“"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Orson Welles said that. No surprise that artists, especially comedians, feel perverse nostalgia for the Bush years. As democracy was for Sophocles and fascism was for Chaplin, so Thatcher was for the Young British Artists (plus Gerald Scarfe, who drew the caricature above) and Bush was for satirists such as Newman. The right wing is often the arts' new target, though you could argue the right's society-denying individualism stokes creativity. "Socialism wants everyone to be equal. We [artists] want to be different," said George, of the British artistic duo Gilbert and George. But that hardly applies to Newman here in '08, who's not avant-garde, edgy -- just grumpy, and clever, and sad.”
"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Orson Welles said that. No surprise that artists, especially comedians, feel perverse nostalgia for the Bush years. As democracy was for Sophocles and fascism was for Chaplin, so Thatcher was for the Young British Artists (plus Gerald Scarfe, who drew the caricature above) and Bush was for satirists such as Newman. The right wing is often the arts' new target, though you could argue the right's society-denying individualism stokes creativity. "Socialism wants everyone to be equal. We [artists] want to be different," said George, of the British artistic duo Gilbert and George. But that hardly applies to Newman here in '08, who's not avant-garde, edgy -- just grumpy, and clever, and sad.
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