Art in a time like this
How we engage and where we draw our attention.
Hello. Since we have last spoken, the country has chosen its next president. If you read this newsletter, my politics should be rather obvious to you. And so, I’ve spent the past week thinking a lot about the role that art plays in the political consciousness of a society.
I will not pretend that I have any real answers; there are theorists and critics and philosophers who have spent far more time than I unpacking the relationship between art—music, visual art, literature, dance, theater—and the political arena (I’ve recently ordered a copy of Marxist theorist Ernst Fischer’s The Necessity of Art and I’m making my way through Howard Zinn’s Artists in Times of War). But about this I feel strongly: For progressivism to take hold in a society, that society needs to be one in which art is accessible across class divides, in which art provokes critical thought, and in which art is varied and reflective of a wide range of thoughts, experiences, etc.
From 2017 through 2020, you could hear the same refrain made again and again in theaters, academic spaces, and other places where art may be put on display: “Now, more than ever.” While that poorly considered phrase became a stand-in for any more meaningful historiography cementing a work in its time of origin, it also diluted the importance of any work ascribed with that footnote. “Now, more than ever” was, more often than not, a negation of the fact that the themes and subjects of the work were always important but perhaps never given the consideration of artistic dialogue or introspection. It is not more important now, more than ever, to support scholarship and the arts because it has always been important to do so.
I will not be surprised if “now, more than ever,” reenters the cultural programming lexicon. And I invite you to take notice of where you find that phrase appended; I know that I tend to see it ascribed to works of art that are concerned, at least, in some part with identity politics, or those that are perhaps centered on a recontextualization of a historical moment that trades realism for some kind of revisionist wish-fulfillment that aims to make us feel simultaneously empowered and embittered. This is not a mark against those works of art; rather, I fear that the urgency levied upon them lends participants and observers a false sense of action and perhaps even the naval-gazing assurance that they are a good person for engaging with such art. I think it is also possible that this art does not reach viewers who hold different views from the ones the art tries to reflect.
The issue, ultimately, is that art is not supposed to tell you what to think, but so often, the framing of “now more than ever” art admits its purpose before you even step foot into a theater or gallery or flip through the first pages of a book. Art, instead, is supposed to make you think and—critically—feel.
There are consequences that arise when a public does not have art to engage with. This is the third time now that I have brought up social psychologist Else Frenkel-Brunswik and her post-WWII research on the authoritarian personality; her finding that intolerance for ambiguity corresponds with a tolerance for authoritarianism is one that I can’t stop thinking about when I consider the state of popular culture—with its reboots and superhero films that paint a moral picture in high-contrast black and white. I think about declining literacy and especially declining media literacy in a time flush with misinformation that promises to only increase through the expansion of both AI and human antagonism. I think about how that relates to what The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky wrote last week about the election, that, “It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things.”
I am not going to pretend that any specific artistic movement, any one play, any musical collaboration, has the power to push the United States leftward into a progressive movement. I am also not going to pretend that artists are inherently all on the left side of the political spectrum, a fact we know to be untrue through history and our current landscape. But it is worth pointing out that it is one specific political faction in the United States that continues to ban books. It is one side of the spectrum that, in multiple countries, has rejected modern architectural designs in favor of going “back to tradition.” It is worth questioning what “tradition” means, when it is levied by those in power and not those who pass it down through their communities.
It is worth pointing out that engagement with the arts and humanities ameliorates critical thinking skills.
It is extraordinarily easy for the arts to be labeled elitist; any criticism about the economic accessibility of a career in the arts and humanities is entirely valid and painfully real. But the reality is that they are also more in reach than many might imagine, even if simply through a screen. And still, for the past two days, I’ve seen discourse online about how reading—reading—is a privilege and not, instead, a right of which some are stripped or otherwise deprived.
I know full well that the domain of this newsletter lies mostly in snobbish topics, but my intent here is to make those topics more inviting. To keep the arts and humanities behind an ivy-covered gate is to do a disservice to the broader population. This is what I can think to do in my own little corner of the internet. I have no real systemic solutions to offer right now, but more simply a calcified belief in the importance of these things that I think make us human.
Just a few other things today:
Can we please have less political art now? This essay by writer Kat Rosenfield really thoughtfully considers the art of the first Trump presidency—and how heavy-handed politicization may have had the inverse of its intended effect: “Satire and other more sophisticated forms of storytelling were subsumed by an intense literal-mindedness, in keeping with a growing conviction that audiences were both dangerously malleable and much too stupid to grasp anything but the most ham-handed moral messaging.”
A Trump win could reshape the cultural sector. How is the art world preparing? A few weeks ago, ArtNews took a look at how this administration could impact museums and other cultural institutions. You can expect more of the same growing challenge we’ve talked about time and time again: Funding. If government funding drops for the arts, then these institutions will have to make up for it somewhere. That isn’t an easy fix.
Rest in peace Judith Jamison, a larger-than-life star who defined the legacy of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company as a dancer and later, its artistic director. If you are in New York, you can see the Whitney’s Edges of Ailey exhibit through early February, and you can see the company perform at New York City Center in December. If you can, I’d recommend seeing “Revelations”—an Ailey classic—with live music. You can see some footage of Jamison performing the iconic solo “Cry,” which she originated, below.
I’ll be back with more of the usual news recaps in a few days. This month, I will also publish a non-consumerist gift guide for the arts and culture lovers in your life—or maybe even yourself. In the meantime, be well. ▲