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| Art has a touch of evil |
It has long been debated, in and out of aesthetic philosophy circles, whether art and the arts should also have a moral, or political, or even religious, function - and of course, throughout human history (and art appears to be a primarily human object, in the many sense of that word), art has been many things to many people and societies.
It is only really, however, in our own recent time, of 'cancel culture', that
the art object, and the artist, have become so conflated, as to become one,
indissoluble and undivided.
Even when Oscar Wilde was dismounted from his seat as the great playwright of his age, and wrecked in a brutish prison, his plays, books, stories, and poems, were not banned; and, conversely, even when Lady Chatterley's Lover was causing a great deal of legal and moral consternation, its author was not a total pariah. Even, albeit controversially, Wagner, the arch Jew-hater, is performed in Israel. We know the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to have been, shall we say, a harbourer of unappealing fantasies; and, Britain's greatest modern composer, Britten, was known to favour boys on the younger side of manhood. No one seriously pickets Penguin's offices for publishing wife-killer William S. Burroughs, or did, until recently, anyway.
And yet, over the past few years, the elision between the creator and the created has become uniquely fused, so that the one infects, and pollutes, and ruins, the other. An otherwise good law-abiding person can write a dodgy poem or book, and suddenly be persona non grata; or, a person can be accused of, or found guilty of, a crime, and find that their life works, in the arts, are loudly binned, or banned, or burned. There is no daylight between the art and artist - no shadow of doubt.
It is the lack of doubt that terrifies; a mob without doubt is a murder squad; and it is not far from a murder squad to the guillotine.
It is a truth widely known - as Stalin knew - that if you kill almost everyone, you will manage to kill many of your enemies. If the police arrested everyone, they would by definition have arrested all the criminals. The ultimate ends of the cancel culture - to protect the innocent, punish and stop the guilty, and create a better, safer, world - are probably rather admirable. No one wants the worst of all possible worlds.
But the error is, like in some Star Trek episode where the computer runs amok and eliminates ALL humans to remove all uncertainty, to mistake the sin for the sinner; and to mistake the ability to destroy and punish with the sugar-rush need to do so. Dropping a nuclear bomb on the White House or the Vatican might solve a lot of issues for a lot of people, but it is also a war crime.
Cancelling whole oeuvres, careers, and persons, to make a critical point about an artist or art work, is to drop a nuclear bomb, where a surgical strike might be wiser, saner, kinder, and more, well, proportionate.
The problem of proportion is forgotten online, because one Tweet can suddenly multiply and cause so many ripple effects of damage, that what seems minor to the originator, can take on a terrible snowball effect somewhere else. Like with drone strikes, it is always easier to destroy when the enemy is unseen.
We live in a virtual world, nowadays, which sounds cool, but also means we live in an unreal world, untethered from much that used to ground human considerations.
All this to say, the arts are under threat as never before, due to the rage against art works, or persons who make art, whose own actions or nature may well be amoral, repellent, or unlawful - because art is no longer seen as AN ACT OF IMAGINATION, A SPIDER'S WEB THROWN BEYOND THE MAKER TO THE WORLD, WHERE IT BECOMES AUTONOMOUS.
The autonomous value of the art work is that essential idea, or belief, that has grounded the entire study, appreciation, teaching of, and creation of, art and culture for thousands of years.
We do not burn Van Gogh's paintings because he was a creepy suicide; or ban Marlowe's plays because he was a killer and spy; we still can enjoy Larkin, despite his porn stash and racist letters to friends; do we? In the past, it was understood that while the human behind the work could be very flawed indeed, we could still take their work and enjoy it, use it, and benefit from it, despite or because of the moral problems of the creator. Indeed, the first life writing, by St Augustine, alerts us to the moral struggles of the writer - suggesting art itself may be that wrestle with the demons of the inner and outer world, to create something of value, of beauty, to make us think, and feel - instruction is not only or always provided by the saint; the sinner's story also informs, and elevates.
This applies more profoundly to creation itself - for some argue the demiurge or creator of the world, is evil; and we do not cancel all the world; we do not refuse to work or live in buildings or cities built by communists, or Nazis, or racists; and we do not refuse scientific and technological developments created by amoral, or immoral, nations or scientists; indeed, since ALL human culture emanates from historically-compromised times and periods, we would need to destroy or ban almost all music, and literature, once we began to seriously and comprehensively apply the cancellation diktats some now live by - and the Taliban have tried this also.
So we come to the stories in today's paper. Should all the ballet and dance choreography of a brilliant man be cancelled, because he has been accused of sex crimes? So far, ballet and dance companies world-wide have answered, yes, we must cancel these performances. And, an author of non-Mexican personal identity has her fictional novel viciously attacked due to her claimed appropriation of the Mexican culture, to the point where her book tour has been cancelled.
Notice that this is not about stopping legal proceedings, or investigations, or deriding the brave who speak out; nor is it about denying the value of holding and expressing interesting critical opinions about literature and cultural identity.
The question goes to something else. The nub: do we as individuals, or a mob, have the duty and right, to destroy or basically silence, art works, when we dislike or disagree with their makers?
