Chapter 14

A Little Night Reading

 

Modern Art, An Invention of the Devil?
BY REV. NATHAN DU NORD, B.A., M.A., F. R. ECON. S.

 

Archimandrite of the First Reformed
and Apostolic Jewish Church of Memphis Tennessee

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The reader will no doubt be aware that the Impressionists were nothing but a bunch of unwashed, wine-swilling Frenchmen who sat around in cafés or pursued dirty women at the end of the nineteenth century. Of course Van Gogh was a Dutchman, which is worse. And Toulouse-Lautrec was a tiny little fellow who drank like a fish.

The activities of these parasites and degenerates gave rise to Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Pointillism, Constructivism, Orphism, Surrealism, Dada, and also Impossibleism, Supersurrealism, Dynamic Double Dog Realism, Ishkabibbleism, and Mama, which is like Dada only nicer.

All of these movements were taken seriously for some reason, and are generally supposed to constitute the early history of modern art. In this book, I propose to show that the work of this assemblage of mentally deranged individuals is unimportant and should not be considered the real story of the progress of Art. To do so, I will first present the history of art, from the beginning of time, in a few pararaphs.

Cave Painting. This was good. Primitive humans painted animals on the walls and ceilings of caves, and why shouldn’t they? After a long day of chasing mastodons, your caveman stayed up late painting one. If we still had people like that, this would be a better world.

Egyptian Art. Also good. They were religious folk, and painted gods and things. They also built pyramids, and made gigantic sculptures for everybody to enjoy.

Greek Art. The Greeks were good sculptors at first—later they changed from making statues of people standing up straight with staring expressions and their fists clenched and went in for cute people, which was a mistake. Their paintings and mosaics—not so good.

Roman Art. The Romans copied the Greeks. Also lousy painters, and so-so sculptors. I am not dealing with architecture in this book—but theirs, and the Greeks’, was okay if you like columns.

Medieval Art. In the Middle Ages, they got everything right. Inspired by constant warfare and the Black Plague, the artists of that time did wonderful things. It also helped that nobody could read.

Renaissance Art. Things got even better. Oil painting was invented, also perspective, and trade flourished so there was plenty of money to spend on art. Different countries and regions developed different styles, and individual artists became famous. Everybody had a lot of fun.

 

At this point, I started to get a little bored with Reverend DuNord’s list and started skipping ahead, reading a page or two here and there. I wanted to get to the modern art part and see what he had to say about that.

What he had to say was that all art was pointless or fake, except art depicting birds, especially ducks. According to him, the greatest artists of all time were a guy named John James Audubon and whoever painted the covers of the L.L.Bean catalog. He also thought that Donald Duck was great art, which I agree with up to a point. But what was clear was that DuNord was a raving lunatic and nutbar. But that did not mean it was not a useful book. I had long since learned at Riverview High School that bad and insane teachers can still teach you things—including not to trust what anyone tells you.

So, on a page in my medium-size sketchbook, I copied all the names of the artists he mentioned, almost none of whom I had ever heard, and also the names of the different art movements and periods in the history of art.