Affirmative Action For Art Work
These days, if you write or create a work of art, you're likely to get judged not just by your art work but whether you fit into some "marginalized" group. If you do, you're in luck, because your art will get a bump up strictly on the content of your, uh, melanin or whatever.
The same goes for art with the "correct" subject matter.
Aesthetics? Back seat, please.
Lauren Oyler writes at The New York Times about the sort of art deemed "necessary":
A turn toward socially conscious criticism, ushered in by the internet's amplification of previously ignored perspectives, has meant that culture now tends to be evaluated as much for its politics as for its aesthetic successes (or failures). Certain works -- usually those that highlight the experiences of marginalized groups, or express some message or moral about the dangers of prejudice -- have been elevated in stature. It's an overdue correction that brings with it an imposition: No longer just illuminating, instructive, provocative or a way to waste a few hours on a Saturday, these works have become "necessary." The word is a discursive crutch for describing a work's right-minded views, and praise that is so distinct from aesthetics it can be affixed to just about anything, from two-dimensional romantic comedies to a good portion of the forthcoming books stacked beside my desk. Necessary for what is always left to the imagination -- the continuation of civilization, maybe.
It's patronizing and infantilizing -- and patently unfair -- to elevate art for reasons that have nothing to do with the art and everything to do with the skin color or origins of the artist or the sort of subject matter we see as good "medicine."
Also, the sort of art that gets elevated -- that needs that special help -- tends to be a fucking bore or at least not that great and/or ugly, meaningless, and un-elevating.
I predict a backlash.
When applied to bad art with good politics, "necessary" allows the audience to avoid engaging with a work in aesthetic terms, which tend to be more ambiguous and difficult. When applied to good art with good, or even ambivalent, politics, it renders aesthetic achievement irrelevant. Not only is that depressing, it also nullifies the political argument in favor of art in the first place: Why write a novel when a manifesto will do?
Nobody wants to read your fucking manifesto.
RELATED: Regarding art deemed "necessary," I'm reminded of Tom Wolfe's terrif little book, "The Painted Word," about how bullshit theory in lofty language came to dominate modern art.
From Wikipedia: "Wolfe's thesis in The Painted Word was that by the 1970s, modern art had moved away from being a visual experience, and more often was an illustration of art critics' theories."
If you are the one paying it shouldn't matter to the rest of us what you buy. So this critique only applies to publicly supported art. I.e. tax dollars. If your museum is privately funded I don't care if you fill it with wax sculptures, barbed wire, or large Campbell soup labels. But for publicly supported museums there already is a backlash hitting. Those of us not in the club don't want to pay for someone else's vanity project. Claiming it is 'necessary' doesn't convince.
Ben at May 23, 2018 8:45 AM
This is already the case in SciFi and Fantasy literature. If you have the right amount of intersectionality points, and include characters from all 47 genders, and are a tedious bore, you might be able to win a Hugo.
Amy's membership in the Witeout Tribe despite her pluming precludes such awards, even if she were inclined to try her hand at fiction.
Oh, and bingo. Wut? aren't we playing intersectionality bingo?
I R A Darth Aggie at May 23, 2018 2:16 PM
For where this is headed, check out Soviet propaganda art. Stiff, boring, hilariously self-important, and political.
For my daughter's birthday (not a kid anymore) we went to see Cinderella, the musical. They used the original Rogers and Hammerstein music/songs, but added a political twist: from early on a protester keeps showing up who wants the king to give the people a say in government. He is a real dweeb--probably a vegan. Toward the end, Cinderella tells the prince he can only marry her if he gives the people the vote, and this dweeb gets voted in as prime minister. I wanted to barf. This is a fairy tale FGS. I really do not want a lecture from Starbucks employees or at a movie or musical. How about half the movies lecture about the beauty of free markets and free speech?
cc at May 23, 2018 2:57 PM
cc, I would never pay to see that either.
On the other hand, I would love to see the 1958 British play by Nicholas Stuart Gray, "The Other Cinderella." (Not to be confused with the 1976 all-black Jackie Taylor version.) Here's what I said in another forum:
I have to wonder if Gray saw the 1955 "The Glass Slipper" with Leslie Caron playing the grouchy Cinderella before he wrote "The Other Cinderella" in 1958. In HIS play, she's a whiny wallflower who won't go to the ball despite her loving stepsisters' desperate attempts to drag her there. This throws the fairy godmother for a loop - as does a demon that's getting in the fairy's way. Oh, and Cinderella doesn't marry the prince!
More on it, from 2015:
http://edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/theatre/cappies-reviews-the-other-cinderella
lenona at May 23, 2018 3:28 PM
And I left out that the prince in Cinderella is an airhead, indecisive, and with no thoughts of his own. A perfect foil for a feminist Cinderella.
cc at May 23, 2018 4:00 PM
It's not enough that the artist be intersectional, the message in the art must be intersectional as well.
Conan the Grammarian at May 23, 2018 4:43 PM
Wolfe's social commentaries (e.g., From Bauhaus to Our House, Radical Chic, and The Painted Word) were always insightful and guaranteed to stir controversy (perhaps a harbinger of the May 24 thread on controversy generating views).
Conan the Grammarian at May 24, 2018 5:48 AM
Fashion-Chasing on Canvas in City Journal. The Baltimore Museum of Art is selling several paintings by "dead white men" to fund the purchase of more works by living African-American painters.
Conan the Grammarian at May 24, 2018 5:58 AM
Since the advent of photography and movies and digital manipulation, the ability to create an awesome image through paint and other mediums has take a backseat to other criteria.
NicoleK at May 24, 2018 11:04 AM
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