Sunday, August 31, 2008

Conservative Art

I read this blog about why artists hate conservatives from American Thinker. Beside the completely broad generalizing that was given in the article, I do think it would be an interesting debate about political leanings of most artists. If you read some of the comments, you also see a huge amount of ignorance about artists.

1 comment:

Troy Camplin said...

This is exactly what I have started The Emerson Institute for Freedom and Culture. As we get money, we are hoping to support artists of all types. Certainly if all the people who are out there spending a fortune to get government to support the arts would spend the money to support the arts and artists themselves, they won't actually need to government.

The support artists give to larger government is self-defeating, which is tragic. If we look at the countries that provided the most support for the arts, those same countries also were most oppressive to the arts. They supported you, but you had to support their agenda. If you did not, you ended up in a worse situation than you do under free markets -- out of work, unpaid, and in prison.

The arts had their foundation in religion, and as society has become more specialized, the arts have dissociated from its religious roots. Today's poet was the prophet of 2500 years ago, the guru and the spiritual leader. The first cave paintings were for religious purposes. The first plays were religious performances. Too many artists have disconnected their work from their audiences, and that is why they do not receive popular support. We may not have to return to full dissolution into the religious origins of the arts, but we do have to return to human concerns and remember that art is for an audience -- nobody cares about your narcissistic navel-gazing. And this fact does not restrict your vision -- it opens it up, and makes it something useful and good and transforming.