Conspicuous Left-Wing Faux Taste

Resentment is free, but an ugly color on anyone.

Elizabeth McFarland is an undergraduate student at The Catholic University of America, where she studies English.

Over the last year, I have noticed an undercurrent of annoyance and disgust within myself directed at what I once mistook for separate, unrelated patterns of thought and speech — usually among liberals. The same unpleasant chord is struck in my chest when I see people complain about Republican women’s makeup, Thomas Kinkade, Catalan modernist architecture, and the musical stylings of André Rieu.

The complaints around these things are not only a guttural cry that they are ugly, but tacky. It their mind, they are classless. My initial disgust was born from the fact this is coming from people whose morality relies on the abolition of class, using it to insult their ideological opponents. It is hypocritical, and despite it being no longer fashionable on the right, still bristles me. The one that got my goat the first time was a barrage of men insulting the makeup of conservative women.

There is no person alive with functioning eyeballs who genuinely thinks these two women are wearing similar styles of makeup. There is nothing similar other than the fact that both women are wearing some kind of paint on their faces. The makeup the woman on the right is wearing is perfectly average. I have known a few conservative women in my lifetime and they all do their makeup in roughly the same fashion, which is to say: just like every other woman off the streets of America.

Liberal women mostly do their makeup in an identical way. It just happens that the women who do very “out there” makeup (purple lipstick, experimental blush, multi-colored graphic eyeliner) are mostly left-wing. Yet, the insults that these men throw are not that Republican women are insufficiently creative with their makeup.

The problem with makeup on the left is that it is the wrong shade, overdone, and seems to have been applied by a four-year-old. The solution is not black lipstick; it is a makeup wipe and a trip to Sephora. The men (and women) insulting Republican women on the basis that their makeup looks like the picture on the left are just lying for the sake of insulting a woman they politically disagree with on her looks. The makeup, however, is not politically irrelevant; it says that it’s both possible and good for a woman to style herself in a broadly inoffensive way that is designed to appeal to most people.

Thomas Kinkade is another artisan on the threshing floor of conspicuous left-wing artistic taste. If you’re not familiar with Kinkade’s work, I’m sure you’ve seen it on postcards, seasonal cookie and tea tins, framed in your grandmother’s house, or as the subjects of 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. His work mostly features a little, thatched cottage in winter or fall, lit warmly from within, sitting upon a lake or river, nestled in a valley, and bathed in literally glittering twilight. He has been described as “sentimental,” “kitschy,” “pastoral,” and “garish,” none of which, in my opinion, are incorrect. Although pastoral may be putting it a little too euphemistically. If I were an art critic, I would probably call it Lisa Frank for Grown-Ups.

You can tell that Kinkade is not exactly my thing, but what he also is not is ugly or sinister. If you hadn’t seen any of the man’s work, and all you had to go on was what Twitter leftists had to say about him, you would think he was the worst person to ever live. It is consumerist, ugly, and according to one National Catholic Register author, “anti-incarnational.” Ouch.

These people are also lying. There is plenty to dislike about Kinkade, but his paintings are not ugly; they are not grotesque, ill-practiced, or messy. People insisting that his paintings are ugly, are mistaking such a sentiment for what is really their disgust towards what Kinkade’s painted world represents. It is the claim that good aesthetics can be expressed formulaically and that there is such a thing as objective beauty. In serious art circles, which do not often mention Kinkade, a similar prejudice was expressed against the Hudson River School of landscape painting.

“Catalan Modernist Architecture” is a bit of a misnomer because it could imply that this architectural style was popularized by a handful of artists, as opposed to one man: Antoni Gaudí. As a child, I was enamored with this style. The most famous example is probably “The Whale House” in Santa Barbara. This movement is characterized by organic shapes (sometimes imitating some specific animal or plant), wavy lines, stained glass, tiling, big pieces of woodwork, and an aquatic or fairy-like feel. To me, the prettiest parts of these homes are the bathrooms, where the tiling and stonework can shine. It is an extremely fun style of architecture, most prettily applied in homes as opposed to churches or most public spaces.

However, if these imitations are cheaply done, the stonework that is characteristic of Gaudi can look a bit like what I call play-set plaster — that very light, artificial-looking kind of cured concrete that distracts from any organic beauty. This is not the gripe of leftists who whine about how “you really cannot buy taste” under videos of these home’s owners giving a tour. These complaints are unlike the still mostly liberal hatred of McMansions, whose criticisms are specific and have to do with actual principles of beauty: faux battlements, play plaster, plastic, fake stone, and clashing architectural movements.

Their complaints are not even that these homes are ostentatious (my and my mother’s favorite architectural insult in our DC-metro area travels) — it is that they say they are ugly. These houses are not ugly. Houses can be ugly in many ways. They can be dilapidated, cookie-cutter, or poorly designed from a practical standpoint, and Gaudi is none of these. To leftist, these houses are eccentric, over-the-top displays of wealth that they cannot stand.

The crescendo of all this is the Dutch composer André Rieu, of whom a particular clip goes viral every once in a while. Uniquely, rather than being presented without context, Rieu is brought up as an example of what “real music” is, or some other more inflammatory statement. As far as I know, the composer and the young girl who often accompany his performances are unaware that his music is being used in such a way. Rieu is a composer who does unique, theatrical performances of classical pieces, along with renditions of some contemporary settings.

Apparently, his conduction is highly controversial among critics. I would describe it as a little much, but I do not enjoy classical music much at all, so I am probably not the best judge. However, I am a person with ears to hear, and his music (not counting the lyrics to some of his songs) is not bad. Bad music that borders on unmusical does exist, but it is no Rieu. What liberal critics are doing is reacting to an insult towards rap, house, or pop by degrading this man’s perfectly inoffensive music.

Call me naive, call me undiscerning, but I just do not understand why we need to lie. The actual thoughts underpinning these false, aesthetically-based complaints are quite obvious. The makeup complaint is either about how the speaker does not like Republican women being consciously put together or that they just wait to insult someone they ideologically oppose. The Kinkade complaint is just that he is curated, consumerist, and intentionally popular. With Gaudi, it is that rich people should be putting their money to better use than building a house inspired by a whale. As for Rieu, the complaint is that it is offensive to say that elaborate elevator music may be technically better-sounding than modern music.

Allow me to liberate you from this pattern with a personal example: I dislike the Hermes Birkin. For the uninitiated, the Hermes Birkin Bag is a purse manufactured by the French fashion brand that can cost as much as a lavish house in most of the United States and a modest apartment in Loudoun County — 500,000 dollars. The leather that makes up their bulk does not come from pampered cows on the peak of an exotic mountain, nor do they have any special, clever features or compartments. A huge part of the Birkin’s allure is that these bags are also not available for public purchase; you must establish a relationship with your local Hermes store and be invited to buy one.

I do not like the Birkin. Were I to call the Birkin ugly, though, that would be a lie. Maybe they’re not my preference, but they are not ugly. It comes down to preference and confidence. A well-adjusted person should not feel the need to justify their preferences and convictions by any pretense, whether related to class or some vague, falsified aesthetic insult. That these insults are lies implies the spitter has something to hide; either they’re embarrassed of their actual feelings, or they’re intentionally disguising them.

In the latter case, the only reason for intentional concealment I can fathom is that their feelings are violent. Perhaps these people do not merely think a person spending millions of dollars to live inside an architectural recreation of Pixie Hollow is a waste of money, but they want the owner of the house to suffer. Resentment is free, but an ugly color on anyone.

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