Monday 25 January 2016

Kick Over the Statues!

We merry few, we band of brothers, we dejected and financially troubled middle aged has-beens who call the rococo master bedrooms and badly carpeted garrets of Stoned Holy HQ our home, are Iconoclasts by inclination...our avowed Atheism however, has resulted in the secularisation of our destructive urges to include all the trappings of the Great & Good as they look down on us from plinth and pediment.

Oft in the firebrand days of youth the S t o N e D H o L y b L o g G e r was wont to pass the lonely, girlfriendless moments in flights of idle iconoclastic fancy. I pictured myself atop a sturdy charger galloping o'er the Green & Pleasant bridleways of Englandshire with the New Model Army, tearing down the bloated edifice of church and state. Of course, the truth of the matter is those Iconoclasters were nothing but a bunch of Joyless Religious Zealots cum Humourless Bully Boys who wouldn't have let me shovel their horseshit, let alone allow me into their greeting-faced ranks! Goodness knows how much wondrous artistic endeavour in wood & stone & paint has been lost to us due to the thuggish actions of this mob of  ISIS-like Holy Willies.

Madamme Michel - What a Gal!!
The Paris Commune of 1871 would have suited our Democratic & Iconoclastic ambitions more, I feel. Oh, to be ripping up the cobblestones and darting through the backstreets with the glamorous Petroleuses! Oh, to be at Madame Louise Michel's side watching the Tuileries Palace aflame! Oh, to be with Monsieur Courbet as the Vendome Column toppled in a matchless piece of performance art!

One reason Courbet cited for why the Vendome Column had to go was its  being "devoid of all artistic value" and we here sheltered within the Unadorned & Stark Walls of the Stoned Holy Chapel of Love & Brethrenness mightily concur with this sentiment! So much of Art, after all, is completely NAFF!! Doesn't Portraiture boil down to a bunch of dead people trying to convince us what wonderfully important people they were! Surely, you too, like I, have ambled down many a dreary gallery corridor bored out yir mind as the utterly forgettable faces of big wigs of yore in all their dreary finery with their dreary wives and dreary children and their dreary favourite gun-dogs in front of their dreary over-sized homes stared down at you from dreary ornate golden picture frames! Kings, Queens, Lords, Ladies, Dukes, Viscounts, Chiefs and aw manner of puffed up n self-important High Heid Yins - Bollocks tae the lot of them!! Do we really careif the 4th Duke of Och-Aye-The Noo rendered luminescently in oils goes up in flames?! We here congregated in the Stoned Holy Art School of  Dada say 'Strike A Match & Let's Get the Bonfire Started!!


Anywayz, ahm only mentioning aw this Iconoclasm mallarkey because it's Burns Night and we here assembled in the Stoned Holy Supper Club, we ragbag o raggedy-arsed chiels n skellums, we, like tae think Rantin', Roving  Robbie Burns was an Iconoclast too! Indeed, we're pretty sure he'd join us in tearing doon aw the Pomp & Pantomime that will be played out in his name this very night in locations as far afield as New York and Tokyo. We're not really ones for dates and formalities, here in the Supper Club of Love & Social Union, but January 25th is as good a night as any tae doff oor bunnet n raise a toast tae a man who recognised a tinsel show and ribband star for what they were and are and always will be - Bullshit!!

Here's tae yi, Rob! There's no More Heroes Anymore! We're Kicking Over the Statues!

 "The Rank is but the Guineas's Stamp, 

the Man's the Gowd for aw that!"

As a wee footnote to aw this havering, here's a couple o wee linkies. 1st tae a modrin take on Tam o' Shanter that we few here collected in the Stoned Holy School of Rhymes n Lines fully and heartily endorse.....and 2nd tae a stooshie that happened in the Louvre recently in front of Gustave Courbet's 'The Origin of the World' It is in its own inimitable way, a classic piece of Iconoclasm....and we here in the Stoned Holy Art School of Drawings n Paintings n Sculptings salute this young lady.....and wish we coulda been there!! 

Until next time, Pop-Pickers, Ahm Ooty Here!