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Taken from this excellent article at The Stranger. I don't really know much about art, especially not art in the American Northwest, but I love hearing stories about ironic racism/sexism/whatever unfurling into something very sincere and very ugly. This story in particular also fascinates me because of how relevant it connects to discussions about the importance of authorial intent. So the star of this story, Charles Krafft, is apparently a big deal in the Northwest art scene; he became famous for creating all kinds of weird poo poo like ceramics out of human remains and wedding cakes frosted with Third Reich insignias (foreshadowing).  He sold the above Hitler teapot to a Jewish collector who later donated it to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Timothy Burgard, curator in charge of the museum's American art section felt the work was clearly antifascist and had this to say about the teapot: quote:These blind-looking eyes also evoke associations with... the world turning a blind eye to the horrors of the Holocaust. Personally, I think it looks like a weirdo tea pot that a Nazi-worshipping serial killer would drink out of, but what do I know?  Anyway, over the last several decades, Krafft has made a career and become a preeminent artist in his community by selling weirdo Nazi art that many art critics and buyers perceive as "ironic". In fact, at one point, he is asked by another curator if he considered himself a neo-Nazi. Krafft said he didn't but then he laughed and said "But would that frighten you if I were?". If I was there, that would be a pretty good sign that I'm talking to a god drat neo-Nazi. But maybe all the money I get from the Jewish space lizard cabal means I'm not being charitable to Krafft. After all, he did say in a 2002 interview with Salon: quote:But it doesn't necessarily have to be that at all. Art that's funny seems to get dismissed just because it is funny. But I've always had a knack and a penchant for going toward humorous irony. Sounds good right? He's clearly just loving with people with his ironic Nazi art and seeing if he could get all this right wing fascist art into liberal institutions like museums, upscale decor shops, and the homes of Jewish art collectors. It's like internet trolling, but in the real world! Truly a goon's goon. Let's check out his Facebook and see what he has to say about his ar- quote:Why amongst the monuments glorifying the history of this nation in Wash DC is there a museum of horrors dedicated to people who never lived, fought, or died here? The USHMM [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum] was erected before there was ever a monument to the 465,000 Americans who died in WWII. And no one did enough to save the Jews of Europe? Well, he could just be taking his real life trolling to the internet. After all, he appeared in a podcast produced by The White Network, produced by a white nationalist website whose tagline is "Whites Talking to Whites About White Interests". I bet he's on the podcast just to make fun of these Hitler-loving jerks! From The Stranger article posted:On the podcast, Krafft says, "I believe the Holocaust is a myth," and that the myth is "being used to promote multiculturalism and globalism." He says he believes the Christian story of the sacrifice of one man (Jesus) is being trumped "by this new secular religion of the sacrifice of six million Jews. And the museums, memorials, monuments, study centers, Holocaust chairs at the universities—it's all part of the promotion of a new kind of, like I said, civil religion maybe... We're the heretics in a new religion that's being promoted and built up and being embraced by governments throughout the United States and Europe."  Sorry for the big quote block; I think that's a pretty important part of the story that is best told word for word. If you'd like to learn more about all the awful poo poo that Krafft spews and its effects on his (former) friends and colleagues, you can read the full article from The Stranger. It's really a quite, if very depressing, good read. Anyway, while Krafft will probably never call himself a neo-Nazi or a Holocaust denier (just as many modern Klansmen will never call themselves white supremacists or racists), it's pretty loving clear from his own words that he is one. But someone who revels in "ironic" racism ending up being an actual racist isn't really interesting to me simply because of how common it is. The question that really interests me is this: what effect does it have on how people should approach his art? I'm a pretty big believer in separating the art from the artist; for example, I love Wagner's work even though he was an anti-Semitic shithead. But Wagner's also dead as gently caress; me listening to Wagner isn't going to materially benefit him in any way. Also, I bet he'd be super mad that someone as racially unpure as me was listening to his music. What about Krafft? I find that to be a far more challenging idea to tackle. While I try to figure this out, I'm going to listen to Kraftwerk because Krafft's name made me think of them. They haven't made any ironic Nazi music, right?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtWTUt2RZh0 Strong Female fucked around with this message at Feb 17, 2013 around 07:38 |
| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:33 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 09:20 |
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I'm a Jew. My great-grandma and great-grandpa were part of the Dutch resistance before being caught and shipped out to Auschwitz in the tail-end of the war. I just want to let you know that I like that teapot. It looks pretty sick.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:45 |
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Nazi artist is Nazi...got it. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:46 |
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He is an artist. Artists need attention to prosper. He is getting your attention.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:47 |
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I think he's just ironically saying the Holocaust is a myth You're missing the layers here
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:48 |
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Ferdinand the Bull posted:I'm a Jew. My great-grandma and great-grandpa were part of the Dutch resistance before being caught and shipped out to Auschwitz in the tail-end of the war. drat, that's awesome (well the resistance part, not the being sent to Auschwitz part). Ferdinand the Bull posted:I just want to let you know that I like that teapot. It looks pretty sick. I think I can understand the appeal (I'd love to turn the leaders who put my family through a genocide into a tea pot to put poop and pee in) but if you had the money, would you buy it from someone who doesn't believe your great-grandparents actually had anything bad happen to them?
