the parting on the left are now parting on the right

This is a bit old--real life has cut into my blogging time far too much lately--but last week the (London) Times Online ran an article asking the question, "try to think of a contemporary piece of art that made a right-wing point" (link via MAN.)  The author's main concern is theater, and British theater at that, so the frame of reference is a bit different for an American interested primarily in the visual arts.  My own knowledge of and experience in the American theater world is fading fast now that it's been about fifteen years since I so much as watched a play, let alone help mount one.  That said, my recollection and limited knowledge of the current scene confirms in part the author's argument: what politics makes it onto the stage is almost always of a liberal sort, and often rather self-satisfied.  I've always thought this had as much if not more to do with the audience for the art as anything else--producers typically being people who are more keen on making money than championing a cause.  I could say more, but I don't have the proper examples at hand, or inclination, so let's move back to the main question: what contemporary art makes a right-wing point?

As the article demonstrates, it all depends what you mean.  Theater often enough depicts people in society, so exploring some theme of political significance is always an option, and depending on one's interests or sensitivities, can come up almost unbidden.  Yet what might be considered political, or left- or right-wing, can differ to according to one's own perspective (part of the frustration expressed by the author and those he quotes is that the artists and arts establishment they perceive as left-wing don't even seem aware of it.)  And if Look Back in Anger could be considered provisionally right-wing, as the author suggests, well, times really have changed.

Visual art obviously may or may not take anything in our social world as a reference point.  While the resurgence in narrative art over the past few decades has also come with a certain level of political art, it's been far from the rule.  Still, the idea that artists should foster some sort of "oppositional" stance toward the mainstream is a common one, with a long pedigree.  That it often meant, among 19th and early twentieth century modern masters, a sort of reactionary, aristocratic contempt for the bourgeoisie, is less often remembered.

What about a contemporary example?  At the risk of taking her themes more seriously than intended, I submit that Dana Schutz's Civil Planning, seen above, could be considered a work of art making a right-wing point, though Schutz herself certainly isn't (as far as I know) a conservative.  I'm not interested at the moment in whether the painting is any good or not, in part because I don't think it's one of her best for reasons separate from the ideas discussed here.  Civil Planning offers a sort of parable of the organization of society, with violence never far in the background and the two (presumed) planners working in the foreground, apparently indifferent to their creations, hardly paying attention, their own attitudes and prejudices reflected back to them on the circular mirrors above.  It's hard not to sense in the work a healthy scepticism regarding human nature or the promise of "civil planning", both eminently conservative points, regardless of Schutz's own politics.

But why should anyone care if contemporary right-wing art exists?  The author seems to want it not only to balance left-wing art, but almost in the spirit of "where's our agit-prop?", ignoring the fact that a lot--most--artwork expressly intended as political isn't very good.  Of course, once again the situation is different in the U.S., where--along with the rather gentle example of popular movies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral--there are a number of televesion dramas catering to conservative markets (as in the theater world, the audience gets offered what those making the work believe it wants.)  But to stick to the visual arts, I would think that the very conservative lesson that such things can't be forced applies.  If we do respond to Schutz's painting as depicting flawed human nature and the limits of our abilities to act, it's because these are as much pre-political truths of human life as much as they are implicated in political attitudes.  Both Kant and Burke believed in, to use the former's phrase, the "crooked timber" of human nature, but they came to very different conclusions regarding the French Revolution.

Both the article and I have been sliding between different concepts of political art, so I'd like to try and clarify a little before concluding.  There's the sort of art that's expressly political--say, Richard Serra's Stop Bush.  For all the attention such work gets, often by people deploring it, there's less of it than one might suppose.  Then there are works, like the Schutz painting, which may deal with ideas, attitudes, or feelings that can have political implications, but don't necessarily, or don't indicate any particular form of politics.  I happen to think that if one takes Schutz's painting seriously, perhaps a mistake, these kinds of ideas lie close to the surface, but others may differ.  The danger here is that by looking at art of this kind through a political lens, one can very swiftly wind up a commissar.  Lastly is what the article calls "Fogey art", work that by nature of its traditional form or content--paintings of horses that look like horses, music with a tune, plays with clearly resolving plots, stories that depict the stuff of broad human experience, etc.--are in some sense conservative.  Perhaps they are, though the sense in which they might be isn't clearly a political one; nor is a taste for such art limited to conservatives, by any means.  But that's enough for now, even if I've left a number of questions undiscussed.  Other thoughts are welcome.

Comments

[Arthur Whitman]

Civil Planning offers a sort of parable of the organization of society, with violence never far in the background and the two (presumably) planners working in the foreground, apparently indifferent to their creations, hardly paying attention, their own attitudes and prejudices reflected back to them on the circular mirrors above. It's hard not to sense in the work a healthy scepticism regarding human nature or the promise of "civil planning", both eminently conservative points, regardless of Schutz's own politics

I agree that Schutz's painting can be interepreted as sceptical in this way. Given what some critics might consider a retrograde "neo-expressionist" (this term is itself dated I know) style, it could be considered as a critique of both high Modernist abstraction and the utopian Leftist ideas that often went along with it. The background appears to owe someting to cubism. You could make connections between this and (for example) the work and ideas of Le Corbusier. As I understand it, his urban-planning ideas, if not so much his buildings, are widely considered naive.

More broadly, I think this scepticism is widespread in modern culture, even amongsty the erstwhile members of the left. This extends, of course, not just to people like Mondrian and Corbu, but to someone like Keynes. So, perhaps what I am trying to say is that its hard to pin this sensebility down anymore.

[JL]

More broadly, I think this scepticism is widespread in modern culture, even amongsty the erstwhile members of the left.

In part I agree with you--hence my reference to the "pre-political truths of human life", not to mention Kant and Burke, above. I also was thinking of the opening of E.J. Dionne's Why Americans Hate Politics, where he connects Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's line "Rules and regulations, who needs them?" to the Reagan presidency (you can read the passage at the link.) On the other hand, some of the pervasiveness of ideas such as these comes from the victories won by conservatives and conservative ideas, and shouldn't be forgotten.

I hadn't dealt much with form in the above, but I think you're right to extend the question there. Not that it means the results are any less mixed, but there's no doubt that, in addition to whatever any painting might express, some will look at it as a "conservative" form and map out attitudes toward other media accordingly. Again, I'm fairly dubious about this, but it certainly happens.

[Arthur Whitman]

Again, I'm fairly dubious about this, but it certainly happens

Its not so much that I think that there is an intrinsic relationship between form and social-poltical values (although the idea is interesting). But I do think that historically informed viewers inevitably bring such associations to a painting or other artwork. So for example, looking at a Mondrian, its hard for me not to think of modernist city planning and architecture. Likewise, I look at contemporary expressionist work and I see not only a narrative quality, but a reaction to the rejection of such qualities in much twentieth-century work. Of course, this "mapping" is inevitably a messy affair and subject to reversals.

[Arthur Whitman]

On the other hand, some of the pervasiveness of ideas such as these comes from the victories won by conservatives and conservative ideas, and shouldn't be forgotten.

It wasn't my intention to deny this.

[JL]

It wasn't my intention to deny this.

Oh, I don't doubt it--I didn't mean to imply that you did so. And I largely agree with your other comment. I just wanted to emphasize the point. I was more thinking of the passages in the article that I referred to above--that from the author's perspective, "liberal" art isn't marked as such in the eyes of liberals. It may be that some "conservative" art isn't marked in the eyes of others, either.

[Vvoi]

A recent quote from John McDonald: “Politics is an embarrassment in much contemporary art – an exercise in selling prepackaged opinions to the converted”...