Writes Alice Gribbin, in "Why Good Politics Makes for Bad Art/Affirmation is available everywhere. Why ruin aesthetics?" (Tablet).
Gribbin discusses the platitude "All art is political." In that context, she quotes Toni Morrison:
"Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, 'We love the status quo.' We’ve just dirtied the word 'politics,' made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.... My point is that it has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world.'"
Morrison doesn't say "All art is political" but "All good art is political." She set it up so that if you want to argue that some work of art isn't political, she's already taken the debate position that it's not good art. (This is the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.) But it's not really a very tough position, because you can see that her idea of "politics" is very broad. It's just in the world.
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I would disagree. However a certain person's political philosophy can make any art political.
There really is no practical reason for it. It doesn't feed us. It doesn't clothe us. It doesn't shelter us and yet it still drives us. The urge to create. Is ,"Girl With a Pearl Ear Ring", political? How about a 1932 Cord coupe? Cave paintings in France? You can make anything political if your raison d'etre is politics.
"[T]he arts suffer because they have been overtaken by a perversion of the democratic spirit. Political art has been prominent"
Actually, they've been overtaken by the prog perversion that subjects all art to the rule of prog power.
"always ruthlessly singular expressions, their nature aristocratic. A culture valuing inclusion above all else will never know its masterpieces."
Sounds like white supremacy right there. And what's with the "masterpieces"? Listen to yourself, Alice.
"her idea of "politics" is very broad. It's just in the world."
Maybe so. But since we've been trained to spot cases where people don't believe what they profess to believe, I'll venture that some political art is more political than others, being more useful to propagate the correct view.
"Lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate Your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world, dear God."
Is Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" political?
If all art is political, then politics has a problem because a lot of art isn't that good.
The warring of two houses is the setting for Romeo and Juliet. The art is about love, religion, and youth.
Politics -- where we are "in the world" -- is usually the frame, not the picture.
I like what she had to say. Great art is not about surface group identities or political propaganda. Great art expresses something about the universal human experience. When one sees great art, one feels a deeper connection to an unspeakable reality.
Gribbin is an enemy of lazy platitudes, propaganda, and tautologies disguised as wisdom. Good for her.
It's just another way of saying "the personal is political", the most socially destructive tenet in the Leftist creed.
And it's ugly, too.
I think Bob Dylan has the definitive take on this one ; he famously eschewed partisan political songwriting (protest songs) in 1964 and recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan, with its classic tune My Back Pages. Its clear that he regarded partisan political songs as an artistic dead end, or as(he put it) mere "finger pointing".
My Back Pages
Crimson flames tide through my ears, rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon, " said I, proud 'neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth, "rip down all hate, " I screamed
Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull, I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers foundation deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now
Girls' faces formed the forward path from phony jealousy
To memorizing politics of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists, unthought of, though somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now
A self-ordained professor's tongue too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty is just equality in school
"Equality, " I spoke the word as if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now
In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats, mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now
Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now
Claiming that "political" means "in the world" in support of one's claim that all (good) art is political is essentially similar to the No True Scotsman fallacy -- you're just tinkering with the semantics of the predicate rather than the subject.
The core of the tumor, the root of the disease, is summed up in the second half of the loathsome Marx aphorism "... the point, however, is to change it," because the kind of change he is talking about, imposed upon people to force the world to conform to the parochial desires of a small elect, is self-righteous, dictatorial, oppressive.
The Will to Power, the desire to dominate, to command, is the fundamental antithesis of the Will to Create. The instant it is made, a creation starts to go beyond the will and intent and purpose and power of its creator.
Artworks are children. Political artworks are slaves.
The Left considers everything politics. The Entertainment Industry and NYC Publishers are all "pushing the agenda".
That aside, all great novels have a political point. But its not following a "party line" or its talking about Culture or narrow partisan politics. A farewell to Arms is an antiwar novel. War and Peace is an attack on "The Great man" theory of history. Almost every novel by Dickens was an attack on some injustice in Victorian society. He's not attacking the Tory Party.
"Is Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" political?"
It could be. Dictators and authoritarian governments often clamp down on art that does not depict the world in purely realistic or even idealized terms, as they deem such work as "degenerate" or "subversive" in portraying the world in highly independent and personal forms. Such independence is seen as a de facto rebellion against the public order, or as a celebration of derangement and rejection of desired norms. In authoritarian societies, all citizens are expected to adhere to explicit norms, lest independent thought lead to disobedience and rejection of the imposed norms. Unorthodox art, by its existence, is a repudiation of the authoritarian society's accepted range of thought and expression, which, if allowed to flourish, will undo the basis of the regime's control.
Van Gogh's paintings were either ignored or ridiculed in his time. If he had lived under Hitler he would have been treated as an inimical influence on the "pure" ideals and noble aesthetic ideas of the proper Aryan society. (Music and especially writing that falls outside of preferred norms in authoritarian societies are subject to such rejection, official disfavor, and suppression.)
Sure, good politics makes bad art, but bad politics does too. While good political art has been made, it is rare. Most is, as Gribbin accurately states, "derivative, pedantic, unambitious, historically ignorant, shallow." But the greatest sin of most political art is that it pretends to be daring, speaking truth to power, while in reality, it's trite and completely safe in the environment in which it is meant to be shown.
The only sense in which Morrison is correct is if you embrace the dangerous and absurd view that the personal is political. But even here, it's an argument that proves too much. If the personal is political, then all art, good and bad, is political and there's no point in talking about good or bad in the context of politics.
The problem is not whether good art is political, but whether political art is good. Goya, yes. Golub, no. At least by my lights. Ibsen, yes, Fo, no. By my lights as well.
