55 Comments
User's avatar
Nathalie Martinek PhD's avatar

This artist loves his rape scenes. This art makes me feel ill, not uplifted. It also looks like a lazy Escher.

Expand full comment
CHUCKY's avatar

It's supposed to make you feel ill 🤢🤮

Expand full comment
Nathalie Martinek PhD's avatar

Mission accomplished

Expand full comment
Burnt taco's avatar

Too bad his shitty race baiting doodles were burned. No tears for this douche.

Expand full comment
Gathering Goateggs's avatar

"Tragically, most of Cleon’s work was destroyed in January during the California wildfires."

If there were a Fields Medal for wry comedic bon mots, Yuri would be on the short list.

Expand full comment
Chris Coffman's avatar

Looking at his images made my blood boil.

I just returned from a weekend in LA where the NGO and taxpayer-funded criminals were unleashed by the Dems.

Perhaps not coincidentally the name Cleon belonged to an Athenian tyrant, the first one from the commercial classes, who ordered the Athenians to massacre the inhabitants of another city.

There is going to be a reckoning for evil people like him and his patrons.

Expand full comment
Chuck Flounder's avatar

You may enjoy this, then; this historian does some good writing and youtube talks:

https://quillette.com/2022/07/13/the-classically-greek-roots-of-civilizational-self-doubt/

Although I agree with his thesis on cultural navel-gazing leading to ruin, I have to wonder if the narcissists and sociopaths who tend to be found in positions of great power are so deluded, or perhaps have a more sinister agenda than the vapid chattering classes...

Expand full comment
Chris Coffman's avatar

Thank you—I’ll check it out!

Expand full comment
John Henry Holliday, DDS's avatar

Unreal. As for his paintings being destroyed by the fire? Take it away, Johnny Cash:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJlN9jdQFSc

You can trace Western Civilization's debasement by visiting any good art museum. We've gone from the genius of Caravaggio, Reubens, and Michelangelo to Rothko's paint swatches, Pollock's drippings, and Cy Twombly's scribblings. We once produced beauty, now we pass off ugliness as the height of artistic achievement.

Expand full comment
Roger Beal's avatar

Not only do we pass off garbage as art, we willingly fund it, via tax dollars and gifts from our elites and our academies.

Expand full comment
Demeisen's avatar

They're not simply dumb people elevating bad art, that's a naive mistake. They're promoting and celebrating desecration.

Expand full comment
Nathan Woodard's avatar

When history judges Robin DiAngelo this so called artwork will provide the perfect illustration to accompany any well formed essay. DeAngelo's book is literally the worst book I have ever read, and these drawings are the worst drawings I have ever seen.

Expand full comment
INGRID C DURDEN's avatar

Also a copycat. Seen too much of M.C. Escher, he made this kind of 'fitting into each other' drawings and etches. Some also remind me of Andy Warhol.

Expand full comment
Anne Emerson Hall's avatar

The figures weaving in and out of each other harken back earlier to Greek vases. “Cleon” has hitched his designs upon a contemporary “star,” racist oppression and criminal response.

Expand full comment
jabster's avatar

Looks like Escher and Haring on acid.

Expand full comment
Jason Brain's avatar

I've never seen or heard of this guy or his depictions. Him and Kara Walker fetishizing racial sadomasochism – seems to be a postmodern genre of sorts. Funny how Cleon's work is one step away from the vectorized corporate art style that is as a friend remarked "something between a kindergarten scene and a communist mural." You know that stuff: https://www.linearity.io/blog/corporate-illustrations/

Expand full comment
Demeisen's avatar

Racial sadomasochism is an apt term. It's pretty activating, this stuff here, but it's what they think. The violence is just under the surface with the left, Camp of The Saints and all... On the original topic, it kind of fits with the banal fetishization of fat ugly black women.

Expand full comment
J6Matt da Silva's avatar

So many ironies to this art which seem an apt depiction of Pagan Aztec human sacrifice that was supplanted by modern Western civilization.