If the answer is yes, then: get out the mallets and blow-torches, and storm the museums, libraries, galleries and music schools. Set fire to the world. Artists and poets were once said to possess a daemon, or be possessed by one; genius is fertile, sometimes chaotic, often insane, maybe dangerous. You will find it hard to locate almost any art object to be left untouched by your zealous crusade to remove what offends you. Pluck out your eyes.
Even when Oscar Wilde was dismounted from his seat as the great playwright of his age, and wrecked in a brutish prison, his plays, books, stories, and poems, were not banned; and, conversely, even when Lady Chatterley's Lover was causing a great deal of legal and moral consternation, its author was not a total pariah. Even, albeit controversially, Wagner, the arch Jew-hater, is performed in Israel. We know the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to have been, shall we say, a harbourer of unappealing fantasies; and, Britain's greatest modern composer, Britten, was known to favour boys on the younger side of manhood. No one seriously pickets Penguin's offices for publishing wife-killer William S. Burroughs, or did, until recently, anyway.
And yet, over the past few years, the elision between the creator and the created has become uniquely fused, so that the one infects, and pollutes, and ruins, the other. An otherwise good law-abiding person can write a dodgy poem or book, and suddenly be persona non grata; or, a person can be accused of, or found guilty of, a crime, and find that their life works, in the arts, are loudly binned, or banned, or burned. There is no daylight between the art and artist - no shadow of doubt.
It is the lack of doubt that terrifies; a mob without doubt is a murder squad; and it is not far from a murder squad to the guillotine.
It is a truth widely known - as Stalin knew - that if you kill almost everyone, you will manage to kill many of your enemies. If the police arrested everyone, they would by definition have arrested all the criminals. The ultimate ends of the cancel culture - to protect the innocent, punish and stop the guilty, and create a better, safer, world - are probably rather admirable. No one wants the worst of all possible worlds.
But the error is, like in some Star Trek episode where the computer runs amok and eliminates ALL humans to remove all uncertainty, to mistake the sin for the sinner; and to mistake the ability to destroy and punish with the sugar-rush need to do so. Dropping a nuclear bomb on the White House or the Vatican might solve a lot of issues for a lot of people, but it is also a war crime.
Cancelling whole oeuvres, careers, and persons, to make a critical point about an artist or art work, is to drop a nuclear bomb, where a surgical strike might be wiser, saner, kinder, and more, well, proportionate.
The problem of proportion is forgotten online, because one Tweet can suddenly multiply and cause so many ripple effects of damage, that what seems minor to the originator, can take on a terrible snowball effect somewhere else. Like with drone strikes, it is always easier to destroy when the enemy is unseen.
We live in a virtual world, nowadays, which sounds cool, but also means we live in an unreal world, untethered from much that used to ground human considerations.
All this to say, the arts are under threat as never before, due to the rage against art works, or persons who make art, whose own actions or nature may well be amoral, repellent, or unlawful - because art is no longer seen as AN ACT OF IMAGINATION, A SPIDER'S WEB THROWN BEYOND THE MAKER TO THE WORLD, WHERE IT BECOMES AUTONOMOUS.
The autonomous value of the art work is that essential idea, or belief, that has grounded the entire study, appreciation, teaching of, and creation of, art and culture for thousands of years.
We do not burn Van Gogh's paintings because he was a creepy suicide; or ban Marlowe's plays because he was a killer and spy; we still can enjoy Larkin, despite his porn stash and racist letters to friends; do we? In the past, it was understood that while the human behind the work could be very flawed indeed, we could still take their work and enjoy it, use it, and benefit from it, despite or because of the moral problems of the creator. Indeed, the first life writing, by St Augustine, alerts us to the moral struggles of the writer - suggesting art itself may be that wrestle with the demons of the inner and outer world, to create something of value, of beauty, to make us think, and feel - instruction is not only or always provided by the saint; the sinner's story also informs, and elevates.
This applies more profoundly to creation itself - for some argue the demiurge or creator of the world, is evil; and we do not cancel all the world; we do not refuse to work or live in buildings or cities built by communists, or Nazis, or racists; and we do not refuse scientific and technological developments created by amoral, or immoral, nations or scientists; indeed, since ALL human culture emanates from historically-compromised times and periods, we would need to destroy or ban almost all music, and literature, once we began to seriously and comprehensively apply the cancellation diktats some now live by - and the Taliban have tried this also.
So we come to the stories in today's paper. Should all the ballet and dance choreography of a brilliant man be cancelled, because he has been accused of sex crimes? So far, ballet and dance companies world-wide have answered, yes, we must cancel these performances. And, an author of non-Mexican personal identity has her fictional novel viciously attacked due to her claimed appropriation of the Mexican culture, to the point where her book tour has been cancelled.
Notice that this is not about stopping legal proceedings, or investigations, or deriding the brave who speak out; nor is it about denying the value of holding and expressing interesting critical opinions about literature and cultural identity.
The question goes to something else. The nub: do we as individuals, or a mob, have the duty and right, to destroy or basically silence, art works, when we dislike or disagree with their makers?
If the answer is yes, then: get out the mallets and blow-torches, and storm the museums, libraries, galleries and music schools. Set fire to the world. Artists and poets were once said to possess a daemon, or be possessed by one; genius is fertile, sometimes chaotic, often insane, maybe dangerous. You will find it hard to locate almost any art object to be left untouched by your zealous crusade to remove what offends you. Pluck out your eyes.
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