Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Illiberal Radicals Are Killing Art

Jed Perl asks the right question, sort of: Are liberals killing art?

At a time when the art world—the vast majority of whose players are liberal-- is agog over a Jeff Koons you have to ask whether art is still art? Or whether it only serves as a critique of commodity fetishism.

On the other hand, if liberals were really liberal they would respect art. They would embrace its complexities.

Unfortunately, today’s liberals are anything but liberal. They are radical, seeing all human activities and all human enterprise as a function of their ideology. And that, naturally, includes art.

Since they see their relationships in political terms, it is not surprising that they see art as politics too.

Illiberal radicals see all human activities as ways to express ideas. Better yet, to indoctrinate people in one or another ideology.

Some of these ideologies are politically correct. Some are politically incorrect.

Illiberal radicals want art to serve as thought reform. If a work of art shows a racist character, and if this character does not end up hanging from a lamppost, the work itself is corrupt and corrupting. It must be suppressed.

At times, if it shows a racist or homophobic character at all, it has to be suppressed.

As Perl points out, today’s thought police also cannot distinguish the artist from his art. If the artists has fascist leanings, his work must be ignored because art is, to their minds, a product of ideology, a vehicle to express ideology and an effort to persuade others to follow it.

To which Perl responds by saying that such a definition undermines the reality and integrity of art.

You cannot and should not judge art by rummaging through the artist’s dirty laundry. If art does not surpass ideology, if it does not give up on the idea of telling you what to think… then it is not art. It is propaganda.

Art presents moral issues in their complexity, not as problems yielding simple solutions.

The same is not true of philosophy, especially philosophy that conjoins itself to a political program. Philosophy teaches what to think, and more importantly, how to think.

We might believe that Ezra Pound’s fascist sympathies made him a reprehensible  human being, all the while enjoying his poetry.

And yet, if Martin Heidegger’s philosophy was a stealth, and at times not so stealth effort to undermine Western civilization and to promote Nazi thinking or totalitarian habits of thought, his beliefs are certainly germane to our acceptance or rejection of his philosophy.

Art dramatizes issues. It offers possible resolutions. It does not tell you what to think or what to do. As the old philosophers had it, the emotion provoked by art is static, not kinetic. Art does not tell you to go out and join a cause or to do something.

Art shows; it doesn’t tell. It is not simply an object to look at, but it must look back at you. It must concern you. It must speak to you.

But that is not at all the same as telling you how or what to think or do. It will show you what this or that character did or did not do. It will show you the narrative consequences of the action or inaction. It is for you to judge whether the lesson is worth following or ignoring, and how.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about if conservatives made some art instead of complaining about liberals making bad art?

Conservatives complain about Hollywood too, but they don't make their own movies.

Conservatives need to stop saying liberals should do this or should do that. They should do it themselves. Make better art, music, and movies.

At least liberals are doing something. Conservatives are almost totally disengaged in the arts.

Anonymous said...

"And yet, if Martin Heidegger’s philosophy was a stealth, and at times not so stealth effort to undermine Western civilization and to promote Nazi thinking or totalitarian habits of thought, his beliefs are certainly germane to our acceptance or rejection of his philosophy."

The fact that the Nazis had problems with Heidegger--and the fact that his ideas have impressed and influenced many on the left, including Jewish thinkers like Arendt and Steiner--would indicate that there was more to Heidegger's philosophy than Nazism.

In fact, even if there had been no Nazism, I think Heidegger would have still thought as he did.

Also, don't have to good or acceptable in our world to be provocative and interesting. Plato's Republic is totalitarian but a great work nevertheless that makes you think and argue.

Never throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Just because Sartre apologized for Stalin doesn't mean that every facet of his existentialist philosophy was about totalitarian communism.

Ares Olympus said...

re: If art does not surpass ideology, if it does not give up on the idea of telling you what to think… then it is not art. It is propaganda.

My favorite author, E.F. Schumacher considered entertainment and propaganda as two primary purposes of art, but that great art can go beyond that to communicate more subtle truths about reality and human predicament.

I like to remember "art" as a verb as much as a noun, as a "practice", but it may be great art-as-a-noun reminds us about our own need to practice something artful ourselves, so I guess that's propaganda also, but the good kind, that seeks to propagate something of worth that can be forgotten.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed#Art
Most art fits into two categories. If art is designed to primarily affect our feelings then it is entertainment; while if art is primarily designed to affect our will then it is propaganda.

Great art is a multi-faceted phenomenon, which is not content to be merely propaganda or entertainment; but by appealing to man's higher intellectual and emotional faculties, it is designed to communicate truth. When entertainment and propaganda are transcended by, and subordinated to the communication of truth, art helps develop our higher faculties and that makes it great.
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Anonymous said...

Anonymous 8/6/14 @9:13 AM:

Spot on. In total agreement. Political conservatism is about distrust in government. Social conservatism is about distrust in man's vices. Aesthetic conservatism is about classic taste and beauty -- clean lines, accurate capture, meaningful interpretation. But blanket, reflexive conservatism as an operating philosophy of life obstructs growth. It is a refusal to look ahead. It halts appreciation of what lies beyond boundaries.

Conservatives are disengaged from the arts. Christians are not involved in the arts as they should be. Art is how you reach people. It's a huge hole in terms of meeting people where they're at and advancing the hope and beauty in the message. I assert the Sistine Chapel has reached more people, and in a vastly more powerful way, than all the theological tracts ever written.

There is beauty in order, and order in beauty. Beauty is undeniable. If there's anything that I find revolting, it's when it's an ideological statement promoting chaos. I'll never tell you it's worthless, because someone might buy it. But if it's not beautiful, public money shouldn't be spent on it. Art is most constructive when it uplifts the human spirit. Subjective? Sure, maybe. But one person's masterpiece is HIS masterpiece. It takes a plurality to make it A masterpiece, and you don't need a degree in art history to know what's reaches the soul. Michelangelo's "David" is beautiful, accessible, and extraordinary at all levels.

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