March 25, 2006
William Safire And Art That's Good for You
Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post:
It used to be fairly easy to draw the political battle lines over art in America.
On one side, let's call it the left, was a view of human creativity that emphasized confrontation and paradigm busting, that reveled in political provocation and performance art, experimental theater and German opera directors, and could be found, reliably every two years, in the Whitney Biennial. On the other, let's call it the right, was a view of art as affirmative and pretty, that favored arts that were popular enough to be commercial, and most of the traditional performing arts, and could be found on a nightly basis at places like the Kennedy Center. This basic cultural fissure was only deepened by the right-wing assault on the National Endowment for the Arts in the early 1990s and the failed left-wing efforts to push back with yet more provocation and confrontation.
If this is an accurate picture of art in America, then conservative pundit William Safire's delivery on Monday of the 19th annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy is something of an anomaly.
More here.
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From the article: “… confront and shame the art haters, exposing their provincial ignorance and bald hypocrisy, their cant and dogma and lies…. forces in our society that prefer a world closed to questioning, impatient with the new or threatening, and comfortable only with certainties passed down from authority figures…” There's the problem right there. The arrogance, the contempt, the shallow moral superiority of the art in-crowd.
Notice how it is the job of the artist to lecture the audience. Notice how the artist lives up to much higher moral standards than the redneck peasants, who are ignorant liars saluting the authority figures. Notice how the job of the artist is to spit at the hypocrits who do not adore their art. Notice how they demand continued funding of their ugly confrontational art by the taxpayers they despise.
Ulli, get mah shotgun from outta the gun rack. I'se goin to town in mah pick-up truck and I'se gonna tell them artsy-fartsies that ah supports Dubya and Morandi, the war in Iraq and Montecelli, balanced budgets and the Group of Seven. That'll make their heads asplode, I reckon.
Posted by: Bob & Ulli | Mar 26, 2006 12:04:08 PM
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