But life reduced to politics is ill-considered, and Shakespeare reduced to politics is more half-empty than half-full.
To some people everything is political. They ought to lighten up.
There's so much in this article that is worthwhile and runs against the current trend to make everything political. Just one gem:
To discern that the relation of art and politics is incidental, not inherent, is hardly to underestimate art’s power. Rather, claiming everything human is political is an underestimation of the human.
Good point Robert Cook.
I am an artist (music) and have worked with artist across multiple disciplines. Even sat on the board of a nonprofit arts organization. At the risk of generalizing, all artists succumb to a hive mentality, which is simply this: Capitalism bad; socialism good.
I think the first part, capitalism bad, stems from envy, as the majority of artists are in the lower economic quartile (if only I had more money like those rich people do). The second part, socialism good, is two-fold. One, they seem to be the least informed group of people I have ever met, making them highly susceptible to groupthink. And two, they are deathly afraid to buck the zeitgeist of the arts community due to an understanding that if they ever did, they would be cast out into the wilderness.
rightguy @ 9:21: Wow. You nailed it. I had never understood that song --had just shrugged it off as a word-salad produced by "Dylan being too deep for the squares"-- but now it snaps into perfect focus.
Thanks from a slow learner.
Prof. M. Drout @ 10:05: "...Artworks are children. Political artworks are slaves."
Very nicely put.
Protest art against totalitarian regimes sometimes comes up with moving and beautiful and delightful works. The first oil painting I have ever immediately wanted to own personally was Wei Luan's Yellow Wall, created as China opened up a bit in the years before the Tiananmen massacre. In his 1984 painting, Luan put a tiny bit of blue sky in one corner of the painting, and two little birds, but the yellow wall still backfills the world of the grandparent and toddler.
I like Rita Mae Brown's quote:
"Art is moral passion married to entertainment.
"Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda.
"And entertainment without moral passion is television."
Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings?
Anyone who thinks Shakespeare plays (even the tragedies and histories) are "about kings" is missing the core of his art. Sure, there was some pro-Tudor political propaganda, but we don't read them for their political or historical content. All that is just the backdrop for the human drama.
I take a little issue with Robert Cook's Van Gogh insight. As he said, it could have been (or could be) political. But was it? What was Van Gogh's intent? Was he making a political statement about representational art versus his version of impressionism? Or an apolitical statement of the same? Or was he just portraying the sky the way he perceived it or wanted to have others perceive it, without a political agenda?
That he was largely ignored or ridiculed in his own time, and that if he'd been making art under Hitler or Stalin he could well have been punished as a degenerate artist and political dissenter, doesn't address his own intentions. All those observations amount to is that politics is always with us, and - as others have said in this thread - the politically minded will tend to see everything politically, whether or not it was intended to be.
People need to beware of Leftwing critics because they will praise/attack novels and other pieces of art because their politics. However, the smarter ones will disguise their true motives and pretend their praising/attacking it for non-political reasons.
Some will slavishly follow "The party line", others will be nuanced. For example Pauline Kael would attack movies she felt were Pro-American, Pro-Christian, or vaguely conservative ins some way. She called Dirty Harry "fascist" and the Sound of Music "The sound of mucas".
However, she refused to praise liberal/leftwing movies just because they were leftwing or pushed the "correct" social attitudes. SHe would only praise them if they were GOOD liberal/leftwing movies. For example, SHe didn't like Shoah, and said so. This got her more hate mail then any review she did at the New Yorker.
I saw a work at the Tate, I think it was, something like five years ago. It was their "young artist of the year" award winner, and I've mentioned it here before in a similar context, if I recall.
It was an attractive work, pretty large and very complex, something like six feet by three; the artist was of African heritage and was making a statement about - I think - the targeting of young African men by British law enforcement. It was very colorful, like Kente cloth, and the smallest elements were something like little buttons the size of lentils or so, filling in some parts like mosaic tiles; each button was, itself, made of... this is really straining the limits of my memory... something that gave it more dimension, tiny dots made of dark seeds or something. The entire piece was supported on two cylindrical stands made of dried and compressed elephant dung.
The work was explicitly political. I know all of the above because of the extremely long explanatory panel beside the piece. But I think it's telling that I can't even remember the flipping subject. It was a mishmash of symbols, each one requiring external explication in order for the viewer to understand the artist's intent. And the overall effect was... "What pretty colors, what primitivism - this would look good in the entry next to our Nefertiti head, wouldn't it, darling?"
It was no more memorable or meaningful, in itself, than the "wall art" you can buy at Target. And this was the Tate.
"All art is political."
Just because someone can force a political interpretation or cast it as political in some hypothetical world does not mean it's political.
Toni Morrison was too bookish. Her novels suffer for it.
Bob Ross 2024.
Happy little trees for everyone, and yeah, I know he's dead, but he's only a little deader than Biden.
What are the politics of, say, Monet's Water Lilly paintings? Indifference?Ignorance? To like the natural world as it is, is that political? It connotes leisure, an aristocratic good I suppose. But it doesn't have to be. Leisure can also be a democratic good. Something that every human should have regular opportunities to experience and enjoy. A good society would be one that makes that possible.
From Yes, Prime Minister (posting from memory, sorry):
PM Hacker: Plays attacking the government are the second-most boring.
Bernard: What are the most boring?
Hacker: Plays praising the government.
“All writers die, but the corpses of writers who write about politics stink more.” - Ernest Hemingway (Paraphrased)
"The purpose of art is to say that which cannot be said with words. Fiction is art that does this with words."
Ursula LeGuin
Great art transcends the world.
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