a pretty damn good one:
While you diss it you actually start fantasizing about it. And the girls are ugly enough to be real.
Instead you seem to prefer to spend your time whining along with an imaginary Celine.
Wow – so dangerous to play with fascist imagery.
To each his own – I for one prefer the nudes, my old altar boy.

Cheers

By: Absurd

Absurd — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:52:17 +0000

There’s delicious irony in posting a ranty critique of 20th century “greats” on a glorified e-zine.

John Dolan would love to be anthologized, but lacks any real talent.

Shitting on everything is easy.