This is becoming a more controversial issue today. We have the push to tear down and destroy statues that commemorate Confederate officers in the US. I am in full agreement with the efforts to remove these statues from such a context as to honor or venerate those individuals. Place them in a museum that addresses their deeds. But I draw the line at destroying them. That strikes me as being too close to the actions of the Taliban... destroying ancient Buddhist and Hindu sculpture because it does not suit their current beliefs. And then we have the fact that the mob in their righteous zeal to erase our Confederate racist past have also pulled down statues of George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and even early abolitionists. It quickly becomes a slippery slope.
Erasing the history you don't like is of course a great way to ensure you'll repeat it.
I don't get worked up too much. Current events have filled me with a renewed sense of humility before nature, and nature ultimately laughs at all our issues, whether silly ones or grave matters. What are statues really other than a convenient place for pigeons to s(h)it on? A thousand years from now, or ten thousand, presumably people will still be scurrying through their petty little lives, angrily tearing down and putting up statues, and thinking they are changing the world. When I think of these issues in terms of nature's time scales, I realize their triviality.
Ozymandias should be required reading in all schools.
The Puritanical desire to erase the past and appears holier than thou has carried over into the museums.
A great deal of it is indeed little more than virtue signaling. So now we have a bunch of youngsters trying to outdo one another in proving their ideological purity. It does not bode well for the arts, or at least for any art of any kind that is or was produced by a white male.
What of the notorious antisemite, Richard Wagner? But then again, Wagner was likely so more of an antisemite than Bach or a good many other artists and composers of his day.
Anyone who has actually tried to listen to Wagner's music will know that antisemitism was the least of his sins.
But yes, antisemitism was standard practice in Europe, for many centuries. Utterly idiotic, but there you go. Wagner's reputation just got unlucky: his work was revered by a culture in which antisemitism finally turned seriously murderous, and he wrote that unfortunate little pamphlet. Had he stuck to opera, his antisemitism might have been forgotten by now, and had the Holocaust never happened, no one today would have cared about the pamphlet either.
It seems to me there is a misconception that the proper goal of art is to ennoble the audience... to edify and educate us as to the appropriate beliefs and values... and that any art which fails to do so... or any artist who fails to meet the proper ethical/moral standards can and should be erased.
"I'm fed to the teeth with all these elevated things!"
It's of course nothing new: as far as I can work out, before modernism it was received wisdom that the arts should instill "proper" moral values (which is one reason why audiences found Manet's pictures of whores so startling). But what are proper moral values? How could societies that practiced slavery and colonialism and war and barbaric punishments really point fingers anyway? And how can a bunch of pimple-faced, uneducated morons who would burn priceless works of art point fingers?
Now unlike WC, this board does not even have a debate section, which is probably a good thing, and thus, I don't want to get drawn too deeply into things that might end up with everyone throwing mud at everyone else. But those kids pulling down statues of Ulysses Grant etc. should understand this: they are handing the election to Trump on a platter.
Exactly. Now we haven't been confronted by too many examples of art that promotes Nazi or Maoist or Stalinist ideas... and that is actually good. There is Leni Riefenstahl... and that's about all I can think of.
Well, as I noted before, one can argue that just about any art is, in a sense, political. Gorgeous still life of flowers and fruit? Well, keep in mind that only the rich could afford such a thing, to adorn their sumptuous homes with something trivial, that will draw their attention away from all the ills of the world. Thus, an artist who paints such things is in a sense publicly showing his support for the status quo. Perhaps we should embark on a burning spree of Dutch Golden Age paintings.
That is of course the problem. As you note, it quickly becomes a slippery slope. The whole thing has now turned into a classical witch hunt, in which to be accused is to be found guilty. But when I look at all those angry kids out there, I perceive a significant element of self-loathing in them. Thus end civilizations.
If we look at art around the time of the French Revolution we get more of an equal quality on opposite sides of the political spectrum. We have powerful works in support of Napoleon and the Revolution... and we have equally powerful works taking an opposite view. Of course we have these paintings where the artist's grasp on reality is so bad they are almost good comedy:
When I first ran into McNaughton's work on the web I honestly thought it WAS comedy! But it demonstrates the old notion that when things get to a certain point, they become impossible to satirize, because no matter how crazy a thing you come up with, chances are that there are people who do actually believe it.
Anyway, it is often just one more bandwagon that someone jumped on. The Black Lives Matter movement seems like it may be such. But once again I don't mind. Beethoven jumped on the Napoleon bandwagon, and looked what transpired.
When the latest political movement... BLM or the "Me Too" movement produce an Eroica Symphony, I might pay attention to the art.
Yes, indeed. But that's the thing: if I think the cause is worthwhile I'll support it irrespective of whether it produces great art or not (while if one of the forms in which it expresses itself is the destruction of art, I will withdraw support even if I initially thought the cause was a good one!) And if the cause is not worthwhile, simply producing great art is not going to sway me. I'm a great fan of the
Eroica; not so much of Napoleon.
A great many of today's hot button issues strike me as little more than bandwagons and opportunities for virtue signaling. BLM comes to mind; #metoo perhaps not quite so much, but it is one of those things that can very easily get out of hand. A great deal of nature "conservation" also falls into that category.
But I'm getting too old to get worked up about such things. Life is short and I have better things to do than either jumping on bandwagons, or allowing them to rob me of my sleep.
