CORRELATIONS IN SEX AND ART

SHEILA: If what you say is true ... about politics, art, and sex all hanging together on an equal level of development in any given class-stage of evolution, then it should be possible for one to equate a given sexuality with a compatible aesthetic or political development, and thus come to form a better understanding of that sexuality both in terms of its nature and the extent of its applicability to any specific society.

DONAL: I agree! And therefore, not altogether surprisingly, I have worked out an exact correlation between each of the subjects to which you refer, with particular reference to the relationship between sex and art.

SHEILA: Please proceed to expatiate on this correlation!

DONAL: Well, I divide sex, no less than politics and art, into spiritualistic and materialistic categories, since such a distinction is endemic to a relative civilization, where either an atomic dualism or a relatively post-atomic dualism prevails, as in Britain and America respectively. I also distinguish between two stages of petty-bourgeois evolution within each of these relativities, viz. an early and a late, and further divide each stage into two phases, the first of which I equate with a revolt against civilized precedent, the second of which I equate with the attainment to a new civilized ideal - a distinction, in effect, between lower and higher manifestations of a given class integrity.

SHEILA: Hence the barbarous art of the lower/early petty-bourgeoisie and, by contrast, the civilized art of the higher/early petty-bourgeoisie, to name but one of the two petty-bourgeois class stages. Though one could just as easily refer to early/lower petty-bourgeois art and, by contrast, to late/lower petty-bourgeois art, if one wanted an alternative logical structure within which to work.

DONAL: I agree, though I prefer to reserve the distinction between lower and higher for the type of art being produced within the context of any given class stage, whether early or late petty-bourgeois. However, since we were intending to correlate a given level or type of sex with a compatible aesthetic framework, we may as well concentrate more on those subjects and distinguish, to begin with, between lower and higher manifestations of early petty-bourgeois sexuality and their aesthetic correlates, before proceeding to tackle the parallel manifestations of those same subjects as applying to the late petty-bourgeoisie, always bearing in mind a further distinction between the spiritualistic and the materialistic side of each subject.

SHEILA: Which can presumably be equated with the predominating moral bias of any given manifestation of petty-bourgeois culture?

DONAL: Yes, with particular reference to its mainstream manifestations, as applying to America and Germany respectively - the former generally displaying a spiritualistic bias, the latter a materialistic one. So we can begin by pinpointing the lower, rebellious sexuality of the early petty-bourgeoisie as involving phallic oral sex, or fellatio, on the spiritualistic side and anal heterosexuality on the materialistic side, a distinction, paralleling that between Impressionism and Expressionism in art, which may be accorded a barbarous status, since involving a paradoxical use of each sexual object. The barbarism of Kaiser Wilhelm II's pre-Great War Germany served as an appropriate political backdrop, so to speak, for the growth of Expressionism and, we can only assume, its sexual correlation in anal intercourse, whereas one can assume phallic oral sex to have been more congenial to fin-de-siècle France, as was Impressionism - the one barbarism indicating a contraction of the material, the other an expansion of the spiritual. However, let us now proceed to the higher phase of early petty-bourgeois sexuality and thus distinguish between soft-core heterosexual pornography on the one hand, and soft-core unisexual pornography on the other, which phase, being civilized, will be found to parallel the elevation of art to the level of Abstract Impressionism, or Post-Painterly Abstraction, as mainly relative to America, and to its materialistic counterpart in Abstract Expressionism, with particular reference to Weimar Germany, that republican manifestation of early petty-bourgeois civilization.

SHEILA: Against which the Nazis were to rebel in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

DONAL: Until their ascension to power in 1933 enabled them to destroy virtually everything for which it had stood. As should now be apparent, Nazism signified a lower/late petty-bourgeois rebellion against Weimar civilization, being essentially a spiritualized politics and therefore opposed, in particular, to materialistic manifestations of civilized art and sexuality, the two chief representatives of which in Germany at that time were Abstract Expressionism and soft-core unisexual pornography, by which I primarily mean a kind of rump-biased heterosexual pornography, one involving young women in a variety of rear positions. If one is to find an aesthetic equivalent for Nazism, it must be in architectural light art, in the lower, impressionistic art of the late petty-bourgeoisie - a type of spiritualistic barbarism paralleling expressionist light art, its materialistic counterpart, which was more sculptural than architectural.

SHEILA: Certainly the Nazis had a reputation for light art, for building 'cathedrals of light', as during the annual Nuremberg rallies, when numerous spotlights were trained on the night sky from a variety of angles and positions, making for a kind of dome of light above the heads of the assembled faithful. Such architectural light art, corresponding to a barbarous because paradoxical use of light, would presumably parallel the sculptural light art of those artists who would appear to be primarily in rebellion against Abstract Impressionism, as mainly pertaining to America, and who consequently employed a materialistic barbarism.

DONAL: Yes, and whose sexual equivalent would be homosexuality, a barbarous sexuality not unknown to Communists either. However, as for the Nazis, who opposed Communists and homosexuals alike, we should have little hesitation in contending that the sexuality most relevant to them was paedophilia, or the condition of being sexually attracted to children, which accords, it seems to me, with a lower/late petty-bourgeois phase of sexual activity, being, in large measure, a revolt against rump-biased soft-core pornography, a fresh sexual medium, but one employed in a paradoxical and, hence, barbarous way.

