Hitler Visits the Warsaw Ghetto to Pray?

Given half a chance, Pope Benedict XVI would no doubt like to rehabilitate fellow German Adolph Hitler before fast tracking him to sainthood in similar fashion that the Nazi Pope Pius XII or the Lunatic Pope Pius IX have both been rehabilitated from their earthly crimes and fast tracked to sainthood.

As I have stated here before, Hitler never officially renounced and or “de-baptized” himself out of the Roman Catholic Church.  Like the nuns in grade school taught me, all he had to do was say an act of contrition before he died in order to gain heaven.  

Though I have also thought that maybe saying an act of contrition while you are committing suicide might be a moot point in the eyes of God and or Saint Peter who runs heaven not unlike his so-called successors run Vatican City. Forgiveness would of course be measured against all material donations made to holy mudder church.

And of course if Hitler had won, I have no doubts in my mind that Pius XII was ready to dust off the extinct title of “Holy Roman Emperor” for the sake of a German boy making good in the world. His own good that is.

There is a rather bizarre tourist twist in Warsaw whereby artist Maurizio Cattelan, who is just trying to push the envelope in decency and or shock to sell his product which on occasion could be themed as anti-religion or anti-RCC, has tastely placed a statue of Hitler kneeling inside the old Warsaw Ghetto.

Kitsch art, blasphemy, marketing, whatever, here are some words and pictures for your own judgement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/28/adolf-hitler-statue-warsaw-ghetto

A statue of Adolf Hitler praying on his knees has sparked controversy after going on display in the former Warsaw ghetto. 

The artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, titled Him, has been installed in the Polish capital where thousands of Jews were killed or sent to their deaths by the Nazi regime. 

The statue has attracted large numbers of visitors since its installation last month, but some organisations have criticised the decision to erect it in such a sensitive area. 

Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said he was consulted on the installation's placement but did not oppose it because it conveyed a strong moral question by provoking the audience. … 

The Hitler statue is visible from a hole in a wooden gate and viewers can only see the back of the small figure praying in a courtyard. 

Cattelan has not made it clear what Hitler is praying for, although organisers of the exhibition in which it features claim the statue is meant to make people reflect on the nature of evil. … 

He said he was reassured by the organisers who told him the statue did not aim to rehabilitate Hitler but instead show that evil can present itself in the guise of a "sweet praying child"."I felt there could be educational value to it," Schudrich added.

. 

In Dolan’s Colon (that rhymes) – Artiste Bill Donohue at Catholic League Displays his “Obama in Feces” Decorative Artwork

Eyes reading a telepromter? - Bill Donohue - The Catholic League

Bill Donohue is like a pit bull. He won’t give it up in terms of being an unrecognized artistic genius having to muck about with the likes of Archbishop Dolan and Rupert Murdoch over at Fox News.

I did not know that the Santorum crowd, the Pink Palace crowd in the NewYork archdiocese like to play with “brown” Play-Doh and call it art.  

I want Bill Donohue’s job. And I won’t have Yahoo as my homepage in the office like Bill – Yahoo! - OMG!

$400,000 a year to sit around an executive suite with a view of Central Park and fantasize about black people in their own feces as the new mean spirited Catholic League / Cardinal Dolan sponsored $$$ vvision of art.  LOL. LMAO.  

Gee Bill, Nostalgia. Now I understand the “New Evangelization” completely.

I haven’t had so much fun with nostalgic memories since I was two and playing with my own feces that fell out of one of those old fashioned cloth diapers that my mother had to recycle in the wash.

Catch 3:09 – 3:59 of video above to listen to a grown man whine about decorative art.  Old decorative art.

BTW the way Cardinal Dolan, I am a starving poet.  Send me some grant money. Pleese!

Here is a sample of my work:

Santorum’s Best – a poem

There once was a cemetery

Crook from Milwaukee Nantucket

Who had a drunk stooge

Who could only flunck(y) it

In life. …

But when it came to his art

The sterling part, the secret

Was found obviously hidden

In his eyes, stars, in wide stance

on a toilet seat perhaps

And (or) in Dolan’s colon.

Comes in Vegan and Non-Vegan shades of Brown - made special for Artists

.

Black Rock City Nevada – Burning Man Festival

I have been aware of this temporary Hippie like tent city celebration in the Nevada desert for maybe a decade or more. 

At first, it looks exotic, almost Road Warrior exotic as in the movie, as in post-apocalyptic culture.  You may see the avant-garde art, smell cannabis, the reverence for all things green and or ecological and I see a party in the desert for 50,000 people where you hang out, drink and kill a few days in the heat.

Supposed to be a "spiritual" experience for some.  (If there is no cell phone connection to the rest of the planet as stated, that is perhaps a good start.)

Been in the desert. Done that.  Camping in the desert in the summer is for fools, crazy tourists, old hippies and kids hanging out on mom and dad’s dime.

 Whatever.

Black Rock City Nevada – Burning Man Festival

They build some pagan like wooden man and temple and burn them down at the end of each festival which is the week before and including Labor Day in the U.S. each year.  But it’s not pagan.  It is art.  Or the usual BS on such plane of things pseudo-intellectual and ar-tis-tic.

Burning Man, Black Rock Playa

Navigate the many photos in the above link/blog to touch some the magic of an old fashioned happening American, Planet Earth style.

The festival started in the late eighties in San Francisco, where else, and migrated to the desert shortly thereafter.  I believe this is the twenty-fifth year of the festival.

(view from the air)

Billy and Diana - Philly Mascots

Something strange happened to me last week. I had been looking though some old research and I came across one of my favorite art objects in a photo.

There is the Augustus Saint Gaudens statue of the Roman goddess Diana that decorates the main hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I am of course aware of all the trials and triumphs of this statue as art and its ability to survive. It started out as a weathervane on the second of four Madison Square Gardens. The second Garden was actually right off Madison Square in Manhattan.

To make a long story short, this one time symbol and “goddess of Manhattan” got ditched when they tore the building down and it survived to become art in Philly. There is even an O. Henry short story, rather dated in language and understanding, The Lady Higher Up, in conversation between “Miss Diana” and “Aunt Liberty” in the New York harbor.

More boring details I will not talk about. But the strange thing is that when I looked at this statue, this work of art, and its setting in a treasure house of human culture, a museum I have many times visited, I slipped into the transcendent and felt spiritual and close to the Divine.

Art, and not pagan idol, touched something in me. The feminine road to the Divine was more pronounced in ancient, primitive, obsolete pagan cultures. Maybe that pathway should consider being reopened in the traffic jam of today’s uncertain global common culture.

I have to wonder how the world progresses that if some art might be a true pathway to the divine.

Speaking of superstition, there is the local Philly myth of the Curse of Billy Penn.

Curse of Billy Penn

The Curse of Billy Penn was an alleged curse used to explain the failure of major professional sports teams based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to win championships since the March 1987 construction of the One Liberty Place skyscraper, which exceeded the height of William Penn's statue atop Philadelphia City Hall.

The curse was supposedly overturned by placing a small statue of William Penn on the top of the tallest building in Philly, the Comcast center at 975 feet, in 2007 just in time for the World Series Title in 2008.

Superstition, myth, religion – many times wishful thinking and self fulfilling prophesy.

In any case, in an ancient sense and in honorable titles, Statues, Art, are mascots, honorary gods, in a vaguely pagan parameter, at Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, the Quaker City.