ON ART
1. The twentieth century witnessed the growth
of a split in art between democratic and theocratic trends, a split, in effect,
between Liberal Realism and Socialist Realism on the one hand, and Liberal
Realism and Fascist Realism on the other hand.
The democratic artist, be he liberal or radical, represents the People,
or that section of them - bourgeoisie, proletariat - with whom he chooses or is
obliged to identify. The theocratic
artist, by contrast, intimates, in a variety of ways and in varying degrees, of
the Holy Spirit, is free to 'do his own thing' irrespective of whether or not
it brings him public approval. He alone
is sovereign, not the People, and consequently he sets such artistic/spiritual
standards as he can achieve, leading, like a fascist dictator, from above. Thus his art - symbolist, post-painterly
abstractionist, surrealist, etc., is fascistic or, better, Transcendentalist. It doesn't require the People's
approval. But neither, in a liberal
society, can it be forced upon them!
Consequently it remains, by and large, an elite phenomenon.
2. In a liberal society, democratic art cannot
be forced upon the People either, though a socialist society can encourage the
People to view and attempt an appreciation of the Social Realist art on
offer. Needless to say, there will be
little or no Modern Realist art on offer in such a social democracy, and
neither, of course, will there be much theocratic art, as produced by the
painterly avant-garde in the liberal West.
The People’s artist must represent the proletariat, almost literally,
though often mythically, as so many militant Marxists overthrowing or opposing
bourgeois rule.
3. Ironically, militant Socialist Realism
becomes anachronistic in an age of détente, with its peaceful co-existence with
the West. Rather, it appertains to the
militant phase of Communist struggle (particularly within
4. However that may be, militant Socialist Realism
would certainly not demean or misrepresent the workers (proton equivalents) of
a liberal democracy, where the perpetuation of syndicalism affords the Western
Social Realist a vehicle for militant dramatization ... in the form of the
workers' struggle against bourgeois oppression, thus creating or perpetuating
the myth of Marxist revolt.
5. But such a militant form of Socialist
Realism is only one aspect (necessarily extreme) of democratic representative
art in a liberal society and, from the establishment's viewpoint, hardly the
most important or attractive aspect either!
For co-existent with this art is Modern Realism, the conservative
alternative to (left-wing) Socialist Realism, which generally portrays middle-class
life in its complacent, classical setting, and therefore may be said to
represent the electron-equivalent bourgeois and/or petty bourgeois of the
contemporary West. All very smug and
relaxed, in contrast to the workers' struggle against capitalist oppression or,
as in the more left-wing types of Modern Realism, the frank portrayal of the
effects of such oppression upon the worker from a democratic socialist
point-of-view. One sees it in certain of
the works of Hockney, just as one saw its
nineteenth-century precursor in Degas, Manet, and
Renoir. Perhaps 'capitalist realism'
would be the most appropriate term for this classical democratic art, the
representative type of contemporary academic art?
6. In the nineteenth century, however, academic
art was less bourgeois and more aristocratic, or neo-aristocratic, in
character, not so much a classical democratic art as an humanistic autocratic
one, as represented by the choice of pagan (ancient Graeco-Roman,
Egyptian, Hebrew, Byzantine, etc.) subject-matter, congenial to artists like
Alma-Tadema, Poynter,
Leighton, and other such exponents of fin-de-siècle decadence, not to
mention earlier masters like David and Ingres, who
indubitably displayed a taste for autocratic nostalgia in an age of ongoing
democracy, an age seemingly no-less partial to the prototypical social-realist
works of Courbet, Millet, and Le Douanier
Rousseau, as well as to some revolutionary theocratic works from the brushes of
Turner, Redon, and Moreau, each of whom preferred to
'do his own thing'.
7. If humanistic autocratic art is now dead and
unlikely ever to arise again, democratic art is still alive in both the liberal
West and the socialist East, if to a lesser extent than formerly. For the growth of theocratic art,
particularly in France and the United States, is in many respects the most
important contribution of the twentieth century to artistic progress,
outweighing the achievements, varied as they may be, of Socialist Realism
which, while bringing democratic art to a republican climax, signifies the
tail-end of an old tradition rather than the inception and development of a
new, higher order of painting, as pertaining to the Holy Spirit. It is this theocratic art which, in the
evolutionary nature of things, has taken over from and extended beyond the
democratic, as in the case of Op art, a late-stage petty-bourgeois successor to
early-stage petty-bourgeois painterly avant-garde art - painting, of whichever
description, being incapable of extension beyond petty-bourgeois criteria,
coming to a climax, one might say, on avant-garde and/or Social Realist terms.
