Best. Painting. Ever.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Genius painting. Thanks for sharing, that was a half hour well spend.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I must cleanse my eyes with carbolic soap after seeing such an outburst of idolatry.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I love it. My favorite is Stephen Breyer holding his head in shame

[Kadagar_AV]

Genius painting. Thanks for sharing, that was a half hour well spend.

Just curious, what made it take half a hour?

[Beskar]

Just curious, what made it take half a hour?

Reading all the little bits.

[Slyspy]

I like the Cthulu version best.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Hmm, Jesus was from Gondor? I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT! Also, except for two individuals, all the black people are far in the back. How unsurprisingly racist... Plus, the black college student looks awkward. Very few college students are black if one looks at statistics, and anyway, the stereotype of a college student is more like a hippy, left-wing, radical, sex-crazed, unruly... you know, on and on.... The college student should have been with the other "sinners"On the other hand, a black American Soldier is just right. Despite being only 12% of he US population, blacks make up a disproportionately large part of the American Armed Forces.

[spmetla]

I like the Cthulu version best.

Same here, having the kid writing in blood over the Constitution is pretty funny. Gotta get this to one of my buddies with a similarly warped sense of humor.

[Azathoth]

Yeah, which is only supports the fact we should remove it. If it was a tradition, I would leave it alone. But it is not. The pledge was tampered with in 1954. BTW, does anyone still remember how the people would do the 'Nazi salute' when reciting the pledge or the national anthem (called Bellamy Salute I believe)? Fun times...

Wow, good thing we don't pledge like that anymore.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Wow, good thing we don't pledge like that anymore.

The extended arm salute had nothing to do with the Nazis, they hijacked it like they did with everything (in this case, from the Romans).

[Hax]

The extended arm salute had nothing to do with the Nazis, they hijacked it like they did with everything (in this case, from the Romans).

Indeed.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Louis VI the Fat]

The extended arm salute had nothing to do with the Nazis, they hijacked it like they did with everything (in this case, from the Romans).

Indeed, so much Nazi symbolism predates the Nazis, and is now tainted forever - the salute, the fasces, the swastika (I went to the Carlsberg Glyptothek in Copenhagen once. The Swastika was all over the building. It was...weird.)

(Poor me, surrounded by huge blond Scandinavians half a meter taller than me, leading me into their swastika emblazoned headquarters, where no doubt some evil Germanic scientist with paintings of Thor and other Teutonic Gods on his wall would await me, eager to perform some God knows what sort of wicked experiment on me while my screams would be smothered by Wagner's Die Valkyrie.
Freightening )

I've always thought it funny how nobody has a Hitler moustache anymore. They were not all that uncommon. I am always shocked to see men of the period have that moustache.


The striking thing about the picture is not the symbol, but that it had pretty much the same meaning as it did in Germany. That of subjugation of the individual under the nation.
The Nazis did not operate in a cultural vacuum. I think that in a thousand years, the nazis will stand out not as something singular anymore, but at best as the most archetypical variant of a civilization at large.

The modernist urge to create society afresh, the racial fixation, the nationalism, the authoritarianism, the militarism - all of that was pretty common. A person from the year 2133 will be hard pressed to tell the differences between America in 1933 or Germany in 1933. The way we are not immediately aware of which monarchy in Europe was the most absolute 300 years ago.

Like the Hitler moustache, the example set tainted it forever, and ended it. An end was made to imperialism, racial fixation, nationalism. Without Hitler, we'd still be in Algeria oppressing the inferior race in a quest for Lebensraum.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Just curious, what made it take half a hour?

Reading all the little commentaries. Reading up on some. Trying to find out what the artist's ideas are, how widely spread they are. Fascinating.

Do you know that this is LDS art? (Some would argue, LSD) It is both subculture and mainstream.


The 'liberal news reporter', along with the professor clutching Darwin's Origin Of Species and the judge weeping over Roe vs. Wade, all huddled next to Satan, turning their backs to Jesus and the constitution.
That's the beauty about art, eh? One painting says as much as a thousand page study.



Edit: The artist does work from a template. Check this:

http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork...rtpiece_id=319

Edit 2: I am still fascinated. That's another half hour wasted. The 'art of reassurance'. Fantasy/new age, religious art, landscape/pastoral, assuring cityscapes.
Peculiar, is that McNaughton does not feature persons in his re-assurance works. Only in his policital and religious art. But they feature dead people* only. He is that disappointed in the modern world, that he does not even paint living persons. 'Grandma's rocking chair':
http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork...rtpiece_id=165

*Then again, Moromons have some rather idiosyncratic ideas about the link between the death and the living.

[InsaneApache]

The Thomas Paine inclusion is hilarious.

[Subotan]

Hmm, Jesus was from Gondor? I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT![/URL].

Why am I not surprised...

Do you know that this is LDS art?.
.

o.o

(Some would argue, LSD)

[ajaxfetish]

Do you know that this is LDS art? (Some would argue, LSD) It is both subculture and mainstream.

Yep. I could tell by a bunch of the guy's commentary. He used a very Mormon vocabulary, plus the work as a whole shows a fairly Mormon perspective on the state of the world and country. Then, we are very accomplished as a people at creating tacky art.

If you want to see some great art by a Mormon (though it's far from the mold of standard Mormon art subject material) look up James Christensen.

Ajax

[Louis VI the Fat]

Yep. I could tell by a bunch of the guy's commentary. He used a very Mormon vocabulary, plus the work as a whole shows a fairly Mormon perspective on the state of the world and country. Then, we are very accomplished as a people at creating tacky art.

If you want to see some great art by a Mormon (though it's far from the mold of standard Mormon art subject material) look up James Christensen.

Ajax

Definately a better artist. Still not really my style, but clearly several steps up from McNaughton.

Yet, for all the tackyness of McNaughton's art, there is a consistent worldview behind his work, and he manages to express it in his work.

It took me a long while to discover that the OP's painting was not merely conservative and Christian fundamentalist, but a bit 'off' too. Mormon.
Strange that the LDS and 'mainstream' fundamentalist America should've grown towards each other so much. One can barely tell the difference anymore.

Have the evangelicals radicalised, or have the Mormons been assimilated? Important question, because at the current rate of demographics, in a few more decades, the Mormons and Catholic Latinos will own America. At least, the entire Southwest/West.



Also:

Bugger.