With the exception of abortion. Because at the same time, these look like visual paens to Planned Parenthood.

Expand full comment
Perry Mason's avatar

As an antidote to all this, I encourage readers to follow Yuri's suggestions in becoming a supporter, educator, student, and/or patron of the classical, perennial arts and those practicing it today (and if one is so inclined, to make artistic contributions oneself).

This is easier said than done, and it does require true sacrifice of time and money.

But it is 100% worth it. Mentioning this only as an example, I have been a founding supporter of a non-profit founded by a composer of sacred music, who is relatively young but has written many lauded choral pieces, an opera and other sacred classical works, which have been performed in the US and Europe. Privately, this composer is very much "one of us", but his public persona and music reach into depths that go past the normie's defense mechanisms, bypassing the internalized propaganda (which beauty tends to do).

In addition to material financial support, my homeschooling, overburdened wife serves on his Board and is an officer, dedicating real time and sacrificial labor for the spread of his music. And lastly, we go out of our way to go to performances with our family, even when difficult and inconvenient, and to educate them in the finer aspects of sophisticated music.

In sum, to create a culture of holiness and truth, we have to practice it one day, one sacrifice at a time.

Expand full comment
Renee Morris's avatar

Cleon Peterson: Consumed from within, so his art was consumed from without 🔥.

Expand full comment
YourGalapagosGullfriend's avatar

It seems fitting that a guy who needs buzzword salads to describe what amounts to a rip off of Picasso would be mentored by Shepard Fairey, who has some questionable "inspirations" in his own rise to fame:

https://obrag.org/2009/02/street-artist-shepard-faireys-arrest-reminds-us-of-earlier-accusations-of-plagiarism/

Expand full comment
Chuck Flounder's avatar

Seeing his art adorning the mast of the Iron Bank's chariot is more unsettling than the art itself. What is it these people are aiming for? Why would anyone want to turn America into Brazil, as you accurately imply with the word favela? Unless they're sociopaths. I'd much rather be middle class in America than wealthy in Brazil. But I don't travel in those social circles...

http://quillette.com/2022/07/13/the-classically-greek-roots-of-civilizational-self-doubt/

This is one historian's insightful analysis of why our cultural elites are morally bankrupt; but I'm not convinced that people like Newsom & Bass and the legions of Soros acolytes are so naive. I think it's more like what JFK called a collective death wish for humanity. Except in his day, he was referring to the CIA and the Kissinger & Dulles brothers types--right-wing sociopaths. It was painfully ironic that his death opened the door for LBJ and the left-wing slave mentality we have inherited today.

Expand full comment
Magdalene's avatar

They are Satanists

Expand full comment
Chuck Flounder's avatar

Maybe so, but that doesn't do much to motivate secular western societies nowadays. It has to be framed in semantics people can relate to, which is a problem. I'm not a religious person myself, but at least I have enough sense to see that this is a spiritual sickness; I just can't convince anyone I know who is not religious.

Expand full comment
_ikaruga_'s avatar

If the mass of people believes matters is all that exists, and money & power all what drives the forces ruling the world, they are clueless, hopeless, and no "semantics" are there that can awaken them or they can relate to while they make sense.

The only honest thing that can be addressed at them is: "Look, it is not like what they are telling you; you are being deceived; and there is a metaphysical, essential, dimension to reality, driving much of what happens".

Expand full comment
Chuck Flounder's avatar

Surely there are millions of people who can agree with the premise that there are deeper levels of reality. Unfortunately, they cannot all agree on the details, so materialism becomes the binding common denominator. And if you live in civilization, materialism is kind of important; if you live alone away from other people, it matters far less.

Expand full comment
Konstantin Smirnov's avatar

It is a plagiarism on Picasso’s “Guernica” and Escher. Lack of talent compensated by overinflated ego.

Expand full comment
Marina's avatar

Blech. This shit is horrendous

Expand full comment
Richard's avatar

He seems especially into rape porn.

Expand full comment