An Artistic Antidote to Miley Cyrus Twerking Travesty

As the world is on the brink of war pending action on Obama's Bloody Red Line in Syria, the American public is tittering about Miley Cyrus's titillating twerking performance at the M-TV Video Music Awards.

[F] Miley Cyrus [B] Robin Thicke at 2013 M-TV Video Music Awards

While the performance allowed 20 year old former star of Hannah Montana to certainly devolve from her Disney roots, the edgey "dance" was universally panned and made many  viewers wish that they could wash their eyeballs. 





Considering the surrealistic choreography which seem to resemble Build-a-Bear Workshops in Hell, the antidote to this aesthetic atrocity may be found in an artistic reductio ad absurdum. Let's see how Miley Cyrus's twerking contrast with other modern masterpieces. 

Edvard Munch's Expressionist work Der Schrei der Natur , a.k.a. "The Scream" (1893), has been compared to an individual suffering from depersonalization disorder, feelings of distortion of the environment and one's self.  Some have speculated that Munch was inspired by the proximity of a slaughterhouse and an insane asylum near his studio.  Or perhaps he had premonitions of Miley Cyrus' dad's achey breaky heart of watching his daughter deliberate debase herself in public. 

Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica" (1937) in response to the Nazi German and Italian Fascist bombing of the Basque village during the Spanish Civil War.  Picasso wanted to depict the suffering of people, animals and buildings due to the bombing of Guernica.  As Picasso worked on his painting in Paris, the artist opined: 

The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death?

It is only fitting that Miley Cyrus' twerking fits in with the death of art. Or maybe just grandly bombing.

Salvador Dali's famous "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) has several symbolic hooks which tie into Cyrus' M-TV obscenity dance.  The melted watches depict Dali's insight that one can not hold onto time (or music).  Deeper Dalian hermeneutics understand the appearance of ants to be a symbol of decay.  So the ants devouring a pocket watch means there is no permanence. Then there is the strange "monster" at the bottom center of the painting.  It looks vaguely human, perhaps an abstract self-portrait of the artist.  Docents from the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida recognize the figure as being  "The Great Masturbator".  There's a certain symmetry with Cyrus' desperate gyrations.  Personally, the "Great M" reminds me of a dead fish, which also has parallels to Cyrus' post VMA artistic career.  But in the parody piece, Cyrus seems to be  barking up the wrong tree. 

After ascending to artistic heights to put Cyrus' dirty dancing into context, it is worth considering the publicity hungrey celebutard's potential synergy in today's entertainment industry.

[L] Miley Cyrus [R] Ashton Kutcher in Two and a Half Men

It's a pity that Two and a Half Men already cast the role of Charlie's long-lost lesbian daughter to Amber Tamlyn for this season.  Miley Cyrus' prior guest shots on the delightfully bawdy show were cute.  Now with her hedonistic reputation, Miley Cyrus  could follow in the footsteps of Charlie Sheen and star in a show which charmingly celebrates cultural depravity which nods to their trouble pasts while undergoing a personal public meltdown.

h/t: Buzzfeed