The Arts

All ideology provokes opposition; powerful then is the ideology that contains the figure of its own opposition comfortably within itself.

Thus to the rigor of science is opposed the freedom of art; to the vapidity of consumerist culture, the edgy brilliance of art; to the conformity of the corporate office, the revolutionary exuberance of art; to the prudent uptightness of the nerd, the sexy recklessness of the artist. It does not matter whether corporate offices are in fact conformist or instead partake of artistic exuberance, or both; it does not matter whether the nerd is a lab technician or a banker or an insurance salesman; it does not matter whether it appears to be scientism or economics or mean kids at school or parents that oppress us. There is a wellspring of dissatisfaction, an abiding sense of being trapped in something; art stands as the figure of opposition to this feeling. In the myriad versions of the myth (in books, movies, etc.), the repressive force is dressed up in every possible disguise, but it draws its psychic power, its seeming reality from this wellspring, this sense of being trapped. The source of this feeling is certainly not science. It is not even reductive materialism, though that is surely a part of it. It is something larger than all these. My purpose here is not to name it. Perhaps it is unnameable. I am speaking only of the role played by art; these digressions are only to ensure that I do not seem to be simplifying and confusing things any more than I actually am.

Art is the spiritual outlet for the prisoner of rationalist ideology, the oxygen mask that drops down from the ceiling to alleviate the sense of gradual suffocation that might otherwise drive him to desperate action. This explains why it is precisely in the liberal, educated urban centers and amongst the most educated and rational classes that art is most devoutly fetishized.

At the same time, or rather at other moments, as it were under different lighting, science takes on precisely the virtues of art: thus the scientist as free thinker, as rebel against conservative belief systems, as champion of individualism, trusting in the evidence of his senses rather than the ossified wisdom of the past. I raise this point here only in order that the reader should not become confused by the double-image. Both depictions exist simultaneously and without real conflict. We see one, the lighting shifts and we see the other; the mythology is not at all destabilized.

Two important points must be made about this art which stands for all that we long for.

(1) Prior to about three hundred years ago, art had a very different role. There were, on the one hand, elaborate religious and mythological systems that sacrilized and structured the world and imbued it with meaning; on the other, there was painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc. that spoke and signified within the systems of meaning that religion and mythology generated, that drew its imagery and allusions and often its passion from them, that was frequently devotional and in many cases actually created for ritual purposes. Now, the religious-mythological structures have been wiped away, and art is left to carry the entire burden: to not only depict sacred events but to be itself the sacred event; not only to express the meaning that is understood to lie in the world but to be the very source and form of that meaning. This is a burden it cannot bear.

It is entirely consistent with its role as the new source of the sacred that art has played such a central role in disassembling—or rather, flouting, tearing down, making a mockery of—older forms and objects of sacredness and devotion. The new king must, first of all, get rid of the old one.

But it is perhaps in its capacity as engine of desacrilization that we see most clearly art’s allegiance with reductive materialism. Science itself, real science, can do very little to dissolve systems of meaning, morality, sacrality, etc.. (Claims to the contrary are made with stunning confidence by people like Adam Gopnik, but it seems to me these claims are all nonsense—a discussion for another time.) The dissolution of these systems requires something that can act on the cultural level, that will not only soberly suggest that a literal reading of their cosmological foundations is untenable, but will actually flout their mores, make a laughing-stock of their sacred objects, undermine them at what we might call the ground-level of their psychological power.

I am not necessarily advocating a return to any particular religion or in fact to religion in general. I am only describing the way in which art and radical materialism work together.

(2) Over the past hundred years, and especially over the past fifty, all that which goes by the name art has undergone a division. At one time, this division was described as being between “pop” (or “low”) and “high” art. By now the division is further advanced, and the two resulting strands appear with a new bleaker clarity. On one side is the work of a highly consolidated media industry; what distinguishes this work, first and foremost, is not its popularity nor its low-brow-ness nor any other internal quality, but rather the economics of its production. It is mass-produced for a mass audience, carefully tailored to market segments, and disseminated through highly efficient distribution systems. On the other side stand the Real Artists— simultaneously heroic pioneers of the new and heroic bastions of High Culture— maintained by a rickety system of patronage from grant-making organizations, wealthy parents, and Kickstarter. The most important point about this latter group is that their work is viewed by an increasingly tiny segment of the population, and this segment consists largely of the artists themselves and their close friends.

The preceding paragraph sounds curmudgeonly and obnoxious, I know. But is there any other way to view the situation? Please write in! Tell me!