Glenn Beck debuts as Fox News art critic

Last night talk-show host Glenn Beck debuted as the Fox News art critic.

Yes, really. On last night's "Glenn Beck" program, Beck, who is best-known for hysterical, tearful, racial rantings that have cost his program nearly five dozen sponsors in the last few months, tore into the "progressive" Rockefeller(s) on the charge that they were responsible for delivering "communist" and "fascist" art to New York. Beck went on to suggest that "Rockefeller" (which one or ones was not made clear) was a communist-sympathizer, a fascism-supporter and a hater of America. [Image above: Beck on "Glenn Beck," Fox News Channel, Sept. 2, 2009.]

Beck opened the segment by arguing that a 1937 Carl Paul Jennewein intaglio carving, Industry and Agriculture, was "communist" art because one figure is holding a longhammer and because the other is holding an agrarian tool, a sickle. Beck went on to imply that because an unnamed Rockefeller had put the Jennewein there, that Rockefeller was a commie symp.

Not quite. The sickle and the hammer have been used separately to signify agrarian interests and workmen or craftsmen in art respectively since at least the Byzantine period. In the 19th and 20th centuries the hammer and sickle were often fused in a range of European symbology, in both provincial heraldry and in state insignia. It wasn't until 1922 that the Red Army adopted them as a state symbol. (It became the Soviet state symbol in 1923.)

Beck's next target was Attilio Piccirilli's 1936 Youth Leading Industry (detail at right, image of entire work here), a Pyrex-brick relief. Piccirlli, best-known during his lifetime for the Marine Memorial at Columbus Circle and for being New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's favorite artist and best friend, occasionally dipped into imagery with which Italian fascists would have been comfortable. (Another of his sculptures for Rockefeller Center, Advance Forever, Eternal Youth was so close to such that on Dec. 12, 1941 Rockefeller Center covered it with a wooden board.) Apparently aroused by a particularly striking, allegedly fascist male figure, Beck tore into the Piccirilli.

"Who is this? Who is this?" Beck asked, his voice rising to a yell. "This is the strong leader taking that, using that industry and those machines to lead us into the, uh, bright future, led by our children. Gee, who's having indoctrination next week? Oh yeah, that's right, our  president. Completely unrelated. This represents, at the time this was made, Mussolini. This represents Mussolini."

I've done a quick survey of the literature on Youth and actually no, the figure at the right doesn't represent Mussolini. It's just a generic, heroic male figure representing industry. There is no evidence to indicate that Piccirilli was a fascist-sympathizer. At the time of the commissions discussed here, he'd lived in New York for four decades. He received these commissions only after a much-publicized dustup about Rockfeller Center pursuing Europeans such as Matisse and Picasso to create the art for Rockefeller Center.) Youth Leading Industry survived World War II intact and unobstructed and has remained on view ever since.

Shortly after that, Beck pivoted into an accusation that the Obama administration is using art as an indoctrination tool of some kind: "This administration is beginning to use art as propaganda. This is nothing new to progressives." (Nevermind that the greatest propagandistic work of our time was the Matthew Barney-esque installation-art-cum-performance created by Scott Sforza, a Republican.) Beck didn't explain how the Obama administration is using art as propoganda. I still haven't figured out how the Rockefellers ended up as agricultural collectivist, labor-loving progressives, either.

Beck closed his segment by appealing to the black helicopter crowd: "Don't let any of these people ever tell you anything other than the truth... the progressives of today -- it makes sense that we're headed down this road. It makes sense that you feel a little uneasy, and everything seems to be a little hidden. It's not if you look. You're awake you need to see the things hidden in plain sight."

Yes, even if you have to make them up in order to see them.

UPDATE: New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz issues Beck a challenge.

Related: Rockefeller Center's website has an entire section on the art and architecture at the site. A multi-generational look at how the art at Rockefeller Center glorifies its builder: Paul Manship's Prometheus and Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror.