***
And, on a related note, here is an excerpt from Thomas E. Woods Jr.'s article on the influence of the Catholic Church in the formation of Western Civilization:
"Instead of the Gothic cathedral and the Pieta, consider what modern Europe -- too sophisticated for Christianity, you understand -- has to show for itself. In 1917, the French artist Marcel Duchamp shocked the art world when he signed a man's urinal and placed it on display as a work of art. A poll of 500 art experts in 2004 yielded Duchamp's Fountain as the single most influential work of modern art. (All too often, art experts spend their time laughing at the rest of us for not being sophisticated enough to appreciate the likes of Duchamp.)
Duchamp was a formative influence on London-based artist Tracey Emin (b. 1963). Emin's My Bed, which was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize, consisted of an unmade bed complete with bottles of vodka, used prophylactics, and bloodied undergarments. While on display at the Tate Gallery in 1999, the bed was vandalized by two nude men who proceeded to jump on it and drink the vodka. The world of modern art being what it is, everyone at the gallery applauded, assuming that the vandalism was part of the show.
Emin's more notorious work, called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95, consists of a tent on which are sewn the names of everyone she has slept with over the course of her life. (She includes not only her sexual partners but also family members from her childhood, as well as her two aborted children.) Emin is now employed as a professor at the European Graduate School.
Europe can also boast a cultural milieu that has brought forth a generation too self-absorbed even to be bothered to reproduce itself at replacement level. There, in the most literal sense of the term, is a dying civilization."
Oh, how sophisticated have we become.