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:48 |
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When an artist does something that I feel like I understand and I like, I don't want to hear anything about the artist's ideas or motivations. When an artist does something that I don't understand but has an emotional effect on me, I don't want to hear anything about the artist because that ruins all the fun. This guy is apparently a dick and a racist who makes bad art. It isn't non-art, mind you, it's just bad art. Plenty of people make good art with remix and juxtaposition of folk/traditional stuff and disturbing stuff. GIS his name and you'll find that his is all shallowly humorous stuff that doesn't actually say anything. The humor in them is worthy of a quick photoshop exercise, but not worth making the ideas into tangible objects. I know that the first thing that comes to mind when seeing his stuff is to call it hipster art, but please don't. No good person deserves to ever hear the word hipster again.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:48 |
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I'm easily confused when it comes to irony and ironic art. I need someone to draw a diagram of a maze going through the onion-like layers of the great Sphere of Irony and put a little arrow that says "you are here" so I can pretend to understand what's going on and decide if people are really racist or ironically racist.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 08:01 |
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The title of the Stranger article says that the artist believes that the Holocaust is "a deliberately exaggerated myth". This intrigued me, because the words in that description seem to be at odds with one another. If you say that something is "exaggerated", it seems to me that you're implicitly accepting that there's a kernel of truth to it; whereas if you describe something as "a myth" you generally mean that it's entirely untrue. So to describe something as both "exaggerated" and "a myth" is odd. This ambiguity brings to mind a lot of what you see from neo-Nazis regarding the Holocaust though. (I mean I don't have extensive exposure to Nazis, but you see documentaries, and exposes of groups like the BNP, and what have you, and you get a general idea, which I'm prepared to accept may not be a comprehensive picture.) They seem to have kind of fluid views about what the Holocaust actually was or is, and endorse those views partly as a way of signalling that they are part of the neo-Nazi family. I mean, you see them making vicious jokes about the Holocaust, denying that it happened, accepting that people did die at the hands of the Nazis but denying the scale of the thing or that there was intent to do wrong... it's like the mindset switches readily between "the Holocaust didn't happen, but that's a shame because the Jews really are bad people, and wouldn't it be funny if it had happened, haha that would serve them right, but it didn't happen even though some Jews did die but only a tenth as many as people say, those lying Jews making up stuff about gas chambers, by the way did you hear this hilarious joke about gas chambers, no seriously though the Holocaust is a myth" This all went through my head and then I searched through the article to see where the artist is quoted for the "deliberately exaggerated myth" line, and I couldn't find it. But it fits the preconceptions I have about Holocaust deniers pretty snugly.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 08:51 |
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I've never once heard ironic racism/sexism/whatever that didn't feel like it was a cover for the real thing. People make ironic friend of the family jokes when they want to make unironic friend of the family jokes but are too self-conscious to do so.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 08:53 |
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That is a bomb rear end teapot does he sell them anywhere I kind of want one.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:08 |
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Ashenai posted:I've never once heard ironic racism/sexism/whatever that didn't feel like it was a cover for the real thing. People make ironic friend of the family jokes when they want to make unironic friend of the family jokes but are too self-conscious to do so. I'd wager the majority of people educated enough to make legitimate points about societal differences don't need to resort to an -ism or irony to do so.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:10 |
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Systemic Flaw posted:I'd wager the majority of people educated enough to make legitimate points about societal differences don't need to resort to an -ism or irony to do so. Well, there was A Modest Proposal, and when done right, satire can be legit illuminating (and funny). Ironic racism just seems to be a way to express racist ideas while still avoiding censure, though.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:18 |
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Clearly you do not understand good art. I went to a gallery showcasing this mans work and it was amazing.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:24 |
