Trembling, Europa hung on to one of the bull’s long horns. Boreas (The God of the North Wind) spotted them too as they plowed through the waves. Sly and jealous, he whistled when he saw the young breasts his breath had uncovered.”
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso
Jacques Louis David The Death of Socrates 1787 France is effectively bankrupt. Soon the beheadings will begin
In 1787 The Roi, King Louis XVI is in the throes of political crisis. Colonne has completely misread his hold on Parlemant. It is both a shock and surprise to all that the Nation is unable to pay its debts. The King must tax the stamps. The Ministers of War resign which is an ominous and deadly loss of support. Soon the beheadings of these ineffectual ministers will begin. Their short sighted misunderstandings of their policies effect on the underclass lost on them.
This contemporaneous Neoclassical painting of Socrates drinking poison is very Twee and almost Kitsch. It is certainly Kitsch in reproduction, which is to say always.
Schmaltzy.
And, rather in the spectrum of Kitsch in that it is contriving to arise sentiment for our Hero Socrates.
Which is to say David seeks an injunction to Justice, to Plato, and to the Republic. This call to sentiment is a call to the mob. It is both propaganda to sway the mob like a demagogue would do, but also a sincere effort to promote and extol the virtue of representative democracy. And yet it is a mob of democrats who condemned our Greatest Thinker to poison; who himself was skeptical of the merits of a group of men ignorant and encouraged to profess opinion.
It was the mob that guillotined the Roi and his Reine. It was the mob who in turn dragged Robespierre from his office having recently shot out his own mouth. It was the Jacques Louis David who patronizingly cried out “If you take the hemlock, As will I!!”
He never did. The mob did not require it. The mob turns.
An equal tension, like a double helix, resides in the Neoclassical. The Neoclassical neatly hides its joints much as it neatly hides its violence. Something Wendy Doniger might describe in the mythological origins of the Great Indian Epics. As the original stories are rife with graphic rape, homosexuality, and murder. These are wonderfully explicit stories to be told around the fire. As we make an effort to civilize, to institutionalize, to write, to have a more broad appeal on social media we must make sure to clean our public profile.
As the dirty ugly face of oil must be whitewashed of its origins in blood. For the sake of good public relations, the CEO of Exxon Valdez must not be caught swearing the ugly, obscene racist vulgarities necessary to production. Twitter will catch hold and the stock offering drops in value. Likewise the Mahabharata must be made safe for children to read in graphic novel form.
We forget.
Rex Tillerson made his bones eating children, and Draupadi is well and truly raped. As the Gopis are adulterers, and Krishna a criminal.
It is not their shadows that performed these crimes.
The notion that we must obscure this ugly origin is the pretension of civilization. Civilization and Empire, and the Queen has always origin in rape and murder. Hiding this. Pretending that legitimacy is divine in origin is a hypocrisy. This is Twee.
The painter Jacques Louis David is also Twee in that he aspires to the Empire.
(Please forgive my cribbing the central thesis of Calasso’s The Ruin of Kasch. He is the genius and bears quoting. )
A book I know about read by a nice registrar sitting next to me from the University of Calgary on a WestJet flight to San Francisco.
Now and Yesterday: “an often poignant and sometimes chilling romance of the creative class.”
Now that is fucking Twee. As my dyke friend (the art restorer) said “there is nothing queer about gay men anymore.”
She meant punk, I believe and it’s true. To be gay in San Francisco is to be Twee. It’s nice. It’s not camp. It’s not fabulous. It’s wealth acquisition, the BMW 1, and a home restoration during the summer decamp to the Russian River Valley. To be a landed Gay San Franciscan is to be an aspirant to Camelot.
Frank Underwood leaned heavily towards the Twee with his Corinthian office, crown molding, and affectionate photos of yesteryear’s portraits of Kennedy and Clinton. Yet that is due to the fact that Underwood is based on Frank Urquhart of the UK’s version of House of Cards. Who was without question a proxy for twin set and pearls, Royalist cuddling, Labour annihilating, Twee card holding, Margaret Thatcher herself.
House of Cards’ Frank Urquhart “FU” Remember that the TV Show is more Twee than the Institution itself
What is frustrating for me about the Atlantic’s 2014 manifesto on Twee is that it ignored its inherent politicization. Ask yourself the next time you wish to use the word Twee.. Would Tony Sparano have it decorating his living room?
Classic Twee from the Sopranos Set
Carrie Brownstein’s kitchen isn’t Twee. It’s cute, and nice, and related to all things Hipster. But it’s not Twee as it is not trying to disguise the essential violence of Empire, and does not aspire to Empire.
Where do you think Soprano’s political leanings lay? Do you think he votes Democratic union down the ticket? Or do you suspect he’s been in bed with fellow fascist Chris Christie the entire time? When John Ashcroft stops by New Jersey with Chris at Tony’s backyard pool party and sings a rendition of Let the Eagle Soar... That’s Twee.
If you adore his harmony and play it at dinner parties.. that’s probably camp.
The archangel of Hipster revival, John Waters is devoted to the mercurial and elusive camp. Brian Lowder wrote about Camp’s essential ambiguity in his wonderful Notes from Camp letters in Slate Magazine.
“It’s that dress in that otherwise horrifying movie.”
But please don’t confuse Twee with Kitsch. (Though Lowder argues camp is still essentially distinct from Kitsch) It’s anti-camp. It lacks irony by definition of its lack of self-consciousness. Waters is giggling with wide understanding of this score. So Portlandia really is so wholly self-conscious that we must understand it as satire. Portlandia satirizes camp.
I often have to stop and ask myself while painting.. Is this Twee? I paint the trompe-l’oeil. A genre of painting that slides into Twee as easily as chintz on drapes. I ask.. is this postcard I’ve reproduced by Bouguereau Twee? Yes, probably. Well done to such a degree as to undermine a progressive’s notion of greatness.
Finish now with the painting’s surface is associated with Empire not avant garde. Finish in painting is just finish. It has no inherent value that is not projected on to it. Finish is finish. The progressive bias against Finish has become Academic. That is to say that avant garde is considered Academic when it is a formula. Though formula itself is neither Academic nor avant garde.
By implication Twee is not extremely well done. It is well done, its just not couture. It’s Empire revival, but performed perfunctorily by a satisfied commercial artist. It’s nostalgic, but it despises Emile Zola’s sentimental reverence for the oppressed. It is Empire fetishization, but it’s more Donna Tartt that Bret Easton Ellis—as he is honest regarding its inherent violence. Twee is an old fashioned predilection for dropping French ala le petite bourgeoisie.. though not a socially conscious middle class-- more like an aspiring and cold blooded Kate Middleton.
My Modern Art history professor in Chicago, the late great art critic Dennis Adrian, said that what makes you provincial is your total disregard for great art in your backyard. (only a Chicago based critic would argue that) The Twee both covet and call out to the Capitol. Hipsters buy local.