Your Tax Dollars At Play

Specifically GOP art hasn't amounted to much since the late Henry Adams died, 27 March 1918. There has been the ever-immortal James Gould Cozzens, of course, yet to mention that once not utterly impotent name is to illustrate the Big Party's culture problem rather than solve it.

Hope for the aesthetically challenged may be on the way, however, and from a most unexpected quarter. Reports the Guardian :

In the Yarmouk district, like many areas [of brave New Baghdád], wrecks of trucks and cars mingle with collapsed metal and sand barriers by the sides of roads. Some people have improvised their own security plan by placing tree trunks in front of shops to stop suicide bombers parking their cars there. "Of course, there has been progress," said Ahmad, a taxi driver from Q[ádisiyya] in west Baghdad. "They [the Americans] are painting murals on the blast walls now."

This critic's professional credentials are a little surprising, and he may even be mistaken about exactly whose work the (literally!) aggression-based prettification actually is. Even should that prove the case, however, the above title may stand, for are not the bare undecorated ramparts of Peace and Freedom already a monument in themselves to the Big Management Party? [1] If we may trust Mr. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the whole "capital" of the former Iraq is being refashioned in a bold neo-mediaeval architectural style that is heavily teichocentric, "wall-centered":

Concrete walls and checkpoints have divided Baghdad into isolated neighbourhoods ostensibly to prevent militia attacks. On the surface they appear to have brought some stability and better security. (...) divided the northern part of the district into fenced neighbourhoods with checkpoints at all the entrances (...) just like Dora the sense of security is accompanied by a ghetto arrangement (...) The frontlines between Jihad, once a Sunni area and now totally Shia, and [al-‘Ámariyya] are sealed with blast-walls (...) "We are strangers in our own city. Baghdad has been divided; I can't cross to the west, and I can't cross the canal into Sadr City to the east" (....)

Why, Dr. Kilcullen's coalitional -- or anticoalitional, from the lowly native point of view -- masterpiece, "The Great Wall of al-A‘zamiyya," passes unmentioned by the Guardian reviewer, there are so many lesser works in the same genre clamouring for appreciation! Bushevik Realism looks very like bein' THE school of the future in the former Iraq's cultural life.

There is even, so to speak, a Magical Bushevik Realism at work out in the semiconquered districts in and around al-’Anbár, namely the Bribe-a-Tribe™ programme, which must not be neglected just because its mural accomplishments happen to be literally transparent and even invisible. One of the Baní Kagan, I believe it was, was congratulatin' herself the other day on the "patchwork quilt" [2] effect thus created. Mr. Abdul-Ahad might do well to borrow that authentic wordin' for the original intent of the Big Party as Artist rather than speak of "ghetto arrangements" on his own authority, the latter being rather inflammatory language in a number of ways. [3]

However even Bint Kagan's formulation is not absolutely unimprovable upon, for reflect: a quilt can reliably counted upon to remain patchwork, which is not altogether the case with Peaceful Freedumbia. The Glorious Coalition will evidently have to hang around the neighborhood for a long, long time in order to perform routine maintenance upon its awesome gallery of Bushevik Realist masterpieces, especially in view of the fact that the Artist chose a rather unfortunate venue for an exhibition that, by its very nature, cannot be transported hither and yon as the delights of Domino Democracy™ gradually diffuse themselves to the misguided heathen all across the Greater Levant. Sad to say, deliberate vandalism is to be feared as well as natural deterioration.

To make the best of it, perhaps the Artist GOP ought to (re)conceptualize Bushevik Realism as a form of so-called "performance art," with the uniformed guards and janitors in attendance considered as part of the overall impact of the exhibition, not mere unavoidable add-ons of no importance in themselves. Would that plan not, indeed, reflect the Artist Party's original vision quite accurately, at least in respect of the armed guards? That is to say, if nobody would have wanted to pull down the flammantia moenia of Freedom and Peace and Big Management, would the flamin' walls have been erected in the first place? Admitting the wannabe vandals as an integral part of the show is no doubt impracticable as well as inadvisable, but the perpetual presence of heavily armed attendants might serve to remind viewers that wannabe vandals existed and exist and perhaps evermore will exist. [4]

But 'tis only an amateur suggestion, that. God knows best what Artist Parties ought to do, Mr. Bones! Who are we humble to pretend to advise our betters?


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[1] Also a professional nuisance to taxi drivers, a point that may have affected the indig critic's attitude.


[2] Golly, 79,500 googlehits for {Iraq, "patchwork quilt"}! Who'd 'a' thunk it? It does not instantly appear which militant extremist neocomrade first thought of it, and it certainly does no wrong to Mizz Kimberley's vociferated views to let her have the credit for it pending a full investigation. Ladies first, Mr. Bones, at least when in doubt!



[3] GAA did, however, manage to restrain himself from noticing any similarities with the Mural School of state-sponsored artists who cater to occupied East Palestine.


[4] As usual, reckoning in the eventual upkeep makes a project suffer from apparent cost overruns almost instantly, a rule applicable to Party Fine Art as much as to any other sphere of human endeavour. How many armed guards would it take to attempt to prevent all vandalism of the Peaceful Freedumbia Exhibition, how many janitors to make repairs if the militant Philistines ever should manage to crash in and smash up?

Though important questions, these are plainly not aesthetic ones, so we shall not address them at the moment except to notice that they implicitly raise questions about whether the existing displays of Bushevik Realism can be expanded much in future, given that the Big Party has only a rather limited supply of custodial hired hands at its disposal. Indeed, a great many observers, some of them fairly close to the Party Artist, are worried that the present exhibition hall is already too large to be securely defensible against a really restless mob of natives.

The practical moral for unattached culture vultures is that one would do well to visit the Peaceful Freedumbia Exhibition sooner rather than later, since its full lustre and effulgence may not be sustainable. Caveat spectator!