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Ashenai posted:Well, there was A Modest Proposal, and when done right, satire can be legit illuminating (and funny). Ironic racism just seems to be a way to express racist ideas while still avoiding censure, though. Satire is a more sophisticated device for criticism, I agree. It doesn't always get the shock jock reaction performers want, so we get people like this.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:36 |
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Israfel posted:That is a bomb rear end teapot does he sell them anywhere I kind of want one. I too would like a Hitler teapot.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:39 |
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Red_Mage posted:I too would like a Hitler teapot. If the guy is saying "I feel the Holocaust is getting a disproportionate amount of attention when many other nasty things are going on and have gone on, yet are not being endowed with museums in major cities, chairs of studies, etc." he may have a point, but boy, what a lovely way to say it!
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:50 |
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Ashenai posted:I've never once heard ironic racism/sexism/whatever that didn't feel like it was a cover for the real thing. People make ironic friend of the family jokes when they want to make unironic friend of the family jokes but are too self-conscious to do so. Daniel Tosh. Ashenai posted:Well, there was A Modest Proposal, and when done right, satire can be legit illuminating (and funny). Ironic racism just seems to be a way to express racist ideas while still avoiding censure, though. Every joke on an episode of Tosh.0 edit:I know this is supposed to be Alister Crowley, but it looks more like the principal from Back to the Future.  Having done a GIS and seen this guy's art he seems like he's probably an insufferable douchebag. CPL593H fucked around with this message at Feb 17, 2013 around 10:05 |
| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:58 |
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The Neofolk of fine art.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 10:38 |
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I assure you he isn't the first to frost a cake with a swastica.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 10:43 |
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That teapot owns.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 10:53 |
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Neo-Nazis don't usually go for the whole delicate hand-painted china aesthetic so I can see where people gave him a pass where they wouldn't give one to someone making belt-buckles or big elaborate knives or whatever.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:17 |
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Burning Mustache posted:That teapot owns. I was yesterday on a gig in a shop which had all sorts of horror stuff, heavy metal records, horror movies, nazi t-shirts and probably the largest collection of nazi occultism literature in Finland. I'm pretty sure the owner of the shop would kill anyone required for that teapot.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:51 |
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AKA Pseudonym posted:Neo-Nazis don't usually go for the whole delicate hand-painted china aesthetic so I can see where people gave him a pass where they wouldn't give one to someone making belt-buckles or big elaborate knives or whatever. I've always wondered what skin heads & clown shoes have to do with Nazism.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:56 |
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Can we officially start taxing people being ironic? I mean loving globally, each nation gets to decide their own rate. It would pull in more money than de-criminalizing drugs at this point. That and put into place mandatory slaps in the face for people who go "BUT HE'S GETTING YOUR ATTENTION HE'S SUCCEEDING!" on every single artist article and post. The same thing basically happens when anyone ever comments on what these droll loving idiots do. If that's the case then the homeless man strutting about with his pants around his ankles on the subway screaming slurs is the next big thing and needs his gallery and check immediately because he's getting all the attention at the time. Now to the actual point.  I am nooot so surprised, there are tons of 'artists' making pieces or statements that are racist on the surface tend to be the more eloquent evolution of the snickering man child who tries to shoehorn "Niggardly" into his vocabulary. Only now he has the boring "But it's art!"  forcefield on top of everything else.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:58 |
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CPL593H posted:edit:I know this is supposed to be Alister Crowley, but it looks more like the principal from Back to the Future. This however is an excellent likeness:   
A Sloth fucked around with this message at Feb 17, 2013 around 12:07 |
| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:58 |
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A Sloth posted:This however is an excellent likeness: I want this for my house. This is beyond perfect.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 13:04 |
