On Art and the Right
The Circus and its Discontents
Pablo Picasso is just like Hillary Clinton: no one actually likes him, they just feel as though they’re supposed to. The reason for this is that his oeuvre is deliberately unpleasant, even ugly, which is precisely why it is celebrated. The Early 20th Century had no use for beauty, and wanted to smash everything beautiful in the name of Will to Power. Guernica is not his most famous work for no reason.
Of course, by saying such things, I mark myself as somone who Doesn’t Get Art. Because Art is Complicated, You Guys, and you can’t just Have Opinions about it without spending several years spewing pretentious rhetoric on the topic. Art is a guild, and it defends its privileges.
This is as it should be. All groups that serve a function in society belong to a Class, and each class has legitimate interests. I put Art in the same category as Entertainment, as good art is pleasing to observe, and good entertainment edifies, the people who make such things are part of what I call The Circus. The Circus includes artists, writers, musicians, entertainers, and all media devoted exclusively thereto. They are an industry, and they work for one thing: your attention.
The history of American Art is the history of its struggle to exist in a society dominated by frontier mindsets and lacking a natural aristocracy. The Circus is a secondary effect of Civilization, a function of wealth and leisure. This is not to say that Art cannot be found in simple societies. But folk art is usually crafted onto capital, or expressed in dress. Capital-A art is by definition immediately useless, and therefore a luxury, and therefore an expression of the will of the rulers.
Especially in the modern age. In the era of mass-production, Art goes to ever further and further efforts to insulate itself against having any economic purpose whatsoever, and indeed holds itself beyond common judgement. Only further and further esoterica can justify its existence. Modern Art is Anti-Art.
And that’s precisely what Academia wants it to be, and therefore what the Bourgeoisie put their money down to buy. The stupider, uglier, and stranger it is, the better they are for liking it. In a society that has abjured aristocratic grandeur and holy truths, only Art of this kind can actually be noteworthy. It’s Grand Inversions all the Way Down.
This is my prologue to discussing Walt Bismarck’s essay “Conservatives Suck At Art”. I would advise that you read it:
It’s important to read it in full, and drink in what the guy is saying, because he has a very serious point to make. The Circus has power, and our enemies would not bother cultivating it for no reason. And the power of the Circus can only be fully utilized on the Circus’ terms. It is a class, it has legitimate interests. Once you hand over your ticket, you must take the ride.
However, he’s leaving out the other half of the story, which is that Art in its current form is a degraded joke of its former self. It’s a toilet revered as an idol. It’s a banana taped to a wall.
Conservatives didn’t make Art into this. They did it to themselves. They did it willingly. They did it joyously. They did it largely to spite us. And we all know it.
Telling the Right that they don’t Get Art is not the way forward. We’ve been told that the entirety of our lives, ad nauseam. It doesn’t even register any more. Sure, I might be conversant in Aristotle’s Poetics and Burke’s distinction between the Beautiful and the Sublime, but I’m a mouth-breathing troglodyte because I don’t masturbate to Banksy murals. I haven’t been hazed by Post-Expressionism long enough to like it, therefore I am Uncultured.
Walt is right that Art follows its own rules, and ancient American Puritanism has left a distrust of beauty and joy that hamstrings the Right its abilities to communicate in a mass age. He’s also right that we won’t get anywhere by shaming, or by forcing the esoteric to spell itself out like a philosopher (we can’t even get philosophers to do that anymore).
But Art is not a thing to submit to; it is a thing to be used. Ultimately, the Circus are servants of the powerful. Modern Art is an exercise in academic esotericism, serving the Great Unfolding that is Science, the Great Numerizing that is Capitalism. It does that because that’s where the trends are; that’s where the money is. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
There’s no reason Right Art Endowments can’t exist, so long as they’re not stupid enough to call themselves that (Left Art Endowments don’t). And to be functional, they’re going to have to recruit the best of the best, and they’re going to have to put up with their artistic temperaments, as Julius II put up with Michaelangelo’s hyperfocus and ill hygiene. There are going to be weirdos and perverts on our payroll, and we’re going to have to deal with it. Our enemies are very good at this (you don’t think Nina Burleigh actually wanted to blow Bill Clinton, do you?), and honestly, so are we, so long as we can publicly ignore it (Lindsey Graham. That is all).
In the construction of a functioning society and civilization, there will be tensions. There will be compromises between classes. This is a sign of health, of ruling classes functioning as they’re supposed to. It is necessary for the detritus of Puritanism to swallow its pride and get in the Game. But no one should ever pretend that anything at the Circus is ever anything more than a Game.
You’re not uncultured at all. Just for the record.
I agree with Walt that the Right, whatever that is these days, has a difficult time dealing with art, artists, and cultural elements, but I break with him over AI art. AI art is downgrading, cheapening, and demystification of art at the hands of technocratic bugmen from California. It's cheap, gross, and meaningless, uglier than the ugliest modernist trash. Duchamps Urinal is better than all AI art combined because it is an object created by human hands that has a point. In a way, the Duchamp post-modernists and Pop Artists like Warhol predicted AI art, the ultimate death of art.