8. Thus in a late-stage petty-bourgeois era the
only truly contemporary art will be theocratic Op, a genre above and beyond the
scope of conventional painting. Beyond this,
however, lies the art of the proletariat, the light art, holography and, in
particular, abstract computer art of an absolutely theocratic civilization,
such as I hope will take root in Eire in the not-too-distant future, following
a progression to truly classless criteria.
9. Needless to say, an absolutely theocratic
society would not encourage anything democratic, so there would be neither
Modern Realism nor Socialist Realism, nor even earlier (petty-bourgeois) forms
of theocratic art, whether abstract, and therefore at best quasi-theocratic
(given the democratic nature of the painterly genre), or as Op or Kinetic art,
and therefore fascistic. Only that which
could be described as relevant to a proletarian civilization, the logical
successor to the spiritualistic, late-stage petty-bourgeois civilization of the
contemporary West, with particular reference to the United States, and one not
at all connected with or stemming from its materialistic counterpart in the
(former) Soviet Union.
10. Not all avant-garde or modern art is
theocratic, as an intimation of truth.
Much of it is neo-autocratic in an anti-aesthetic and expressionist kind
of way, more concerned to distort nature and the natural than to intimate of
pure spirit. An art of
the Ugly rather than of the Beautiful, the Ethical, or the True. Some of it is even neo-pagan, and thus a
glorification of sensuality, hedonism, sun, strength, nature, etc. And, of course, it should not be forgotten
that nature-painting of any description is fundamentally autocratic, that is to
say, concerned not with man, still less the Holy Spirit, but with that which,
as nature, stems from the First Cause and thus, by implication, solar energy.
11. If nature precedes man and his democratic,
humanistic concerns, then nature-painting, whether in the hands of a Constable
or a Cortot, a Monet or a Rousseau, is beneath
democratic painting as a kind of more absolutist autocratic art than that which
focuses, even in pagan guise, on men and human society generally. To be sure, not a great deal of
representational nature-painting was done in the twentieth century, least of
all among the truly representative artists of the age. But we should not let this fact lead us to
attribute a democratic or a theocratic bias to paintings of nature done in a
semi-abstract or minimalist style. A
more contemporary technical treatment of natural phenomena does not constitute
the truly modern! Rather, it is a form
of attenuated autocratic art, indicative of the lowest type of twentieth-century
art, using the latter term in its strictly painterly sense.
12. If the highest type of twentieth-century art
has its limits, how much more limited must this autocratic art appear when
compared with that which, as holography and (more importantly in the immediate
future) computer graphics, is beyond painterly art, and as much above and
beyond such art as pagan sculpture was beneath it! Indeed, to do this ultimate art justice, we
should distinguish between holography, as a true antithesis to the inception of
'art' in pagan sculpture, and computer graphics, as a true antithesis to pagan
and, in particular, ancient Greek amphora art.
In contrast to the antithetical equivalent that may be inferred to exist
between light art and medieval stained-glass in a fascist/catholic
distinction. Thus holography and
computer art are as much above and beyond the pale of Western civilization ...
as pagan sculpture and amphora art were beneath and before it.
13. Concerning elites, who are always a minority,
one may note a progression, commensurate with autocratic/democratic/ theocratic
distinctions, from aristocrats to meritocrats via
plutocrats. Whereas the autocratic
aristocrats rule the populace (largely in the guise of peasants), the
democratic plutocrats both rule and serve the People
(as middle class and/or workers), while the theocratic meritocrats
serve the masses (largely in the form of proletarians).
14. A parallel description to the above
categories can be discerned in the distinction between Lords, Ministers, and
Commissars - the Lords ruling a subject populace, the Ministers representing
(ruling and serving) a sovereign people, and the Commissars serving the free
proletarian masses.
15. However, one should distinguish between
Commissars (more usually bureaucratic Ministers) of a socialist stamp and,
conversely, those of a centrist one; for whereas the former endeavour, in their
democratic capacity, to serve the material interests of the proletarian masses,
the latter will strive, in their theocratic capacity, to serve what is best in
the People - namely their spiritual potential, even though compromises with
materialism will of course have to be made.