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This dude is pretty good at sculpture. It's also not surprising that he's from the NW, or that his teapot says "idaho" on it; he just knows his market. There's a boatload of white supremacists and neo-nazis in that part of the PNW.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 13:08 |
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Strong Female posted:
Please remind me never to invite you to a tea party. You are supposed to put tea bags and boiling water in. Not poop and pee. No wonder you prefer coffee.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 13:17 |
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I totally thought this was going to be about Bryan Ferry.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 13:56 |
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The idea of a Hitler teapot is amusing enough to begin with, but the knowledge that it's actually meant to honor him makes it loving hysterical. I love it even more knowing the artist is a neo-Nazi.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 13:59 |
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Systemic Flaw posted:He is an artist. Artists need attention to prosper. He is getting your attention. It's this. He wants to be able to sell off his overstock of Hitler teapots to people who 'ironically' want them.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 14:09 |
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Lumberjack Bonanza posted:The idea of a Hitler teapot is amusing enough to begin with, but the knowledge that it's actually meant to honor him makes it loving hysterical. I love it even more knowing the artist is a neo-Nazi. Sort of similar concept to Franz from The Producers?
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 14:21 |
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Lumberjack Bonanza posted:The idea of a Hitler teapot is amusing enough to begin with, but the knowledge that it's actually meant to honor him makes it loving hysterical. I love it even more knowing the artist is a neo-Nazi. Yeah, it seems to me like an absurd joke played on the people who appreciated it as ironic. I don't know whether this is the case, but this entire thing seems like it could be an attack on ironic modern art itself, or at least a joke playing on it.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 14:27 |
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gannyGrabber posted:He wants to be able to sell off his overstock of Hitler teapots to people who 'ironically' want them. gently caress irony, I want one because it's hilarious. That Nick Griffin one is absolutely golden as well.  Edit: Oh man 
Yardbomb fucked around with this message at Feb 17, 2013 around 14:36 |
| # ? Feb 17, 2013 14:32 |
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This is incredible, and I know a few people who would buy it without irony. 
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 14:38 |
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This reminds me of Zbigniew Libera's works. They weren't pro-Nazi or Holocaust denying though, quite the opposite: There was a full set of these:  The holy Grail of a Lego collector.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 14:41 |
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Palpek posted:The holy Grail of a Lego collector. That's something alright.  Also the OP guy has a couple others that are a bit giggle-worthy as well.  Along with that one there's a Charles Manson and Amy Winehouse one too. (Post swastika-carved-in-forehead Manson of course) Then most of his other stuff is guns made all flowery and swastikas/nazi symbolism on stuff it seems.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 14:47 |
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Strong Female posted:The question that really interests me is this: what effect does it have on how people should approach his art? It depends on what your motivations are. There's a big difference between appreciating art and identifying with its message. I'm sure there are some neo-nazis out there who loving love this guy's work and see it as a reaffirmation of their beliefs. The Hitler-teapot isn't necessarily hateful nor does it even communicate a clear idea, but it's natural to apply one's own preconceptions to art. E: This rocks. Also, liking something "ironically" is dumb as gently caress. If a piece of art is bad or offensive in a way that's valuable or interesting, then guess what? It's no longer irredeemably terrible, and you can admit to liking it honestly. Most people who say they like something ironically are either insecure or aware that their tastes are offensive to others. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at Feb 17, 2013 around 15:46 |
| # ? Feb 17, 2013 15:35 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 09:20 |
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Funkdreamer posted:I think he's just ironically saying the Holocaust is a myth Even if the guy is an unironic shitbag, this is the best way to remember him and has the bonus benefit of pissing on his memory. If he is being ironic even better. I highly encourage an unshakable faith that he is playing an ironic joke on the white supremecists. Either way humanity wins.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 16:11 |
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