Gratuitous Bowie references aside I was struck by this comment on Leorockwell.com about the sale of Warhol's 'Mao'.
Marxist Mass Murderers Are 'Iconic'
But imagine the reaction, says David Kramer, if Andy Warhol had painted Hitler instead of Mao.
I couldn't find a link to the afore-mentioned David Kramer, but while looking for one I found this:
In a piece entitled "Mao and the Godfather", Eddie Driscoll describes seeing a photo of Francis Ford Coppola with a picture of Mao behind him. (You can see the photo if you follow the link.)
[T]he photo [...] "knocked me for six", as the English would say. Here's Francis Ford Coppola, at the height of his powers, shortly after making his fortune from the first two Godfather movies. It's taken, I believe, in Coppola's Napa Valley mansion, in what I assume is either his dining room, or perhaps a conference room.
In any case, notice the Warhol Mao print, and its placement directly behind Coppola, who it's safe to assume always sat at the head of the table. It was clearly hung there to establish some sort of "we're both powerful men" relationship.
Perhaps (and I'm being really charitable here), Coppola was making a statement about how dictatorships are powerless before the power of mass media (Warhol of course, cranked these prints out like mad). But probably not. Imagine dining with someone who had a print of Hitler, Stalin, or Castro (heck, that last one is probably still hanging in more than a few unrepentant leftists' homes). Wouldn't you have some second thoughts about your host?
What is it with the left and their love of evil men who have the murders of tens of millions of people on their hands? Is it the desire to seek some sort of weird, Palpatine-like father figure? Is it a belief that all of the evidence against their heroes is slanderous? (I'd pull off an Orwellian, "seeking the love of Big Brother" reference here, but that would be awfully cliched.) Or that the genocide they commit--all those broken eggs---is justified?
I don't know enough about Coppola's politics to speculate as to why he had the Mao print (maybe he was just a fan of Warhol), but I thought the central question (how would you feel if it was a print of Hitler) was a good one. Examining my own reactions I realise that I'd feel a lot more queasy about a pic of Adolf than I would about Mao or Stalin - why is that? I can't really see any justification for it.
2 comments:
British Journalist AA Gill recently attempted to sell a portrait he owned of Joe Stalin (it made his wife uncomfortable). He asked Christies, the auctioneers, to sell it for him but they declined informing him that they had a 'No Hitler, no Stalin' policy. Gill asked why this policy didn't cover Warhol's Mao. Good question, they replied.
An excellent answer to my question. I could add that from that list only Adolf is responsible for the deaths of members of my family.
Your description of an apparently Pavlovian reponse is very interesting. You have given a very good account of why Schikelgruber provokes such a visceral reaction. I wonder if there's also an underlying sentimentality about communism - namely the feeling that however many millions may have been killed the ideal at its heart was a good one; a claim that could not, I think, be made for naziism.
At the risk of getting a bit stream of consciousness, I am also pondering the fact that while Hitler may not be an acceptable icon, there was certainly a period in music/fashion when Nazi regalia was. (And for a more recent reference, insert your own Prince Harry joke here.) Was it a two fingered salute to taste and decency or is there a common aethetic thread here?
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