Bruno Piglhein (1848-1894) was German sculptor and painter I came to know by Bram Dijkstra’s book Idols of Perversity. I referred to Dijkstra’s book in a previous post on the Pre-Raphaelites. While Idols of Perversity is a great source of information, Dijkstra’s interpretation of art is most often absurd due to political agendas. Instead of attempting to understand the art works in terms of the period in which they created, Dijkstra imposes notions of oppression into the art works. For example, Piglhein’s Christmas Morning is accompanied by the text, “Thus a genre was born in which crass child pornography disguised itself as a tribute to the ideal of innocence, and even children fell victim to man’s fearful retreat from woman who knew too much about the sins of the flesh.” Frist of all, Piglhein’s sleeping child is as innocent as the Christ child and cherubs which appear in hundred of Renaissance paintings, therefore it’s certainly not crass child pornography. Second, Dijkstra imposes post modern feminist ideology of gender in order to tarnish the experience of the work.
Why would Dijkstra do this? The agendas of many within the art-historical establishment can be compared to the Red Guards of China. In 1966, Mao Zedong mobilized a student movement during China’s Cultural Revolution. The ruling elite saw traditional culture as a threat to its power, if cultural artifacts were considered to represent one of the Four Olds, they were to be destroyed. Historic sites were assaulted and religious texts and figures were confiscated and burned. In the West, the attack on tradition is not carried out physically on culture but rather psychologically. Actual artifacts are not physically destroyed, instead the Babel Guard attempts to destroy the experience of culture. It may seem progressive to reject “Euro-centrism” in the name tolerance and sympathy for other cultures but the inability to enjoy warm sentiments expressed in romantic art reflects a hardness of heart which undercuts the very possibility of progress and humane values. Beautiful painting which manifest values to resist the state are interpreted as a form of oppression so that one is estranged from the foundation an authentic self which can resist the political agendas of the elite.