QAnon People Once Again Profoundly Misunderstand Art

All the artists are cannibals, you know

One of the underlying themes of rightwing conspiracy culture that has emerged over the last several years has been a tendency to just really not get art. Or to think every piece of art — music, movies, theater, visual arts — is but a means to convey secret messages about one's personal enjoyment of eating children or love of Satan or the New World Order. Indeed, the initial Pizzagate conspiracy theory that started it all was partially centered on the fact that John Podesta had attended one of Marina Abramovic's "Spirit Cooking" performance art dinners, which they sadly believed was an actual Satanic ritual of some kind.

This week, in light of Netflix's "Dahmer" miniseries, one of the old Pizzagate art conspiracy theories has reared its ugly head (or lack thereof), and many QAnon devotees are excited to use the show to "redpill" their friends and family about how many non-Jeffrey Dahmer people are very into cannibalism.

"Since everyone seems to be obsessed with Jeffrey Dahmer at the minute, it's worth reminding everybody that Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta (Hillary Clinton's campaign manager) has a replica of one of Dahmer's victims hanging in his home," tweeted right-wing twitter personality @CharlotteEmmaUK, adding "His wife's a bit creepy too."

This of course ended up on the Great Awakening QAnon forum under the headline "Good time to redpill normies obsessed with Netflix's 'Dahmer'" 

And that might be true if not for the fact that Google exists and people who have not fallen for this nonsense probably know how to use it.

The sculpture, by Louise Bourgeois, is called the "Arch of Hysteria." It does not depict one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims, but rather Bourgeois's assistant of 30 years, Jerry Gorovoy. It's not a serial killer thing, it's a Freudian thing.

Gorovoy, via the Museum of Modern Art:     

Louise had actually been in psychoanalysis from 1951 all the way up until the 1980s. At the beginning of psychoanalysis with Freud there was a lot of interest in the hysterical woman who would have these contortions where the body would arch up in the air. Men did it too. But Louise always thought the psychoanalysts liked to see the women.

I mean they couldn’t figure out because there was no physical reason for this kind of bodily reaction. They thought it had to be some sort of mental trauma, whether it was repressed memories or connected to psycho-sexual repression. Louise's work is to a certain degree the same thing. It’s psychological and emotional things manifesting in the body that she then transforms into sculpture.

The hanging arch figure is actually a cast of my body. Louise had me lie down on a curved mound to get this shape, and then the body was in a plaster mold, which she then cut up to make this curve.

To Louise the state of hanging was this idea of fragility, because it meant that the body could turn, it could pivot, it could spin, so it wasn't a stable kind of thing. Louise wanted this figure to have a high polish so that the viewer’s face is caught inside the body of this contorted figure. So it brings the viewer into the picture.

While one of Dahmer's victims was indeed posed this way, there is literally no reason to believe this sculpture is related to that or that Bourgeois even knew about it, or that Tony Podesta then bought it in order to celebrate his Dahmer-esque love of eating human beings.

In fairness, some people in the thread suggested the real crime here is that the body is gold (it is bronze), based on a Q drop about how Ancient Egyptians thought their gods had skin made out of gold.

This same person then linked to a website about Nicholas Flamel, the alchemist who claimed to make the Philosopher's Stone (yes, like in Harry Potter ), which I imagine was meant to prove something it did not actually prove.

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .

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