SHEILA: Are you serious?

DONAL: Perfectly! Just as architectural light art bears no resemblance to Abstract Expressionism, and Fascism no resemblance to Weimar democracy, so paedophilia bears no resemblance to soft-core unisexual pornography. As is well known, Hitler made no secret of being fond of children, and was often photographed in their company. Goebbels and Bormann were likewise highly fond of children, being fathers to large families. Even if neither of them went the whole hog, as it were, and actually violated children, they were certainly not ashamed to kiss, fondle, pat, stroke, and hold hands with them! Nor, I dare say, were a number of other high-ranking Nazis who, like their Führer, would have furiously denounced homosexuality. And rightly so, since that is more appropriate to Socialism, with its materialistic bias - a lower/late petty-bourgeois sexuality relevant to the Left, though particularly to Western socialists and anti-fascists, who necessarily lived and worked within a relative framework peculiar to petty-bourgeois civilization and were - contrary to Stalinesque requirement - essentially petty-bourgeois types.

SHEILA: Thus from the contemporary point of view, both paedophilia and homosexuality are passé, anachronistic modes of barbarous sexuality.

DONAL: Absolutely! Following the brutal demise of Nazism, the way was clear for the development of higher/late petty-bourgeois sex and art, which took the forms of hard-core pornography and abstract light art, as relevant to the late petty-bourgeois civilization of the Federal Republic of Germany on its materialistic side, and to post-War American Republicanism on its spiritualistic side - the former the relevant political setting for a bias favouring hard-core homosexual pornography and abstract-expressionist light art, the latter the relevant political setting for a bias favouring hard-core heterosexual pornography and abstract-impressionist light art, which usually takes the form of slender neon tubing symmetrically arranged rather than, as with its 'materialistic' counterpart, a-symmetrically arranged in everywhichway anarchic fashion.

SHEILA: Doesn't a kind of sculptural light art continue to exist with these developments?

DONAL: Yes, particularly in Germany, with its materialistic bias. But more as an anachronism than a genuine representative of 'contemporary' civilized art - a kind of parallel with the co-existence of rock 'n' roll with hard rock, or trad jazz with modern jazz. However, we are now approaching the climax of our tale because we have to deal with the barbarous enemy of civilized higher/late petty-bourgeois art, sex, and politics which, while not alien to American civilization, may well find its chief practitioner in Eire in the future, an Eire revolutionized by Social Transcendentalism, that politico-religious integrity of 'Kingdom Come', and partial, in consequence, to the short-term production of representational holography and, so I would imagine, to soft-core juvenile pornography, the former a revolt against abstract-impressionist light art, the latter a revolt, involving pubescent teenagers of, say, sixteen to nineteen, against hard-core heterosexual pornography, the two trends relative to Social Transcendentalism's inceptive phase, when tradition is undermined and uprooted in the name of theocratic progress.

SHEILA: Thus certain barbarous American trends in sex and art would be adopted by Eire and made representative of its short-term integrity?

DONAL: Yes, until such time as that integrity was no longer necessary and could be superseded by Social Transcendentalism's mature phase, the phase more dedicated to construction than destruction, when abstract holography would come to supplant the barbarous, or representational, variety and, in sexual matters, hard-core juvenile pornography become the logical successor to soft-core juvenile pornography, with its representational perspective.

SHEILA: How exactly would juvenile pornography become hard-core?

DONAL: By exclusively focusing on the rump and, in particular, anus of the mature teenage model, be it boy or girl. Such a hard-core absolutism would transcend both heterosexual and homosexual hard-core pornography, the former tending to focus on the vagina, the latter on the penis. From being sexist, pornography would become post-sexist in the transcendental civilization, a juvenile's rump distinct from either male or female sex organs and significant, moreover, of a higher order of unisexual focus - one literally transcending sex. In such fashion pornography would attain to its consummation, a consummation wholly relevant to computer discs and thus to VDU contemplation, while holography was likewise brought to its consummation in the purest abstractions, abstractions originating in sculptured objects projected into space through the reflection of mirrors.

SHEILA: Quite a remove from Nazi paedophilia and architectural light art!

DONAL: To be sure! And quite a remove from all modes of civilized late petty-bourgeois art and sex as well, not to mention civilized late petty-bourgeois modes of religion like neo-Buddhism and mescaline tripping, about which we have not said a word! Certainly there will be no toleration of barbarous modes of late petty-bourgeois art or sex either, which means that paedophiles and homosexuals, if any such exist in Eire, would be subject to censure and, if necessary, internment. Similarly there would be no encouragement of either architectural or sculptural light art, nor, I need scarcely add, of their civilized successors. A Social Transcendental Eire would not be a place of conservation for alien class-stages of sex or art, and consequently one would look in vain for examples of adult hard-core pornography or abstract light art. A proletarian closed society can have no truck with petty-bourgeois precedents, particularly when alien to our people. If any such precedents now exist in Eire, as manifestations of 'contemporary' art, they will no longer exist there in the future! Eire will be purged of everything irrelevant to a Social Transcendentalist integrity. Only thus will it be set on course for its eventual attainment to People’s civilization, to higher proletarian standards in both art and sex.

SHEILA: That is something to which one can only look forward!